049 – 5 Tips on Using the FASTER Scale

Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast where we partner with you to bring hope and freedom on your journey to purity. Before we start the podcast today, we wanted to let you know about our new resource for men, the Stories for Men book study. Finding Sexual Integrity is Possible and going through this six week study will show you the path to lasting freedom from addiction. By studying 20 stories of men who've experienced the destruction that sexual addiction can bring, you'll begin to see the power of both sharing your story and being a part of a community who fully knows you and fully loves you. To start on the path for sexual integrity, visit PureDesire.org enjoy the podcast. Hey there. I'm your host, Trevor Windsor and we're so thankful you're taking time out of your day to hang out with us. I'm here as always with my co host, Nick Stumbo.

Yippee ki yay.

And just for all you listeners out there, you're welcome. It'll just be me and Nick today. We don't have any guests. You just get to spend the next 20 to 30 minutes, hopefully only 30 with us. So we're glad that you're here on this ride with us.

You say that's a good thing. I hope they agree. Well, you thank them for something they.

Might be regretting at this point if they've listened. This is episode 49, so they've had, you know, quite a bit of time with us. So we're hoping that you out there are not sick of us yet. And if you are, we'll just pray for you. So today this episode we will be talking about the five tips on how to better use the faster scale tool. For those of you out there who don't know what the faster scale is, go back and listen to episode two of the podcast. That episode covers what this tool is, how it functions. Nick does a great job walking us through that. So this is also just so any listeners who maybe have some familiarity with the faster scale, maybe you don't, and you want to continue listening through this episode. It's one of the most important and most used tools that we have in our group. Materials, our resources. This is a tool that we both have had lots of experience using with that we just hope that this episode gives you a few tips on how this it really is a simple tool, how this tool can be really significant on your journey to freedom and your journey to sexual integrity. So let's just start with the first question and real quick, before we jump in, let's just remind just briefly, Nick, will you Remind our listeners what the faster scale is.

You said real quick and briefly. Now I feel pressured to, like, do it real quick. That's right. For sure. You know, the faster scale is an emotional awareness issue inventory. And that kind of sounds like a mouthful, but essentially what we're recognizing is that most people know what they do. They don't always know why they do it. And so we've been in our behaviors focused on, you know, what did I do, how did I get there? But we really want to help someone look under the surface at why am I doing the things I'm doing and how are my emotions driving me down this scale? So the faster scale was developed by a guy named Michael Dye who was working with ywam in a foreign country, and he was actually working with drug addicts and found that he could predict or see a pattern coming of them relapsing into their drug activity. And he started to say, man, is this a repeatable kind of thing that is common to all people? And that's where the faster scale came out of. So faster is an acronym for the steps that we take as we regress from a place of living in trust and a place of just being at home with God, which we call restoration that I'm in openness with God and others. I'm faithful to him and my commitments. And then at the other end of the scale is a relapse. And so we want to look at what are the steps I take along the way. So F in the acronym being forgetting, priorities, A being anxiety, S speeding up, T ticked off, E exhausted and R relapse.

Yeah.

And we can see how every step along the way, we're moving further and further away from where we want to be and getting back into our old pattern of really trusting in something else to medicate the pain in our lives.

Yeah. And again, if you have not listened to the episode, go back to episode two. This is what we talk about the whole time on that episode. And it really is. I mean, I can just speak from personal experience. It is one of the most influential yet very simple tools that I've used as I found purity in my life.

Yeah, for sure. I've had guys that, as they walk through a group, they'll say, you know, the faster scale alone was worth the experience because of how it just helps us see our life through a different lens and creates self awareness that really spills over into every area of life. This isn't just about avoiding that troublesome behavior that we've defined as relapse. It's really about being emotionally self aware. And that's a gift that we give to people in all areas. So it's really helpful. So with that, let's start with the first tip. And tip number one today on this episode is this to check your faster scale each day and write the date next to what you have identified with on that day. So, Trevor, what do we mean by that?

