Video games are a horrible substitute for playing sports. If you're trying to have fun, and you want to have a better life, and you play video games, I hope what I'm about to share gets you out of your comfort zone. I hope it encourages you to take a deeper look, and I hope it helps you not waste so much time like I did playing video games.
Yesterday I got my tennis membership back
Yesterday, I just got my tennis membership. I got off the waiting list at my local racket club, where they have a bunch of tennis courts and pickleball courts. I had a free coaching lesson, and then I went to a little kind of free tennis camp for members, like an hour long, and I had so much fun. I had so much fun. There were six of us total, three on each side, playing doubles and rotating. I was hitting good shots, bad shots, but I was having fun. I kept thinking while I was playing tennis, Jesus Christ, this is fun. I love it.
You know, the last time I played a video game and had that thought? I've played tens of thousands of hours of video games in my life. Video games are such a trap. They're fake fun. They take more from you than they give. I know video games can be fun, of course. I've had fun playing video games. But many of you are not even having fun playing video games anymore. Many of you sit there, and if I could watch your face, if I could read your thoughts, you're bored. You're grinding a game for some stupid piece of equipment, some meaningless reward, some useless achievement. You're grinding and competing against other people, and you're just throwing your life away.
Meanwhile, your body's deteriorating, and then you get up and you have physical pain and you suffer and you complain, like I used to. I used to have back pain. And you know what helps you have back pain? Sitting on your ass playing 10 hours of video games a day. That'll help you have back pain. Getting out there and playing tennis will help you stay in great shape. And you don't have to just play tennis. There's basketball, baseball, football, ultimate frisbee, pickleball. There are all kinds of sports you can play and have fun. And video games are a piss-poor substitute for sports. If you want to see how I keep talking myself out of the trap and back into a real life, that's a big part of what I share in my Games playlist.
It takes effort, and that's exactly why it's worth it
I know it's hard, because video games are such a trap. It takes effort to go find people to play tennis with. You have to get off your ass and face the unknown, as I did. And I'm embarrassed to say this. I'm embarrassed to look at how many video games I played when I knew I loved playing tennis. I got into playing tennis in 2020, 2021, right when all these people were stuck in their houses. I didn't go along with that. Not a day, not a second did I go along with that BS. And I'm not going to go along with whatever the next BS is either. I got out there and I was playing tennis and I was having fun.
And then I got sucked in by video games again, because tennis took time. It costs a couple hundred dollars a month to be a racket club member, although it's free to go to tennis courts anywhere around. I did play some of that, but it took effort. It took knowing people in person, building relationships to go play tennis with. And I eventually got lazy. I eventually quit putting effort into making friendships and finding people to play with. I eventually cut the cost of paying a couple hundred a month for a racket club. And then what do you know? I'm telling myself I'm trying to have fun, and I'm sitting on my freaking phone like this trying to get some fun. And you know what? I finally noticed it's not fun. Most people, most of the time, are not even having fun playing video games. It's a distraction.
If I'd reached for a game instead of a racket
When you compare the amount of fun you have playing sports, like I did yesterday, to what a game gives you, it's not close. Yesterday, the rear of my neck muscles were hurting a little bit. In the past, I would have figured this is what happens before I get a headache, and I would have tried to play video games to not think about the physical pain. And then, because I'd been sitting there playing video games tense, I would have gotten a headache. Then I would have taken headache medication like Tylenol or Advil, and then I would have gone to bed. That's what I used to do 10, 15 years ago. Or I would have drunk a lot of water. Or I would have drunk alcohol and screwed my body up and poisoned my body and felt like crap the next day.
And even recently, what I was doing in that scenario was grabbing my tablet and playing Marvel Snap. I dumped thousands of dollars into Marvel Snap, almost enough to pay for an entire year of family membership at the racket club, which entitles you to unlimited tennis. They have a pool there. You can sneak into the pickleball court if it's open. You get a free clinic. You can play every week with a coach. I traded all of that for some digital cards online that I have no real ownership over at all. I traded one-on-one time in person, moving my body, for some images on a phone. And I felt like an idiot.
And yet it was hard to stop, because if I stopped, then I'd have to admit I was wrong for buying all this crap. And I was wrong for buying all this crap and putting all this time into Marvel Snap to start with. So I'll just go ahead and say it: I was wrong. That was absolutely ridiculous, to just throw that money into Marvel Snap. I was wrong. I'm moving forward. We're done with this. I want to have fun. I want my body to be healthy. I want to have energy. I told that whole Marvel Snap story in detail in how I spent $2,000 on Marvel Snap and quit in 2024, if you want the full reckoning.
And you know what happened yesterday? I was feeling a bit low energy, my neck was hurting, and I went out there to play tennis. I had fun. I came home. And I realized, as I was having a little snack, that I'd totally forgotten about my neck and it felt great. Literally all I had to do was get out there and move my body and have fun and forget about any problems. Get out there and play. Get out there and feel joy. Connect with other people. And all that neck pain and low energy? My energy fired right up once I got on the tennis court. I had so much fun. I haven't done something recently, maybe in quite a while, where I thought, this is so much fun. This is awesome.
The first sign of a loss of vitality
This connects to a book I've been reading, one of the Seth books. I just did a deep, deep review of Seth Speaks, and I highly recommend you read that book. One of the things Seth said that was such a breakthrough for me is that the first sign of a loss of vitality, before you get your health problems, before you get laid out and strung out on drugs or medication, the first thing that usually happens is you stop playing and you start focusing on your personal problems. And your personal problems could include all your views on politics, and the state of the world, and your money, and your health.
