I don’t like posting my own success story, nor do I even like calling it that. In a way the struggle we face is so odd, because we are struggling to just get back into our normal bodies. We have fallen below the realm of reason and logic, trying to dig upwards towards the surface of the earth. The other perspective is one of wonder, because now a days most people are below the surface, not aware of it and living like worms in a dirt cage.
The title is 90+ Days Again because I was previously above ground in life. I made it to 730 days and made some serious power moves that have affected the term of this birth. I live comfortably and happy because of those decisions. However I got slipped up by a small trigger and plunged. Now I climb and climb and climb, but now it is different. I no longer stop climbing when I get to the surface. Now I breathe air and keep going. I’m climbing as high as I can go, to the heavens and beyond. My hope is to bring as many people with me this time. It is a heavier load, but I am capable beyond measure, and so are you.
What follows next is my post for the Heirs of the Sun after I hit 90 days. Everyone who hits 90 in the Heirs must post about it. So if reading success stories helps, maybe my failure after failure will also help. I haven’t built success from winning, I have built it from loss and madness.
How does one get a decent streak going?
I recently earned 90 days and thought about how I did it. It is tradition around our group at Heirs of the Sun for all the 90 day Heirs to post: How did I become Brave Warrior rank? How can you? Our ranks have different names, going all the way up to one year clean.
Most of us will say this and that regarding success. We all have our own ways that our mind works best. All of it is true if it works for you. Whatever worked for someone is true, at least to them. That is why I regard everything as truth, in some form or another it is true to someone. Take what is true for you and drop the rest. Keep what works.
What works for me? I believe I did not become Brave Warrior. Nor did I become Captain in the recent NoFap war in Reddit. I believe Brave Warrior and captain was in me already, I did not become anything; I already was it.
When in comes down to the moment of truth, the moment of action in life, our decisions must come quickly. What comes from your mind in a quick decision is what lived there all along. It is the great mass of the iceberg underneath the ocean that determines who you are. Your real character only comes out when life is giving us the greatest challenge. So the first thing I do everyday is determine who I am. What am I all about? I do not fight pornography, I live like the person who cannot be touched by it. I was a Brave Warrior the day I signed up for NoFap. The rank only shows what was there the whole time.
We don’t magically conquer resistance. Knowing we are all at a certain maturity and understanding can be helpful on this journey. It can prevent depression and sadness knowing that you are where you are and there is always much learning left. There is always room for improvement. Comparing yourself to someone else is a recipe for upset. Compare yourself to who you were last year or two years ago and see if there is progress. Don’t make week to week or month to month comparisons, go for year to year. Anything else isn’t accurate.
Remember your speech. Over the last three months I have constantly read “the urge is hard”, “the urge is strong”. This is inaccurate. The urge in and of itself is attributeless. The urge doesn’t care what body it is in. It is us who assign the qualifier “hard” or “strong”. Remember the affirmation post I did, what you think, say and feel is actually going to happen in life, try to create the right things. Don’t create a difficult urge by calling it that. You are reading a book, you don’t say “I am the book”, you are hungry and say “I’m hungry” but you know you are not hunger itself, the body is hungry. You say “I am sad”, but the “you” is not sadness itself, it is only experiencing a temporary bout of some emotion. What I say is “I am experiencing an unnatural craving caused by the instinctive mind, therefore I will change that because I don’t want to experience this urge.” Over time it will become natural and the urge will come and quickly leave.
So ask yourself not “what can I do”, ask yourself who are you, what are you all about? What is inside you? That will usually determine what happens next. I say that because it is a pattern in all of life. In all effective, powerful people. They don’t question what their belief system is, they have internalized principles and character traits that they want and help them succeed. These are proactive people who win the private battles. They use their speech in a positive way and constantly sharpen the saw. They empower those around them. They do that by making deposits into the emotional bank account of everyone they interact with. This in turn increases their circle of influence and makes them responsible. The responsibility then creates purpose. That purpose creates drive. The drive is willpower and then there is one victory after another after another. This is self-mastery. This is the path of evolving through challenges. After this challenge is finished a more difficult one will take its place, it has too because that is why we are here: to evolve through challenges. When the foundation is built, the challenges may get harder but you get tougher. Living like this creates wisdom. Eventually ones own path is no longer as important and helping those who are just starting out becomes the greatest challenge. Changing other peoples lives becomes the final goal. All of it is right there inside you, the entire time, just like it is inside of me.