Yeah, so really set a time each day that you check your scale. So, you know, for me, it's usually after I get home from work. I spend time doing that. Usually at lunchtime is also another one just kind of midday checkup, see how I'm doing. But I've also started practicing it in the sense of right after I've had a really difficult conversation or I've had a really tough day, I think of it. I've got to the point now where I've used it enough that I can find at those moments I need to fill out the faster scale. I need to make sure I'm walking into the rest of my day or the rest of, you know, whatever's going on in my life, I need to make sure I'm walking into it with some awareness and with that writing the date next to it. So one of the best things that I've done, and this was a tip I got from a group member, was that when I'm going through it each day, make sure to write the date so that when I go back at the end of the week and see the faster scale and I can look through my stuff, I see, okay, this is where I was Monday. Wow. Tuesday I jumped all the way down there. Okay, Wednesday, maybe I went back up like. And so I'm starting to see and map out how my week goes. And it helps me with my awareness going into it and it helps me plan and really be better prepared for the next coming weeks.

Yeah, for sure. And when we think about coming to group, you know, in our groups we encourage someone to share down to the lowest point they reached on their faster scale. And sometimes if you're only filling out the faster scale once a week, you look back and you forget stuff and you're like, well, what happened? And you tend to just identify maybe the most recent thing that seems obvious. But if you're checking it each day, if you're writing down some dates and then you go to get ready for group, you, you look at those and go, oh yeah, I remember now on Friday night I was down and it ticked off and maybe three days later you've forgotten about the incident and moved on. But that learning opportunity to really share with your group. When I got to my low moment, here's what was going on. That's really, really helpful. And I talk to people all the time that'll say once they've gotten accustomed to using the faster scale regularly, that they can almost feel themselves moving through the stages, that mentally they'll be rehearsing and saying to themselves, oh, I think I'm speeding up, or oh, I just moved into ticked off. I'm headed towards exhausted. And it's really that daily rehearsal. And it doesn't mean every single day we're going to sit down and do the whole experience. I mean, time wise, that may just not be realistic, but at least a check in to say, you know, where do I think I'm at? What's causing that? And that internal awareness really just then becomes, as I'm saying, it becomes internalized. We feel it happening and it becomes a grid through which we evaluate what's going on inside. Why am I feeling what I'm feeling?

Yeah, that's so good. So that's tip number one and tip number two. And Nick, you've talked to me about this a few times is to work the faster scale both ways. What do you mean by that?

I think it's a helpful tip if someone finds they're kind of getting stuck on knowing where they're at. That one way is to look back at your week and just say, well, what was my worst moment? And maybe it's I can remember I blew up at my kids or I was really sarcastic with my wife or someone cuts me off in traffic and I remember I yelled expletives at them. And usually our lowest moment is fairly obvious. If we relapsed, that's obvious. So it could be okay to just start there. So if I know, like let's say, for example, I know I was in exhausted because I just, man, the whole week just felt drained and empty. So I could start there on the faster scale, go through that piece of it, identify what I was feeling. How does it impact other people? Why do I do this? What's the benefit? And then I always encourage someone to at least look at the next level down. So read through all the descriptions of relapse and see if you relapsed. And maybe it's not a relapse in your traditional sense because those are pretty easy to identify. But maybe you even see there were moments where you did kind of give up. So always check a layer lower. But then what you can do if you've identified the low point is, then work your way backwards. So start out and go, well, if I was exhausted somewhere along the line I was ticked off. And now let's think sequentially back towards all the way into forgetting priorities and then filling out restoration. So that's one way to do it. That's obvious. But the other direction I think helps too if, particularly when you feel like you've had a pretty good week and this has been my experience, like, hey, I've had a great week. And so I just start at the top forgetting priorities. Like, well, yeah, I had some procrastination this week or sometimes I didn't follow through on a commitment. And I answer all the questions 1, 2 and 3 on that one. And then I'll read through and I encourage people always read through the next level because you'll surprise yourself. And I find myself, oh, well, yeah, I was mind reading and I got into that. Okay, well I guess I was in anxiety and okay, no big, no big deal. But then I read speeding up, like, oh, well, yeah, I guess I remember that happened and that. And pretty soon I'm looking back at my week and it can be humbling, but it's also super helpful because I realize in my own kind of self denial or just being, you know, okay, I'm okay, everyone's okay, I thought I was having a great week, but if I see I got into ticked off right, I might recognize how it's been kind of an under the radar pattern. And that can be really helpful too. So maybe just depending where you're at, when you start the faster scale that could determine do you want to start at the bottom, your low moment, work your way up, or do you want to start at the top and work your way down? Because both can be very, very enlightening.

