2. The Three Crucial Steps to Quit Porn Permanently

Welcome to the Breaking Free From Porn podcast. My name is Samir Gardner, and today we're going to talk about the crucial steps when it comes to quitting porn permanently. I'm going to give you guys practical advice that you can apply as soon as possible, and trust me, when you do apply it, you'll see, especially in the long term, you'll see drastic results. Like, you'll really see changes in your life. So first and foremost, I want to talk about the idea that if your life gets better, then you'll be able to essentially quit. And there's some truths and there's also some, some falsehood in it, in that saying. So for example, a lot of people say if you have a purpose, if you have a good life, now you're, you're basically not going to watch porn. Now we need to realize that this is not causation. This is maybe there's a strong correlation between both. So for example, The issue that a lot of people have when it comes to porn addiction, when it comes to addiction as a whole, is that there is a perceived lack of options. What do I mean by that? When you are there in the moment and you have that desire and you think in the back of your mind, you have limiting beliefs, you're like, okay, Yeah, I can quit, but I'm still going to have that desire. I'm addicted, or I have urges. You have like these limiting beliefs. Then what's going to happen is you block off all other possibilities, all other options, basically. Like for example, you could think, okay, well, yeah, I'm having this desire, but I can maybe do something about it. I can maybe go and do something productive so I can actually satisfy my real desire. Like intimacy-wise, maybe it's you building yourself up for marriage. So you see, like, the issue that a lot of people face, sadly, is that they go straight to the conclusion that they have no options. It's like, I'm gonna have to fight this desire. That's my only option, essentially. They don't rationalize, okay, yeah, I have this desire right now. I wanna actually watch porn. I wanna have intimacy with a real woman, but what can I do instead? They don't rationalize. They just feel like they're under attack. And that is a huge issue. Now, of course, also in the physical world, and this is where like the issue of if your life becomes better, will it be easier for you to quit? Well, the truth is yes, to a certain extent. What we need to realize is a lot of people live in, you can say, this also mindset and also their life actually reflects that. That they can't really achieve or do much. They can't really change. So for example, if I've been watching porn for the past 10 years consistently, I've been binging, and let's say that's my situation, and I never really went out and tried to like have social interactions, make friends, try to maybe work on myself so I can build a family in the near future. I don't have like a job or anything. Then What is going to happen? I might think, well, I don't even think that these things are achievable. So these are not even options for me. It's not to say that, for example, getting a job or having social interactions is going to be like the cure for your porn consumption, obviously not. But when all you think, and this is literally all you think, not like all that there is, but all you think that there is as options for you, whether that be like to, like the things you wanna do, maybe like again, social interactions, friends, maybe it's these goals that you have. You think that these things are either very hard to do. So meaning like you'll be very uncomfortable and you're not willing to go through that, or that they might be impossible to achieve in the first place or to pursue in the first place for whatever reason. And so what happens with that mindset is, well, you think, I'm hopeless, basically. I cannot really do anything. So why even try to change? Why even try to change when you think that changing itself is either impossible or it's going to be so hard that it's going to just have like a negative impact on you almost, maybe on your mental health, for example. So this is why we need to be really, really open-minded and really try to seek out information and really take action to see that change is possible. Because when you really have a lack of option or a perceived lack of options, because you don't actually have a lack of option, for example, If you say, okay, yeah, I can, I can, for example, start a business. But in your mind you're like, yeah, but it's nearly impossible. I don't have the background. I don't have the experience. Well, you're probably not going to start one, but the reality, like objectively, if you were to start, you probably make progress. And what point maybe your business will become successful is if you work on it with the right mindset. So essentially the point I'm trying to make is that don't neglect other aspects of your life in recovery. I don't like using the word recovery. I don't like saying like, oh, you need to go through a reboot. This is not like a surgery we're doing. This is not like I'm giving you a pill and you just take it. No, this is just about making different decisions in your life. This is what quitting porn is about. Many people overcomplicate it and they think that quitting porn is something so hard. It's like a battle that you need. I wouldn't say just like the supernatural, because you can say that the supernatural, you need it. You need the supernatural for everything. I mean, you need God for everything. But you see my point where it's like you almost need something that's beyond what's comprehensible to quit those things. And it's like, sure, rely on God. Of course, I'm a believer, right? I'm not someone that's going to say, yeah, I have a big ego and think that you are all powerful. No, no, no. No, not at all. Instead, what I'm trying to say is do not make quitting porn such a big issue that you think it's like a monster that's out there to just go and take you. Because at the end of the day, porn is a video. Porn is a video on your screen, on your phone, on your laptop, on your desktop. You need to understand that this video itself, when we make it, a bigger problem than what it is, when we make it something that seems actually like it's powerful, that we just essentially say, you know what, we can't really do anything about it. It's so powerful that I'm going to fall for it. And it's