3 Problems with Attaching the “need” for Self-improvement to Your Porn Habit

I teach guys powerful, useable, practical, hands-on tools for managing their mind.

Some of those tools include:

• -Thought Work
• -the Self-Coaching Model
• -Impulse Shifting

Why is managing your mind important?

Because thoughts create results.

A lot of my clients first learn about these powerful mind-management tools because they have a porn habit that they want to quit, once and for all - FOR GOOD.

So they practice with the mind-management tools and see that it helps (very effectively) with their initial problem.

Sometimes, they begin to attach the “need” for using these tools to whether or not they looked at porn recently.

This can be problematic. Why?

For a few reasons.

First, the pattern can look like this. 

• -You break a commitment to yourself and look at porn.
• -You have an unwritten rule in your mind that if porn happened in that last few weeks, that means I need these mind-management tools.
• -You spend a few weeks with renewed energy to practice managing your mind with the tools, and you benefit from it.
• -As the porn incident becomes further and further in the past, the unwritten rule in your brain says you don’t need to practice anymore.
• -Your brain goes unmanaged, and you may find yourself breaking a commitment to yourself and looking at porn again.

So in this first pattern, you’ve attached the need for thought work to whether porn has happened recently or not.

The second issue. When you attach your system for self-improvement to a specific problem like a porn habit. You may be putting incentive in place to look at porn.

Why? Because there is part of you that is hungry for continual growth, expansion, self-improvement, learning. It’s either a learned value of yours, or simply just part of being a human.

So that part of you that hungers for more learning. Your brain wants to help it succeed.

And if your brain recognizes these mind-management tools as one of the most effective things you’ve learned to accelerate learning, it will seek to use them.

And if the rule in your brain is that you only use them shortly after viewing porn, then you have put an incentive in place for your brain to help make sure porn happens so that you can use the tools and learn with them again.

The third issue with attaching the need for practicing with these tools to the porn habit specifically. 

You can use the practicing with these tools as a way to reinforce your identity as someone with a porn problem.

For example: “I only need to use these tools because I’m someone with a porn problem.”

So every time you practice with the tools in this mindset, you reinforce this learned/optional identity of you being someone with a porn problem.

Solution to these 3 issues?

• -rewrite the rules. 
• -Don’t use the tools only because of the porn thing. -Use the tools because (new, porn-free identity) you are someone who values continual growth, expansion, self-improvement, learning.
• -show your brain that you can learn and expand whether you look at porn again or not, because you are someone committed to continual, incremental improvement.

This way, you don’t reinforce the porn identity every time you sit down to practice.

This way, there is less incentive to view porn.

This way, you get to use whatever cool new self-improvement tools you’ve learned well after porn is a thing of the past.

Championship teams don’t only practice when they lose. 

They don’t practice more when they lose more. 

They just keep practicing, win or lose, and are obsessed with continually showing up and getting better in the next small way.

They don’t tell themselves while practicing, “I’m practicing right now because I’m someone who loses too much.” Or, “I’m practicing because I need to practice more for a few weeks after every loss.”

They tell themselves, “I keep practicing because that’s what champions do.”

They don’t overcome one obstacle, or learn 1 new skill and say, “okay, I overcame that one thing, so now I’m done practicing from here on out.”

Champions overcome one obstacle after another. They are always open to the next new thing they can improve. They keep practicing all along the way. They have regular transformations.

Time to start playing like the champion of your own life.