Well, and for people who are competitive like me, I'm very, very competitive. If you know me, you're probably rolling your eyes right now as I say it. But the reality is that when you're competitive and you think of it that way, you find, I know I found this, that when I start from the top and go down, I start to feel more shame the further down. It's like, okay, my week is getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And the reality is that the further down you go on, the faster scale doesn't necessarily mean the worst that you're doing that week. If anything, it means the more aware you're becoming that week. But I think that if you are also able to look at the bottom and then work up. It kind of helps with that shame piece that can creep in because let's be honest, the enemy wants us to feel shame because then we lead into isolation and then relapse becomes a possibility.

Yep, yeah, totally. And the temptation there is to maybe overlook what we would call small things or it only happened for a few moments. But even if that, you know, even if our moment of ticked off was a short lived thing and then we were back up into a good place, we still want to identify what took us there. So if, if we have a week where we identify we were exhausted, that doesn't mean we lived all week and exhausted. Now, some weeks it might have been, and that's something you want to address, but it may just have been Monday morning you were down there and really looking into it is so important as opposed to going well, most of my week was good, so I don't want to say I was in exhausted. No, it's not. Like you said, it's not about score keeping, it's not about performance. You know, lowest level loses is not a thing. Yeah, it's about that awareness. And I actually, when someone's in group sharing, I have more questions for someone that shares and said, oh, I was in restoration all week. Yeah, it's like, that's awesome. But are you a human being? Because I think most humans, we get anxious, we get ticked off. It's not a barometer of our sin, it's just where does our humanity take us?

Absolutely.

All right, well, let's talk about the third tip then. And the third tip for the faster scale is this. Discuss it each week during weekly phone calls. What's that mean, Trevor?

Yeah, well, obviously if you've been in a pure desire group, you know, and if you haven't, then, you know, one of the things that we really emphasize is weekly phone calls. So you're calling your group members and we see, suggest at least three a week. So if you've got a group of three or four guys, it's nice to call all four of them three, four, five, however many guys there are in and connecting each week. And what we're seeing is that that is a check in. So you're just saying, hey, how you're doing? But what I've experienced is that when you initially ask, hey, where are you at? On your faster scale, it puts you into this self awareness mode. And so it allows you to really have that conversation and talk it out. And what's great is that if you know, the more that you understand about the faster scale. It's not that you go down the scale and then you climb your way back up. It's the further down you go then you need to jump off, you need to get off the faster scale, go back up to restoration, living on God's terms. And I found that a great way to do that is having these conversations. So when my group member calls and says, hey man, where are you at on the faster scale? I can say I'm living in anxiety or I'm in speeding up. He'll ask, okay, like what are you identifying in there? Talk to me like, what's your process been? And then you know, asking questions like, how do you plan to address that? How are we going to fix that? And, and that doesn't happen if you don't talk about the faster scale during the week. And so you may end up being that person who fills it out at the end of the week, right before group. Maybe you're sitting in the parking lot before you walk in and you fill it out. But you're gonna see that the more self aware you are, the better your weeks end up being and that and you're gonna become more self aware if you have those conversations during your weekly phone calls.

Yeah. And I think it's important to note that doesn't mean you've had to sit down, write out the whole faster scale before you can make a phone call. Because I think for a lot of people that would be one more reason not to call. It's like I didn't have time to do my fast track.

I don't have 45 minutes to talk to you.