not to say that you should not have humility and that sometimes you make mistakes, of course. But I'm saying instead that we need to really be critical and think, okay, well, yeah, I watch porn because I like to do it for pleasure, but porn is not like something magical or something that just like is going to drag me and forced me to watch it itself. Okay, so this is what we need to be careful of. So another thing that we really, really want to apply is that we want to really understand that life comes with challenges, that life comes with you being uncomfortable, that you need to accept that yes, the moment you're going to quit porn, it's not going to be that hard. Okay, I'm telling you, it can be really effortless. But you need to be aware that, okay, maybe if you've never dealt or maybe you barely dealt with stresses and challenges and adversity in your life, and now you quit porn, meaning you quit the tool, you can say, that you've been using in order to distract yourself whenever you felt uncomfortable, then just acknowledge that you're going to feel uncomfortable now because you're removing what you used to use as an escape. So you'll have to face life. Now there's also the topic of the moment you face life, you'll, you'll gain so much that you can actually desire to not escape things. This is something I teach my students actually. But the point I'm trying to make, the, the most important point you need to understand here is that we need, and this is the, the issue for a lot of people. They, they think that adversity is a sign that something wrong is happening, that they're doing the wrong thing, that this is not going well, or it's going to be bad. But actually, adversity is like, even from a neuroscientific standpoint, okay, based on research— you know, I have the research next to me to really cite it— but this is a research on the brain where they went over like X addicts when it comes to drugs, to certain drugs. And they saw that after 6 to 12 months, not only do the brain goes back to normal, as we know, neuroplasticity and so on, but the gray matter in the brain actually increases after they quit, after those 6 or 12 months of quitting. And it shows that recovery, you can say, or just like quitting a behavior like this, because of having to now deal with life and having to problem solve and not rely on the drug in order to feel good and having to be a bit more creative on how you're gonna be able to find pleasure and so on and having to adapt, these things that you go through actually allow you to grow. You literally get more gray matter in your brain. It is more developed than someone that never took drugs in the first place. This is what they found with the study. So the point I'm trying to make is you need to see whatever challenges, adversity, anything that you might go to, not necessarily just because of like, let's say for example, you, you left porn and now you don't have a way to cope with certain things, certain problems in life, but also just the problems that come in your life, the adversity that will be there. And when you don't have like a distraction— and by distraction I mean like it can be porn, it can be you scrolling on social media. It can be you binging on Netflix. It can be you binging on video games, anything that really like takes your mind off these things constantly, obviously, because if you just like, I mean, it's not like you're gonna be focused on that adversity or that challenge like 24/7. You obviously, you have different things to do in your life. But when people, for example, listen to music for hours on end, well, it's like, it's always playing in the back of their mind. It's like, it's taken away their focus. As we know, our minds can only think of one thought at a time. Your mind cannot have two thoughts at a time. So the moment you're focused on music, then for example, or on porn, then you're thinking about that. You're not thinking about anything else. You're not thinking about the stressful events. You're not thinking about the prompts. You're not thinking about the meaningful goals that you have and so on. So essentially being distracted only comes with downsides in my opinions, except when, except with certain situations we've seen based on studies that for example, if a traumatic traumatic event happens to an individual and they distract themselves right after, then it actually might help them when it comes to their emotional well-being. Now, what we need to understand, another crucial step, and this is something which I just like, it's so simple and it's like I thought that everyone would just like apply naturally because that's how people naturally like apply and that's how People move on from, from, from PMO, for example, from porn masturbation addiction as a whole. But for some reason, people in the NoFap movement, meaning that they think that they need to recover from porn and go through like a recovery process, essentially they make quitting porn the goal in their life, the main goal in their lives, rather than having a main goal in their lives and they want to quit porn for that main goal. And this is where therapy— you can say I'm not against or for therapy. I think like obviously these are experts and they obviously do possess the knowledge. But when it comes to porn specifically, and I'm not going to talk about the addiction when it comes to drugs, nicotine, alcohol, whatever, but therapy when it comes to quitting porn, it's really it can be ineffective if the goal of the therapy is to simply make it so that the individual simply focuses on the behavior itself and only makes progress when it comes to that. Because the question that comes to mind is, okay, you want to quit this behavior, but what for? You don't quit porn just for the sake of quitting porn because it's apparently just bad for you. Okay, it's bad for you, but why do you not want to do something that's bad for you? This is a huge issue when it comes to actually becoming free permanently from porn, masturbation, and so on. People really make improving their lives for the sake of improving their lives their goals. But why do you wanna do something for the sake of doing something? It doesn't make sense. We always, and this is all, I love Viktor Frankl's work, The Doctor and the Soul, Man's Search for Meaning. His books really give a good model for life, which actually is really close to the model of