Do you enjoy playing video games? Do you suspect that this activity keeps you from having a rich social life and making friends?

I don’t argue: high chance is you’re right. But do you really need to sacrifice your life-long romance with CS:GO, Skyrim, or, god have mercy upon us, Minecraft in order to get a social life?

Not at all.

If you had a chance to read my first articles, you may remember the post, in which I dogmatically blame my weakness for the computer games during teenage period as one of the primary reasons to lag in social activities.

Looking at gaming from such an angle made me think that the only way out was to break the habit completely.

I deliberately made a choice to lose interest in video games entirely.

Though it did have some really good effects on my social life, with the course of time, I came to the conclusion that that judgement I had ten years ago was perhaps too black and white.

Later, when I figured out that going to a night club (and meeting new people overall) was no such a big deal as I thought, to my surprise I found out that many who I hanged out with, were also gamers.

It had blown my mind!

Before, I was sure that one couldn’t have the best from both worlds: you are either an anti-social gamer, or a party person. Binary choice: A or B.

I was incredibly amused when I got to know that some of my friends whom I considered as socially successful people, also enjoyed playing Counter-strike, RPGs, and some social web games.

Moreover, they were quite good at them. It’s not that they just played it like 5 minutes per week. They spent quite a lot of time in front of their desktop screens (yes, tabs and phones were not that spread back in the day).

So what was the difference between me, a guy who had no social life, and my friends, who spent almost as much time playing computer games as I, and at the same time enjoyed abundance of social interaction?

The answer is clear: they did not close their minds for other experiences. They did not cross out other areas of life from their reality.

They felt the line where gaming starts to harm their social life and stayed away from it. At the same time they did not abandon their passion for computer games.

They managed to find a balance between playing games and socializing.

They had friends, they went out regularly, they had girlfriends and they played video games.

And that balance was achieved by spending a fraction of their day on socializing. They played, but they DID make time to call a friend, send a message, to go out.

Perhaps, the thought of giving your passion for video games up completely as a necessary and ultimate step to get a social life disturbs you.

You are not ready for such a harsh approach.

So you may procrastinate on leaving your home, meeting new people and making friends.

However, as you can see, you may find a happy medium without taking borderline actions.

You can have the best of both worlds: stay in touch with your friends AND enjoy playing video games.

When you choose to miss opportunities that life gives you, hardly anything can be done.

If your general life plan is to stay the way you are — a reserved guy with a rich inner world, hardly anyone can help you.

If you choose to shut your mind, you will not be able to see chances to get out and become socially savvy no matter how many of those opportunities are floating around you back and forth.

That is what we call the power of choice. This is a great power, and luckily, you can control it.

You may choose to change – invite new experience and activities to your life. Do not step aside.

Balanced lifestyle, when all your passions and activities are interwined in such a way that they feed each other, does exist, and you have the strength to find it.