I didn't do a call for me. What that often looks like is if I'm going to make a phone call, even just for a minute or two, I'll kind of sit and quietly think about, you know, where have I been this week, what's going on inside? And I kind of have a script when I call someone because sometimes I am just leaving a message, but other times I'm getting to talk to them in person. And I'll say, hey, this is Nick. And my commitment to change this week was to do this. And I'll report on how I'm doing on that and I'll say, and on the faster scale, I think so far my lowest level has been this. Or I might say, I think right now I'm in ticked off and here's why and processing that a little bit. And so it is kind of a just a quick self awareness check in. And sometimes I've had more time to think through it or I'm more self aware but other days I'm just, I know the phone call's good and what I find can happen even if I've just done a little bit of self kind of check in and then start to talk about it on the phone call. There's something in my brain or my thinking that just can open up and even hearing myself talk about it like I learned something or when, when the person who I'm talking with maybe asks a question or, or they share about their week. It's amazing how an aha moment. Yeah, some discovery comes and that, you know, that's not every time but it is an encouragement of. Even if you feel like I'm just having a routine week, nothing special has happened, think about where you're at and talk about it because it might unlock some things that could surprise you.

Well, the rest of your day at that point too is going to be focused on that. So maybe you won't be thinking about where you're at on the faster scale the rest of the day, but at least for the next five or 10 minutes, kind of going into your next meeting or going home, you know, when you're pulling into the driveway, whatever it is, you've got that self awareness piece on your mind, you're able to walk in with a better preparation for whatever you're walking into.

Yeah.

Okay, so tip number four. Alright, we're almost there. Tip number four. This one is do the faster scale with your spouse. I feel like there needs to be like a dum dum dum, you know.

Here, I know as you said this one I'm imagining some listeners are like, what are you crazy? Like do you want, you know, my spouse to be angry at me? Or but, but really here's a couple of ideas on that. You know number one, if you are sharing your faster skill routinely with your spouse, they know you better than anyone else in the world and they're going to point out things that honestly can be really, really insightful and helpful because when you share something they see another side to it and they'll go and what about this? Oh wow. So that's one thing is just how insightful our spouses can be and that's part of the blessing and gift that they are why God gave us spouses because of how they can be a part of our journey. Second thing I would say if you're worried about sharing with your spouse because of the potential you might have to share about a relapse it's actually the routine sharing with your spouse that is going to help prevent you from relapsing. Because one of the dangers or problems that couples have fallen into is the only time a spouse will share something is when they've really gone over the edge again and now there's guilt or they've promised they'll tell her and there's the pain of that and they want to stop. Well, really at that point, there's not a whole lot your spouse can do except feel hurt by it and ask for more boundaries or consequences so you don't do it again. But they're kind of in a no win situation at that point. Whereas if you're sharing your faster scale, they can help ahead of time at a place they might actually be able to do something. So maybe you're into speeding up and you're like, I am just feeling like there's too much at work and there's these projects at home. And your spouse might be able to say something like, wow, I didn't realize you were feeling that pressure. That job we talked about cleaning out the spare room. It's really not that urgent. Let's push that off to next week. And suddenly, because they know how you're feeling, they can help. And that's actually a place that might be useful. So that's the second thing. And the third thing that I really would encourage you to keep in mind with your spouse is particularly my encouragement to men thinking about sharing with their wives. What wives very often want from their husband is they want to know what he's thinking and feeling. They don't just want to know. I talked to this guy at work and then I drove here and then we bought this. And I mean, that kind of informational sharing is great, but, you know, God made wives for that emotional connection, that relational connection. And she would probably love the chance to hear what you're thinking. And for a lot of us as guys, no one taught us, no one really trained us how to share what we're feeling. You know, it's kind of an intimidating, well, how do you feel? I don't know. I just did it, you know. But the faster scale is actually teaching us to be aware of how we feel. So, you know, I procrastinated at work. And how did this make me feel? Well, I felt like I was being lazy. And as we're processing that and opening up that door to our spouses, that can create some incredible connection and a sense that absolutely we're in this together, we're a Team. I'll hear wife say, I finally feel like I know my husband. I know what's going on in his inner world. And yeah, at first, that might be a little intimidating, especially if we haven't done it very much, if we're not great with the language of emotions. But this is where husbands and wives can connect in a new way. Because if you look at Pillar seven in the seven Pillars workbook, it does talk about men's realities and women's realities. And. And it might feel a little stereotypical, but this comes from secular research that's been done for decades and decades that just show how men and women approach most topics from different perspectives. Men from the physical, women from the more spatial, meaning, non physical. And the meeting place is the emotional. It's that inner world. And so if we can see the value of that, well, suddenly the faster scale becomes this great tool to meet at that middle place of our emotional connection. So for those three reasons, I think sharing your faster scale with your spouse is really helpful. And it was something just last thing I would say about this, that in our first year of recovery, for my wife and I, this was really an important moment for us that we had kind of two nights a week that were special. We still had our date night where we would go out, watch a movie, go to dinner, you know, whatever we felt like doing on our date night. But we'd also have our talk. I think we just called it our talk night. You know, great name. Real inventive. You guys are so creative. Yes, let's talk. What that meant is that when the kids were in bed and we weren't going to turn on the tv, we were going to sit down and I was going to share my faster scale. For me, at that time, it was important that I walk through my list of boundaries with her to let her know that I remembered them and was following them, and to just let her ask questions about what I was learning, to let me ask questions about what she was learning in her group. And the connections that developed in those nights was really amazing. I mean, there were a few nights we stayed up talking way past when we normally would have gone to bed. And not because we were determined, like, well, let's sit here and talk it out, but we were just connecting. And the cool thing, I would say this, that it really gave us freedom on our date nights to just have fun, right? Because then my wife wasn't trying to figure out, what's he thinking and how's it going? And we'd already talked about all Those things the night or two before. So date nights were just fun and we got to let go.