Gravelord Swordsman with the Soul of a Brave Warrior to Heirs of the Sun
- My Daily Affirmation
- A Technique for Aiding Blue Balls, Unwanted Erections and Wet Dreams
- Affirmations: Why and How to Use Them
- How to Build Willpower
- Energy
- Shame, Regret, Guilt: You Relapsed
- Why Do We Fail? Why Do We Succeed
- What is Greatness?
- Public Battles; Private Battles
- A Larger Perspective
- Paradigm Shift
- Being Proactive: Part 1 and 2
- Sharpen the Saw
- Understanding the Mind
- The Art of Meditation
Motivational Writing:
- We Must Struggle to Succeed: Anticipating Resistance
- Keeping Desire at Bay
- On the Front Lines of Our Own Mind
- Knife of Wisdom
- Pretend Your A Saint
- Molding the Clay Mind
- Why Can’t I Do This?
LINK – 90+ Days…Again
by SolidStance
UPDATE – Day 142: Climbing Out of Our Own Pit
Hello again my Soldiers of the Path. I hope you are well.
I wanted to share a message about living the porn free life. I urge you to not focus so much on not masturbating to porn, never looking and completely abstaining. While those habits must be developed, there is too much pressure on thinking about it all the time.
I notice a trend in the communities, both here and Reddit. The trend and pattern is to devote all your energy to not masturbating, to not watching porn. This is not the way that I have come to know as success. What has led me to get to this point, and to get to my previous two years clean, is changing the person that used to use porn. Try not to focus on porn or anti-porn so much, just relax a little.
Everything is going to be fine everyone. You are all going to become the person you have always wanted to be. As long as you are aware of the problem you can systematically change your weak-points into strength. When you act like your life is over due to a relapse, you end up creating much more trouble than what actually happened. Just chill. All you need is a few days under your belt to get rolling. Once you are past the first week you will find that sensitivity to fade and an inner strength arising.
The path is about ups and downs. You are bound to relapse, and that is ok! You won’t overdose and die or end up in the hospital, you will just feel shitty for a while. Even if you are in the thick of it, the real addictive pain of constant relapse, chances are you are going to make it because you are here reading this. I went through ten years of pain but I made it out. I don’t hate the ten years either. I actually know that all that pain and suffering made me into the man I am today. All I had to do was learn that the struggle was good for me. The resistance built strength and character. Now I look at struggle and resistance in a positive light and I see it as the next challenge to conquer, just like porn.
This addiction is like a deep whole in the ground that we dug, climbed into and then threw the shovel above ground. You have no light, the hole is so deep it is completely dark. All you have in the end is you. The community is there above ground cheering you on, but really the strength and resolution to win must come from you, there is no rope in that hole, there is no one reaching down and grabbing you.
What happens is eventually you get some light shined into the whole from the sun. The sun rises after a long dark night and shines light right into this deep pit and exposes the sides of the pit. There are jagged rocks all along the walls going straight up to the top. Once you realize that there is a way out, you slowly attempt to climb out step by step.
You actually make some progress, but then slip and fall again. You can get bummed and sad, and you do the first few slips, but really there is no where else to go after a while and you start to climb again. This happens enough and you memorize the path up. You start to recognize what rocks have good traction and which ones lead straight back down.
Slowly you make your way to the top and climb out of the very hole that you dug. Everyone is at the top and congratulating you, hugging you and letting you know that you made it. Then the community can navigate the rest of the way, they can help you avoid other holes that other people dug and they can show you tools to quickly climb out of the next one, if you fall again.
The whole time, with each fall, there was a way out. All you needed was the light shining on the steps. Once you saw that it was possible, you easily make the decision to climb back up. It may not be easy, it will be difficult at times. It will seem downright impossible. But you have to try, remember what steps work and avoid the slips.
I love you guys. Can’t wait till you see what it looks like up here. Remember, even if it is your dark night, I can see from here. I can see the steps. Start Climbing.
UPDATE – Over 700 Days Free
After enough time went by I began to realize that porn addiction was not the main cause of my sorrow. For all the days and nights spent wasting away I could have sworn, surely, the enemy is in the computer, in the technology and in society as a whole. I, of course, was wrong.
The main issue regarding my own recovery was discovering that I wasn’t in need of porn safety, I was in fact in need of growing up, maturing and becoming a man. A simple paradigm shift over 700 days ago brought resolve to my purpose in life and changed my thinking forever.
Let’s take a moment and briefly explain what the final conclusions of my nofap came to be:
Man has been afflicted with vice since the beginning; with the dual nature of reality we have always experienced the good along with the bad and vice versa. As we roam and evolve we must carry the joys and burdens that come with having a physical body. With every learning experience our evolution must come through hurt, pain and suffering. A child learns to not fall by falling and scraping the knee. A boy learns steadiness and balance by getting knocked off his bike, skateboard or rollerblades. A teen learns his tolerance for alcohol by taking it too far and getting sick with friends. And so a man must learn how to reach his true self by living a lie and experiencing moral illness.
