5. What Actually Changes When You Quit Porn

Welcome to the Breaking Free from Porn podcast. My name is Samir Gardner Gardner, and today we're going to go over the benefits of quitting porn. This podcast is not going to be about giving you just some broad benefits that you've probably seen before when it comes to quitting porn. And you know what I'm talking about, more energy, more time, more confidence. Instead, I'm going to give you more of the evidence, more of the proof and logic behind why your life is going to change and how is it going to change. And this is going to completely blow your mind because I'm going to give you a different perspective that you've never seen before. So I want to just dive right into it. I don't want to waste any time. Let's go into it. So one of my students His name is John, and John was struggling for years and years. I'm talking about, and you've probably seen John before on my Instagram stories. I posted him there, some of the coaching sessions we had. He was discussing on how the program really helped him. And John, to give you a backstory, his backstory, he struggled for years. He's in his mid-30s. He started when he was very young. And every single time he would go maybe a month without porn, sometimes 2 months without porn, but then he will just come back and come back. And now, thank God, he's been free. I've been coaching him for the past few months and he made a ton of progress. He's completely free. And one of the things that we did that really, really, and really helped him is that I, and this is the benefit I'm going to first introduce, the benefits that you're going to get once you quit porn, and this is what I presented to John, is that you're going to reduce the amount of time that it's going to take for you to get closer or to achieve your desired reality. You're going to reduce the amount of time it takes for you to get closer or to achieve your desired reality. This is life-changing, and this is true because when I was presented this benefit for other things, like for example, scrolling on social media, that literally created the desire to not scroll on social media for me. And the same exact thing will happen with PMO or can happen with PMO if you apply this. So what you want to understand when it comes to watching porn, this is what I explained to John. When it comes to watching porn, I told him, okay, you have these goals. He told me, I really want to help my parents because when I was young, I couldn't really spend much time with my parents. My dad was away, he was working. "and that really impacted how I grew up." And he also said that he wanted to be able to build his life, like build a business and so on, so that he can be a stay-at-home dad, so that he can be with his kids, because when he was young, again, his father wasn't there because he was working so much. And that I could tell really meant a lot to him. So what I did is I made a personalized video, which is something which I do with a lot of my students. Every single student, they love it. They love it because I send them a video based on their situations, just made for them. I spend the time just for them, answering either questions or specific problems that I know they need to work on or things that they want to improve on or that I know they need to improve on. So for John, I took that in the first few weeks of coaching, as an opportunity to say, okay, these goals you're talking to me about, let me introduce to you evidence, let me introduce to you logic that if you stop watching porn, you're going to get closer to these goals. And what we need to understand is, here's the logic. I don't need to really give too much empirical evidence or studies and research, even though I'm going to really present you guys with one very interesting study very soon that was done in 2014. But what you need to understand is once you have clarity around a specific goal, you know, okay, I want to, let's say, get married, in the next year. And it's, for example, time-bound. If it's time-bound, it's even better. If you don't have, if you only have one year to do something, let's say a specific goal, and this doesn't just apply to goals, but we'll just use goals as an example. But let's say you really want to be married so that you can build a family and it's getting late, you're maybe in your 30s and you're like, I really need to do something. Time-bound like this, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna get married within 1 year. If I, or if you, present yourself with the information that if you were to quit porn, and let's say you really want to be married because you really want to build a family so that you can make your parents proud because you felt like a failure all of your life. Let's say that's your situation. You felt like a failure. You felt like you let yourself down and that you let your parents down, and you really want your parents to see some form of success from you. So you wanna be married so that you can give them grandkids, have that family and show them that you're mature and show them that you're progressing in life. Let's say that's the reason why you want to achieve your goals or to get married. So this is why getting married is important to you. Now, if you understand this benefit, the benefit I'm telling you about here is that If you stop watching porn, it's not about just like, yes, you'll, you'll have more confidence, therefore your chances of you being married and building family is going to be higher. Yes, sure, that's part of that. But the biggest benefit is that the amount of time that it's going to take for you to be married in the first place is going to be reduced. The amount of time it takes for you to improve in order to become the man that will be able to be married that is essentially the man that is mature or masculine or whatever, the amount of time it takes for you to become that person is going to be reduced. And so what I told John is, look, you want to retire your parents and so on. Let's say you need to build a business. And I'm going to get back to the marriage example. I'm kind of jumping from topics to topics, but hear me out. It's going to be very important to you guys understand