Well, and what you're speaking about, and it's one of the things that comes to mind is that one of the. I don't know if I'm gonna call it a cancer, but I feel like one of the things that's. That really eats away or can erode at a marriage is assumptions. And so always living in this world of I assume I know where they're at or what they're thinking, or really just you're jumping to whatever preconceived ideas you have about this person rather than just being honest and asking those questions. You know, sometimes I know for me, a struggle is I usually want to know what my wife is thinking. And so a struggle for me is that I ask too many times, like, hey, are you okay? How are you doing? Like, is something, you know, so I've got my own stuff. But what I'm seeing, though, in talking about where I'm at, it gets rid of those assumptions and really, I mean, putting just a different flavor on some of the things you've been saying. It's a way to minister to your spouse when you know where they're at. If you know that they're starting to get into black and white thinking or, you know, they're judging other people's motives, you're able to come alongside and help them, encourage them, you know, how to better pray for them. And I think that, that, that really is an amazing thing to have. It's an amazing tool to have as a spouse, because I think ultimately down at the core of our heart as a believer, we want to help our spouse grow. We want to help our spouse throughout the week. And this really creates that opportunity or that platform for us to step on and say, you know, I know that you're having a hard time in this. Let me help you. So I just think it's a. It's a really cool thing.

Yeah, that's really cool. And one aspect of this I would encourage listeners to avoid is filling out their faster scale for their spouse. You know, if you find that you're filling it out because, hey, here's a really good place to bring up something I didn't know how to say any other time.

It's not a passive aggressive tool.

Exactly. Or I'm going to answer this the way I think my spouse wants me to answer it. I mean, that's kind of like if we were writing in our personal journal for someone else to read it kind of defeats the purpose of keeping a personal journal. So really, when you go to fill out your faster scale, you need to just really look into your own heart and thinking and be honest. And hopefully those are all things you can share with your spouse. But if you find yourself getting into this trap of, okay, what does she want me to say? Or what does he think I should say? You're going to start to lose defectiveness, so guard yourself against that approach. That's good. All right, well, that leads us to our fifth tip and the number five tip for using the faster scale. Well, is this. Use it even when you're not even in a group.

