3 ways video games can help build your confidence

In dire need to build your self-confidence? It may sound like counterintuitive advice, but start playing video games! Contrary to popular belief, video games actually help build self-confidence. The most obvious way it does this is that it forces you to interact with other people, (if you’re playing online multiplayer games. With so many multiplayer games today, you are bound to find out that you genuinely enjoy and even meet new friends to share in the fantastic experience.

Here’s precisely why video games can help build your self-confidence:

1. You learn to do something well

Perhaps the most apparent way video games can help you feel more self-confident is the fact that when you play a game for long enough, you become better and better at it. The satisfaction of learning and mastering a skill is all that you need to fill your mind with) pride and happiness.

Note that the journey to get good at something is a long and arduous journey, even with video games. Often, when you pick a game at the beginning, you will not be that great at it at first. However, this is where you can start building your confidence. When you learn to play the game, you slowly get better and better at it. While you will feel awful for losing at times, the promise of victory and satisfaction is what will keep you going.

As a result, you come out better than before, making you more confident in your skills. At the same time, if you play with new friends, you also become more helpful to them, guiding them through the difficult areas of the game. This can help you feel a sense of usefulness, which further enhances your self-confidence.

2. You get used to losing

Sure, you want to win, and you do that by getting better (see point 1). Chances are you are going to be a great big loser for a while. And that’s ok. Learning to lose and losing to learn are key parts of growing your geek self-confidnece.

Every time you lose, you learn something. That first Goomba ins Super Mario Bros.? Walk into it and you quicly learn that walking into goombas is bad, and you die. YOU LOSE SIR. Next time? You leap over that goomba with Mario’s trademark jump, maybe bouncing off its head and squishing it.

Then maybe you fall down a hole. Another lesson learned.

3. You can start contributing

Not only can you get better at the game all by yourself, but you also contribute to the community of the game. For example, once you’ve gained plenty of knowledge about a specific game, you can enter smaller gaming communities where you can both learn and teach the gamers around you. The feeling of learning something new, as well as being able to teach skills to newbies, will help you realize that you can develop yourself as a person—a realization that’ll help you become more confident in your abilities.

As a plus, these communities are filled with people who are into the same thinsg as you, meaning that while you do start as strangers, you will soon create new friends just like if you were to make friends in the physical world around you. Through bad and good games, you’re still bound to have fun, something which goes a long way in keeping you happy and confident in yourself.

Get on the Discord servers of your favourite games and you’ll find welcoming – and well-moderated – communities of gamers to hang with.

Conclusion

All the things we’ve listed above help you build confidence in yourself, and we hope that you put it into practice! Just remember: whenever you face challenges in video games, you can pretty much apply the same determination and persistence you’d exert in-game in real life.