this. What I told John is, okay, your parents, they obviously are getting older just like any of our parents. Your kids, you want to help them, you want to be a stay-at-home dad. Well, this is time-bound, meaning, okay, your kids, if they get to the age of 18, then they might just move out. Now, your parents, they're getting older. Let's face reality. What if they're not there in a few years? Let's say in 20 years. Now to build a business, let's say that objectively it takes 5 years, or let's be generous, 2 years. Let's say it takes 2 years. What I showed them, really made so much sense to him that he just didn't want to watch porn really anymore. Like, his desire really, really, really reduced. I said, look, you can go about it, you can go about living your life with porn, and every time you face a challenge, because most oftentimes The most common time that people watch porn is when they face some type of negative situations where there's challenges, there's adversities, and so on. So I said to him, okay, well, look, if every time, let's say, you face a challenge, you face adversity, you face negative emotions, you feel bad, you decide to watch porn. Instead of, let's say, working on your business, even though that's not the only thing that we obviously do in life, but let's say in that scenario, if every time you decide to watch porn instead of working on your business, it's just going to be, you're just going to gain nothing. It's gonna be zero. You're gonna be still there. It's like the 2 years to build your business, you're still going to be at the start. You haven't started yet. You haven't started yet. On the flip side, the 2 years, if you start now, every single time you face adversity, every single time you face challenges, every single time you face something negative, but you decide to say, I'm not going to watch porn, I'm instead going to face life, I'm instead going to go and work on my business, not only will you take one step forward rather than not even moving at all, or maybe going backwards, not only will you take one step forward, you might take 2, 4, 5 steps forwards. Because another benefit is when you face adversity and challenges, at a certain point you gain mental clarity where you're like, actually, I can solve this problem. And that gives you so much motivation. Let's say, for example, someone at work is really putting you down, is treating you badly, and then you feel those negative emotions. You're like, man, usually you would go and escape to porn because you don't want to feel that way. You're like, this sucks, I can't even do anything about it, and you feel hopeless. And we don't like feeling hopeless because that means that we are out of control, or we are out of control, we think we are out of control, therefore we feel hopeless. But if you go and just sit there, and by sitting there I don't mean you meditate and you just spend 1 hour in nature, it can just be you're doing the dishes and you're just not distracted, you're thinking about the situation. At one point you will find a solution. By solution, I don't mean you will go and text the guy and, or try to talk to the guy and call him. It can be that for sure. But you might think, oh, you know what? Yeah, this guy, this job, why don't I use that as motivation to get a better job? Why don't I use that as an opportunity, as a sign from God that I might need to go and get a new job? Suddenly, ah, you feel better. Suddenly, you're making— not only are you feeling better, obviously, because you're feeling relieved, you're like, oh, actually there's a solution, there's a way out, I don't need to feel hopeless. But also, you're getting a new job maybe. Also, You need to apply to new jobs. Also, you're going to take action. You're not going to just feel miserable. You're actually going to have to make progress. So now you're not just taking, again, 1, 2 steps forwards. You might take 5 steps forwards. You might change your job and that might change your life. But if you were to go to porn, if you were to go to masturbation, if you were to go to any distractions, video games and so on, it can be social media, it can be binge-watching self-improvement videos for that matter, even though there's benefits to self-improvement videos, it can be a good distraction, I'd argue. But when you constantly distract yourself, in order to forget about the problem, in order to forget about the issue, the challenge that is in front of you, you can't make that progress. You delay that progress. But then the problem is not only do you delay the progress once, but often multiple times, often maybe even your lifetime. It will take your lifetime. It will take maybe a decade. And this is the reality that we need to become aware of. You delay because you think, I shouldn't feel this way, I don't want to feel uncomfortable, I don't want to feel negative emotions. But then you don't see that time flies by and you're still in that example at the same job with your coworker just making fun of you, just using you, just putting you down, nothing changed. But if you right from the start said, I'm not going to go escape and use that distraction of porn, of masturbation, the time it would— let's say that your goal from the start was to get a better job and really become successful and financially stable. Now instead of taking a decade because you constantly escape to porn whenever something bad happens at work, now you've actively tried to find a solution to that specific problem that we're talking about, that means that the moment that this problem happens again, boom, you're straight going to find a solution or try to think of one at least, and oftentimes you find a solution anyways. And that means instead of taking a decade again, In that example, you take a few hours. Can you imagine that? A few hours instead of a decade. And this is the thing I, I told John. I told him, look, the benefit you're going to get from quitting porn— and this is, again, it doesn't just apply to porn masturbation, it applies to any distractions that will distract you in a, let's say, constant, like constantly, and you're constantly distracted by that. Your mind is completely away and just focused on that. And you forget