Yes. Okay. So I think I've heard you actually say this, and maybe you're quoting Dr. Ted or someone else who's smarter than me, but the reality that addiction doesn't take a break, and so you shouldn't either. And so what. What I've seen in my experience with using the faster scale is when I stop using it, I become less and less tied to how I'm actually doing each week, how I'm feeling, things start to slide, my guardrails slip, I'm not having good conversations with people. I'm not being real and authentic. Maybe I'm being dishonest. So it can just become this slippery slope where if self awareness is going down, I'm not becoming a better person the lower my self awareness goes down. And so I think that whether you're in group or not, because if you're in a pure desire group, what you'll see is that these tools are used every single week. So in any of them.

Or they should be, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So if you don't be feeling guilty like that.

Yeah. If you have the workbook, but not the journal, that's a problem. Get the journal. But what we see is that even outside of group, it just is one of those things where your self awareness should continue to increase. Because as you become more aware of you and your pitfalls and your struggles and your issues, you become more aware where you need Christ, where you need community, and where you need your spouse or others around you to come alongside you and help. And so it's one of those things where you really need to just be devoted to using something like this. Using whether it's the faster scale or another self awareness tool, using something that is always going to keep you in that mindset of I need to know where I'm at so that I can better handle any situation that comes my way during the week.

Yeah. And it really speaks to the value of writing it down to physically having pen and paper. And whether you're using a journal that you bought or the pure desire journal or you're just writing it somewhere else, the value of being able to look back I think is really, really important. Because what we tend to miss, especially as we're getting healthy, walking in freedom, is our patterns get elongated, they get lengthened. So when we're struggling with an addiction, we might zip down the faster scale in the course of a day or less. And it's just like, you know, on our way down to a crash. But as we get healthy and we have community and some groups in place, what we might miss is kind of the slow burn towards a relapse. And when you can start to flip back through pages and go, okay, two weeks ago I was in exhaustion. Three weeks ago, exhausted. Four weeks ago, ticked off. You know, I had a few weeks and ticked off before and maybe all the way back to three, four months. You're like, man, three, four months ago, almost all my faster skills, I didn't get much past what was going on around that. And now routinely I'm getting into exhausted. Okay, let's look back over a few months here and see what's going on. And that self humility to be able to say to a spouse or a friend, a group member like, boy, I'm, I've been down low quite a while now and that over time is going to make me in jeopardy of relapsing. So what, what changes do I need to make? And if you're only just doing it off the top of your head and you're never writing it down, you'll lose that ability, you'll lose that self awareness that really can become profitable as you're walking in long term freedom. Yeah.

And again, this is just such a great tool to use and it's really not that difficult. I mean you're, you're going through it and you're just circling stuff you identify with. And if you're using these tips, you're going to see that you're going to be so much more aware. And maybe it might be, you know, the first couple weeks of doing it, maybe you don't feel like you're self aware. But as you're saying, Nick, as time goes on and you're continuing to heal and finding some freedom from this, you start to see that things are adding up like this self awareness is starting to really bear some fruit. And what's really cool is that leads to just health in other areas of Life. And that's my favorite thing about the faster scale, is that you start to look at it. And not just the way you relate to your sexual addiction, but maybe the way you relate to your food, maybe the way that you relate to how you use social media or Netflix or video games or reading anything. It could be anything. It's one of those things where self awareness isn't about just getting free sexually. It's about becoming a better person.

Yeah. And that's a great tip. And it's not one of the five.

But bonus tip number six.

Well, I have a different thing. No, just the connection that maybe someone feels like, well, I haven't had a relapse. And when they say relapse, they're thinking pornography or their sexual issues. It's been over a year, so I guess I'm done. I don't need the faster skill anymore. But as you just brought up, maybe now we could have. Or what I would say is we add to our definition of relapse. So for me, pornography, masturbation, that's always going to be a relapse. I don't quit working on that one.

But maybe we're happy. Thanks for doing that.