The first sign of a loss of vitality is a reduction or elimination of play, taking life really seriously all the time. Everything is so serious all the time, and no fun. Even when you say you're having fun, it doesn't look like fun to someone else. If you were to watch me play video games, and I have watched myself play video games a lot, most of the time it doesn't actually look like fun. In fact, more of it is suffering than fun. Yesterday on the tennis court was awesome. Even when I missed shots, I was having fun. It was funny to watch other people miss shots. I wanted other people to hit good shots and play their best. Whereas when I played video games, I wanted other people to suck and let me dominate them. Video games are a piss-poor substitute for sports.
Get honest about how much fun you're actually having
And yet so many people today are sitting on their ass playing video games all over, and they're telling themselves it's fun. Ask your friends and family: does your video gaming look like fun? When you stay up for eight hours grinding Destiny, and then you get up late dragging it, does that look like fun? How often were you actually having fun? What really often is fun is hanging out with your friends. And hanging out with friends playing video games is better than gaming by yourself. But what is even better than that is to play sports and get your body moving.
Because so many health problems, so many mental health problems, are a function of stuck energy. And when you're playing video games, you're choosing to keep that energy stuck. Whereas when you get out there and play sports, the energy moves. Like yesterday, there was just some stuck energy in my neck, and when I got out there and ran around and played tennis, the energy moved, and I felt better. I didn't have to take any pills. I didn't have to go through any awful procedure. I literally got out there and had fun and felt better.
Little kids are often completely onto this, and that's why little kids often have great lives. And yet, if you look at a little kid, and then you look at what you think of as somebody right before they pass, usually people right before they pass are rigid. They're rigid, they're serious, they're not having any more fun in their life. And you would almost think that passing is the best thing that could happen to them. Then you look at kids that are flexible and fun and out there playing around all the time. Kids have to be convinced relentlessly to stop playing and get serious. And I'm telling you right now: undo that programming. Especially when it comes to video games, get honest about how much fun you're actually having. Most of you are not having fun most of the time you're playing video games.
Instant gratification steals from you on the back end
What's even worse about video games is that the instant gratification makes it harder to actually do the real work in the rest of your life. When you can just sit down and get an adrenaline dump playing some battle royale, why bother taking the time to make some new friends and go play basketball? Why bother? Oh, it's raining today, I'll just play Call of Duty right now. And then the next day it's sunny out, and you figure, forget going to the basketball court, I'm just going to sit here and get my adrenaline dump with the least possible energy.
You pay a price for that. There are so many things in life that take from you. They look like they give you a little instant gratification up front, but they steal from you on the back end. You play video games and it gives you some immediate gratification. You turn on your phone, you're instantly in a game, and you get this little rush of adrenaline. You feel a little something. But then you feel disgusting when you turn it off. You feel worse than before you played it. And now you also have the opportunity cost: look what you did with your time. Look what you did with your time. This is the same reason I treat video games like alcohol now — the short-term hit is real, and so is the hangover.
Isolation is how a life goes bad
Instead of getting out there and being with people in person, which is such a wonderful, natural experience, you sat at home alone on your phone. Almost everybody I know who has a life that sucks is isolated. And the way you get isolated is this: the more time you put on your devices, the less time you put with people in person, having real conversations, having fun. If you want to have a great life, having people in your life, in person, real conversation, having fun, that's how you do it. If you want to be miserable, sit with your face in front of a computer all the time and don't be around anybody.
Now, it's one thing if this is what you do for work. And if this is what you do for work, it's extremely essential to not do it in your off time, too. If you have a job where you're on a computer already, then please get off it when you're not working. Get out there with real people. Don't volunteer to just dump more time in. And man, I've wasted tens of thousands of hours playing video games in my life. The only positive thing I can think of from that is if I can help you not waste as many hours as I did.
Why I always came back, and why I'm done
I want to remember this and never get tricked into it again, because I've quit playing video games a bunch of times in my life. I always came back to video games when I got to a point where I didn't know what else to do. When there was empty space in my life, when a business idea flopped, and all of a sudden I have no money, or all of a sudden I have a bunch of money and a bunch of time, well, let's play video games. When I'm bored and I don't know what else to do, video games, instant, easy, short-term solution. But the problem is, it also blocks anything better from coming in.
If you're tired of being broke, you don't have time to play video games, because you could be using that time to learn valuable skills to make money. If you're tired of being lonely, you don't have time to play video games, because you need to get your ass out there and be talking with other people. And if you're having health issues, you could take that time to learn how to fix those issues and help other people. You don't have time to be playing video games instead of honoring your body and getting it to circulate. So video games are one of the biggest wastes of time I've ever engaged in, and they are a piss-poor substitute for sports. The hardest part is the moment you finally walk away from it for good, which is why I wrote out the whole process of how I finally learned to quit playing video games. If having other people in your corner would help you do the same, that's exactly what the Family is for, and you can join us anytime.
I'm going to be playing tennis for the rest of my life
I hope I never forget this again. Because when I'm on the tennis court, I think about it like this: this body was born 40 years ago. There are people out on that tennis court who were born 10, 20, 30 years before me. And they're still out there, still active, and they could hit balls back and forth with me. I'm looking at the rest of my life, and I'm going to be able to play tennis. If this body can't play tennis, if that looks like something it can never do again, then it's time to drop it and get a new one. Like when your car gets too many miles on it: all right, I'll let that one go to the junkyard, and we're going to go buy a nice fresh new one and drive that one around instead.
My whole mission with this is to help people get out of video game addiction and live better lives. If this was helpful for you, the energy you're putting into a game today is energy you could be putting into your body, your friendships, and your future. Get out there and move. Get out there and play. I'd love for you to come be a part of the community as you do it — that's what I keep building over in my Life playlist and inside the Jerry Banfield Family.