about the problem. You will, and so I told you, you will get closer. I mean, you'll be able to, get closer to that goal. Instead of taking 5 years, it'll take maybe a year. Can you imagine that? And that leads to one of these studies which is so interesting. It was a study done in 2014 by Timothy D.L. Wilson. I have it pulled up here. Published in the journal Science. It was called "Just Think: The Challenge of the Disengaged Mind." Disengaged mind. So what was the study about? The study essentially was about can people just sit alone with their thoughts and do nothing without getting bored? So the Setting of the study was, well, the participants will just sit alone in a room. They'll be completely alone. There was literally no distractions, no phone, no music, no distractions, just there for like 5 to 15 minutes. And before the experiment, they actually gave them a mild electric shock just to know how it feels. And then they were told in that setting where they had no distractions for 5 to 15 minutes, "you can press this button and shock yourself again if you want." Guess what happened? Many people just chose to shock themselves. Some literally shocked themselves multiple times. We're talking about like feeling pain. They decided to feel pain because they didn't want to sit in boredom. One man literally shocked himself apparently 190 times, 190 times. So around 67% of men and 25% of women shocked themselves at least once, even though earlier before the study, they said that they would pay money to avoid getting shocked again. Interesting. So the researchers concluded that people struggle to be alone with their thoughts. That was their conclusion. And that boredom can feel uncomfortable. Some people prefer physical discomfort over mental discomfort. And you can argue that obviously nowadays people are so stimulated, they are always on their phones and they can't just sit and bored and they always have to do something. But let me present to you a different perspective. Let me present to you a different conclusion. To that state? What can we actually gain from that state? This will shock you. If people naturally, if humans, if humans literally naturally want or decide to shock themselves when they are bored, and we know that when we remove porn, when we remove masturbation. Oftentimes we get bored. Sure, if you have like all of these good habits, you have a good routine, you might have a lot of things to do, but still, to a certain extent, it can get boring sometimes. And by boring, I don't mean you feel negative and so hard to do. No, you just have nothing to do, or you're just there with your thoughts. When you're just there with your thoughts, what happens for most people is they start to think about certain things. And one of the things that they can think about is things that motivates them. Like for example, they think of maybe I want to build a family and they start visualizing in their mind like how it feel to have a kid, how it feel to have a wife that is loving to them, how it feels to help their parents to build that business to help their community. They visualize those things. And in those moments, you know, from personal experience, you feel that sense of motivation. You think, I need to do something about this. Let me go and take action so I can actually get closer to that goal. And it's in those specific moments that you're willing to go and do more than usual. You're willing to go and take that risk. You're willing to go and say, I'm done with living this life I'm done with not really taking action. Let me go today and go to the gym and have the best workout of my entire life. Now, sure, these workouts, these short bursts of motivation, they do not really stick long term, but they can open up the doors to different opportunities. They can open up the door to a new habit. They can open up the door to many different things that will bless your life. Many different benefits. But a point I'm trying to make is that when you're bored, you're going to be willing to shock yourself with pain much more than when you're not bored. Much, much more. And what does that mean? What is pain? Of course, we're not going to go and just administer shocks to our own selves. No, of course not. But it can mean to go and live your life to the fullest, to have that workout, and because you're bored, you think, let me do more in that workout. Let me push myself to the limit. Let me live according to my potential. You're not gonna be in that state constantly. Do not expect that, but you're going to increase that baseline. Meaning you're going to be much more in that state compared to when you're not bored, compared to when you're distracted watching porn. This is a huge benefit. This is— this allows you to go from when you have these days and you're bored and you think, man, I really need to do something about my life, and you You start to think about this great idea that, oh yeah, if I just start this specific thing and this specific project, this specific business, it could change the trajectory of my life. And then you start it and a few months later, your life is completely different. Maybe let's say a few years later, your life is completely different because of that idea. I remember I was driving from one city to another city. It was a 1-hour 30 drive. I was a few years ago, I was coaching people, but it was more part-time. I was doing it and I was working on the side and I was working in sales at that time. It was my main job, but it didn't really go well. And I remember just being in my car thinking I was bored. I had no distractions, no music, nothing. And I was driving And I started thinking, why am I doing my sales job? Why am I doing this? It's not even working for me. Whilst with my coaching, I'm feeling that sense of purpose. I'm feeling this meaning. I have this specific thing where I know I can do right. I can follow and help people for God through this. And it works better for me anyways. It's, it's just better overall. And then I started thinking and I started rationalizing. And after a few minutes I said, I'm going to drop everything when it comes to sales and go all in my coaching. This decision changed my life. It literally did. And