Maybe now I add to it. Do I lose my temper? And I view that as a relapse? Because if that's something I've committed, hey, I don't ever want to yell at our kids. That's just not who I am. But then if I do, that means I've gone to a place I didn't want to go and I need to look at why. For other people, it might be binge eating late at night. For someone, it might be getting lost in video games and losing a whole afternoon when they had other commitments they'd made. Whatever the issue is, because that's the neat thing, is God's always working in our lives. He's always in the process of making us more like him. And we could stop in our journey and just say, I'm done. I don't want to go any further. Yeah, or we could keep saying, okay, God, you're really giving me growth and freedom here. What do you want to work on now? Is it my impatience? Is it my spending habits? Is it my impulsiveness wherever it is? Make that your new definition of relapse. Because the self awareness can keep coming. Just like we don't meet our spouses and learn them and then we're done growing in the relationship. The same is true of self awareness. We don't become self aware now it's Over. That's an ongoing process that actually can create growth for the rest of our lives.

Okay, so there are the five tips, but for any of those who continued and listened through the whole episode, Nick, is there a bonus tip, a number six tip that we give somebody when using the faster scale?

Or maybe this is like our final thoughts, you know, last thing you tell people. One of the things I hear from people is they maybe grow tired of filling out the faster scale. They're weary of. Oh, every week I'm getting bored of this. And I would encourage people to think of it like a discipline. You know, we might say about exercise, well, I'm tired of exercising. Well, I'm tired of going for a run. I'm tired of going to the gym. I'm tired of eating healthy. And that's okay. The activity itself might become routine or tiresome even. But we don't do the activity just for the activity. It's the outcome we see coming from that discipline. So, you know, I continue to run even when I'm bored by it, because I like how it keeps me in shape. I have more energy, keep my weight down, you know, all the benefits that come. And I would encourage you to think about how the faster scale is like that. It's a discipline. And yeah, maybe you feel like I've been through the same scale a hundred times. Why am I still doing it? I just find that when you sit down and you do the work and you really think through. Okay, this week, were any of these things true in my life? Circle the ones that were true, figure out which was the most powerful, answer the three questions. It's one of those things in my life that anytime I put effort into it, I get something out of it. And maybe in the exact moment I don't see it, but the way it just continues to create this attitude of self awareness, of growth, of what's happening in my life, I think it's really amazing. And so I just want to encourage anyone who's listening and is growing weary of the process. Maybe take your eyes off of the activity itself and look more at what are the outcomes? How is it creating growth and self awareness in my life? Because I really believe the more you put in, the more you'll get out. So just like you wouldn't give up on exercising or eating healthy, don't give up on a healthy discipline because I think it'll continue to yield fruit in your life for the long haul.

Yeah. Okay, so there are the five or six tips on seven or. Yeah.

However many we Threw in a lot there.

Sure, maybe you have some that you could add yourself to this episode, but those are the tips we have on using the faster scale. And for anybody who's listening, we'll make sure that the faster scale is attached to the show notes. And if you want to go to our website and look up the tool, you can just PureDesire.org tools and you'll find it on that page. And just know that this is really, really such a powerful self awareness tool when fighting for sexual integrity. And it's really, really important just to know that you continue to grow in your self awareness. You continue to understand your traumas, you understand your triggers, you understand your trouble in life and it helps you. Because sexual addiction is not just about sex. It's not just about stopping the action of masturbating or looking at pornography or acting out sexually. It's about becoming more aware of who I am, what I struggle with, and how I handle those things in life. So this tool is such a powerful one and it's a simple and easy one to use. So go check it out and if you haven't, make sure you go back and listen to episode two on the faster scale and start using this because this tool is going to be monumental for your journey to freedom. So, Nick, thanks again man. Appreciate your time.

Great to be here. And next week's 50 50, baby.

That's right man.

How about that?

And thank you for listening to the Pure Desire podcast. If you like what you're hearing and want to keep up with the podcast, please subscribe. You can also rate and review our podcast and let us know how we're doing. For more information, check out our website PureDesire.org and you can follow us on social media. EaredesirePDMI. Once again, that's EaredesirePDMI. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Pure Desire Podcast. For more information, check out our website, www.puredesire.org. check in each week for new content on the podcast and we pray that it will help you find hope and freedom on your journey to pur.