how, for example, religions deal with pain. It's like, you can say therapeutic approach when it comes to life and psychological approach. And one of the things that he talks about is that with meaning, essentially, you'll be able to go through so much. We obviously see this within religious people, like meaning is essentially like, okay, they believe in God so much that they're willing to sacrifice the things that most people are now willing to sacrifice, whether that be money, whether that be desires and so on, as we know. But the issue is there's a lack of meaning. There's really a lack of purpose. And it's not to say that meaning or purpose is necessarily going to just like completely eradicate everything from day one, okay? Because again, it also depends on your level of conviction when it comes to meaning. So for example, someone that believes in God outwardly, meaning externally says, yeah, he believes in God, and he has, you know, a grain of belief, you can say a seed of belief, will obviously take different actions than someone that doesn't believe at all, let's say, when it comes to, let's say, his desires. Like, maybe premarital sex and so on, or maybe scamming people, like whatever. And someone— but the thing is, someone that, yes, has like this little, you can say, seed of faith, this grain of faith, that is like, let's say, a lukewarm religious guy. This guy compared to someone that is like really, really committed, like really convinced that really God exists and that he believes that's the truth, essentially, you're going to see completely, completely different actions from both individuals when it comes to the same things. I mean, again, like, God knows best in that sense, but maybe the first guy, the guy that, yes, he's like lukewarm when it comes to his faith, maybe when there will be, like, let's say, for example, something that might involve certain sins, he might be a bit more lax. Like, he might be like, okay, well, yeah, I can do it. Like, maybe God will forgive me. But the other guy might have more of an approach of like, no, I don't even want to do this because of his conviction and his knowledge when it comes to his faith. And he knows that, okay, if I don't do this, I'm going to be able to get closer to God. God is going to reward me in these ways instead. And you see how that mindset and the meaning that it possessed, like for him to have that connection with God, and essentially that's his purpose, is going to allow him to say no to— I mean, it's not like it allows him, but he makes a decision obviously. But it just becomes like a no-brainer, like, oh yeah, porn is a sin. Well, I'm not even going to have any excuses for watching it, even if I have the desire to watch it. It's not to say that he's going to be perfect because he reached a certain level of conviction, but it's to say that now these things that's like, ah, okay, you wouldn't do that. Just like, for example, if we again, like, take this example for someone lukewarm and someone that's really convinced, really religious. If they, for example, have a relationship, like, let's say, for example, they both wanna be married. Well, when it comes to the marriage itself, the lukewarm guy will probably be a bit more lax when it comes to how his partner is in regards to religion, whilst the other guy will be probably a bit more strict in the sense of he's going to have these high standards. And so obviously, again, these beliefs and that knowledge that both of these guys have are really going to dictate how they're going to act and what they're going to get out of life. So this is the key. So coming back to the point, we don't want to make, for example, like a religious guy doesn't see, okay, let me just make my whole life about quitting porn. Obviously people don't go to that extreme saying like it's their whole lives, but oftentimes I see people like making it a goal as if it was like a business, like they were trying to achieve success in that business. And making it a goal actually makes it harder to quit because when you really think about it, in order for a goal to be something that you want to, that is going to be meaningful, then you need to obviously be able to go to— I mean, not be able to, but you need to maybe go through adversity. You need to go through challenges. So maybe you see the point of if you make quitting this a goal, then what's going to happen is you're probably going to make it harder on yourself in order to make the goal more meaningful if you were to achieve it. You see the point? Was the people that do not really care, but they do it because, uh, what I mean by do not really care, like they have the intention of quitting, but they don't really see it as like, okay, this is the end goal. They're more like, okay, I wanna quit this for something greater, for maybe God, maybe because I just started a business and I really wanna succeed. And I believe that this is going to be a distraction for me. These people usually just naturally leave this behavior. I'm not saying like all of them, but they have a much easier time when it comes to leaving the behavior without putting more effort. Actually, they put way, way, way less effort. They actually just have the intention and they also don't have the limiting beliefs usually because I'm not gonna confuse you guys, but a lot of people that really try hard to quit, they watch a lot of these NoFap videos and these NoFap videos tell them like they're addicted, that they have a problem with their dopamine and their brain, their brain change and that just creates limiting beliefs, whilst these guys, they do not really go through this information, and therefore they just don't have like these limiting beliefs, or not to be, um, not to be, you can say, I don't want to offend anyone, but they don't have like these excuses of like, oh yeah, I can quit, but I'm addicted. Oh yeah, I've been doing it for multiple years, so that means that I, I, I probably will have like compulsions and I have desires. And It's really a mess when you really have these limiting beliefs. So these are the true, like the 3 crucial steps you need to apply as soon as possible. And I'm telling you, the moment you apply these things, your recovery, I don't like using that word, but you're going to be able to change and really move on from this forever. So I hope this was helpful, guys, and I'll see you in the next episode.