it's these moments when you're bored, when you're there with your thoughts, that you have these revolutionary ideas that will go, that have the potential of literally changing your life. But when you're constantly distracted, there's no way you're going to come across these things, except if someone else comes and tells you like, oh, hey Samir, why don't you try this? But even then, when you don't have that time with your mind, with your thoughts, You're not going to be willing. You're not going to have like that same mental energy, that same focus, that same mental space to think, okay, yeah, I can actually do this. I can maybe set up a plan for this. Let me think of what I can do. You're not going to think about these things. This is very important. So the likelihood that you quote unquote get successful, that you reach success, and by that I don't mean business, I don't mean just career, it can be having a family and having a real marriage, it can be helping your parents, it can be becoming that role model for people around you, it can be building that charity, the likelihood you're actually going to achieve these things in your lifetime is gonna be much higher, much, much higher. And I didn't even tell you about, like, not only is it that you reduce the time it's going to take, but you also compound. When you do not escape something, as time goes on and you don't escape and you don't escape, at one point you get used to it. But then at one point, it also— it's the hockey stick effect, where you, yes, you see results initially, but then you just get used to it it seems like it's just your new normal. And then suddenly you see a lot of results come out of nowhere because you've been so consistently not escaping and just working on these projects on your business or your career or whatever things, whatever you're pursuing in your life. And this is very important. Second benefit, this is the last benefit I'm going to talk about in this podcast, is you get a sense of maturity, leadership, and edge from facing life rather than going to porn. It ties back to the first benefits, but let me give you a different example. Imagine that you have a job interview and you have two guys. One guy constantly distracts himself and talking about, goes to parties, sleeps with women, watches porn, binges on alcohol, and so on whenever life gets hard. And another guy, every time life gets hard, he kind of retreats and just thinks and gets— tries to maybe get help from God. I'm not saying that the non-secular, the religious approach gives them an edge here, because this is not like the point I'm trying to make. But let's say you just goes to God and just doesn't distract himself with these modern-day distractions. Now let's say that both of them face the same exact problems. Maybe they just got divorced. Maybe they just lost one of their children. Maybe they just are financially unstable. But because they react completely differently, There's going to be that confidence, that way that they carry themselves, it's going to be completely different from both of them. Because the decision to face life and accept life and accept challenges is going to have a ripple effect on different areas of your life. Because when you— and we heard this before— whatever, how you are outwardly is just a reflection of your inner self, of your heart, of who you are. Sure, you can, for example, dress the part and buy a very nice-looking outfit and have the best haircut, and yet inside really be bad. But oftentimes we know from looking at someone, and again, oftentimes, that this person is better. Better, I mean, better as in maybe for the job interview, for example. And this is the thing. The moment you quit watching porn, of course, like, there's the shame that is removed. Not that shame is dependent on porn, but that's another topic for another day. But the way that you carry yourself, your character, because you went and you reflected on the problems and you found a solution and you even found meaning in them. Your confidence, your ability to express yourself, your ability to stand for what you want rather than just being nice to other people and so on is gonna be much, much higher. It's gonna be a night and day difference with the person that constantly and constantly and constantly escapes. The removal of an escape looks like this. It's like, imagine you have two worlds. One world has no benefits. You just go there, it's, it's, it's, there's nothing. And the other road has many benefits, like you're gaining. This is the thing I like to say to students: imagine of benefits when it comes to quitting porn as XP, experience. So with every single day that you go by without porn or masturbation, not just day, just time in general, it doesn't have to be a specific, uh, time frame, but with every single second, let's say, with every single time that you go and work out, every single time that you go and spend time alone with your thoughts. It's like you're gaining XP, just like in a video game where your character just improves with time being spent, with the time that you, you play on that, that game. This is what happens. Your character, like the character that you have in your video games, the same thing happens here with the— as time goes on now, you're constantly gaining XP, you're constantly gaining experience. When you're not escaping to porn. But on the flip side, if you're constantly escaping to porn, it's like you're not even playing the game. Therefore, your character is not improving. Therefore, you stay the same. You might think, yeah, in the future I'll change and I'll be able to get back to that. It's like, yeah, sure, but not really. You're gonna miss out on a lot, on a lot of improvements that could have been made. So the XP could be the experience that you gain, maturity, leadership, you become stronger mentally because you're sculpting that version of yourself that you might have in your vision, for example, the desired version of yourself, the future version of yourself in that exact moment, not in a few days, you're building that right now. So this is it for the podcast. I hope this was helpful. I hope that you took some notes and I'll see you guys in the next episode.