Over the course of your nofap journey you will undoubtedly hear about all of the ups and downs, supposed superpowers that some are having from long streaks, the aid of cold showers, an influx of energy and attention coming from the opposite sex, relapses, binging, brain fog, wet dreams—and if those are relapses or not—edging, regret, power, new found hope in life and suicidal tendencies from the hopeless. All of this comes with the culture of nofap.
What is nofap anyway? Most of what we know comes from a subreddit that a college student created and eventually lost control of and over time it became unmoderated and open to interpretation. What you see is the result of thousands of young men trying to explain why they are seemingly addicted to porn and masturbation and how they either succeeded or failed over and over and over again.
In the course of my own history regarding nofap it is plain to see how I started right at the very beginning. From finding out that others like me existed, to getting a badge for the first time and helping others as noble fapstranauts. I have seen high streaks, god modes, leaders pulling up the weak with encouraging advice, tips on how to do what they did, criticism for why we do it, the haters, the couples, the powerless and the folks just wanting to try it out for fun. The history of nofap will repeat itself, just as most history does as history is just one long cycle of experience. So, let me do you a favor and end all that now by writing the final conclusions of the nofap path and the last overview ever needed.
Getting away from the word “Addiction”
Someone at some time lied to you, it happens. From someone’s experience of a hopeless incessant binging lifestyle came the theory that we are addicts for masturbating to porn too much. While there are some extreme cases of people out there unable to leave their house and go to work because of porn, the majority of PMO users will never go to such extremes. Most of us will get stuck for months or years in an endless cycle of porn that gradually decreases over time until we finally stop. Yup, one day this won’t be an issue for you. You are stuck, lacking purpose and meaning, and need a good nudge in the right direction.
Often times young people live myopically. They don’t see the larger picture but only see a small constricted part of their situation and microscope it so it looks really big, but it’s not: relax. Other people actually have way bigger problems and habits than you do. Some people kill, steal, rape, live in prison, or actually are addicted to fatal narcotics such as heroin. Let me ask you, have you ever sold your body for a chance to PMO? Have you ever considered fighting someone to clear the room so you can masturbate? Or how about possessions. Have you ever given up and lost major assets in order to obtain porn. If it wasn’t readily available would you perform those acts of addiction? Probably not because your not an addict. You don’t crave porn to the point of sickness, vomiting, blurred vision, cold sweats, hallucinations or fits of rage. That’s what an addict would do. Still think you are one?
Educating yourself
One of the most liberating experiences we can have is educating ourself. Once we learn something new there are thousands of little electrical currents firing off in your brain that create new channels of structure. The same thing happens when you develop a new habit, good or bad, or even do nothing. The act of nothing can be registered in the brain. On this journey, usually in the beginning of discovering nofap, we educate ourselves and it feels amazing. Finally we can intellectualize what has been happening to us and why we act the way we do. Liberating right? Read, Youtube, study study study until we are nofap professors.
“Ask me anything” you say. You learned about what your brain does regarding porn. Your brain treats many situations similarly and we learn that we do this because of this. I guess that’s it. Now that you learned what is happening and you know the consequence, then it’s all pretty cut and dry. No more porn for you, right? Well no, not really. Most of us don’t care in the heat of the moment. Why? Because we can’t feel the negative right away. Our brain is not that clear or visible to people in the beginning stages of observation. We can’t see the habit being formed unless we actually were to reflect on our past and become super observant of ourselves, something that our youtube video about PMO didn’t tell us. Unfortunately the body is capable of extreme amounts of injustice to itself. The sheer power of a body is immense. Ever think about that when you see an obese person?
The skeletal system, the small joints, none of it gives in but adapts to the hundreds of pounds being placed upon them. It is really quite something how we can a take a beating! Knowing that we can see how we quickly recover and that the side effects won’t really be that bad, we keep watching porn and masturbating to it. Feels good too, except there are a few shitty side effects like brain fog and we become numb to the world around us, same thing happens to stoners. Ejaculating to porn on a regular basis feels good enough to keep going and feels bad enough to want to stop. Thus we are caught in the cycle.
Frustration, Anger and Resentment
This is bullshit, right? The one thing that feels so good and it comes with a bunch of lame consequences. AND to top it all off it’s everywhere. Sex, tight clothes and beautiful people are everywhere. It looks good to consumers and it makes money, lies look really sexy. We end up in the stage of external blaming: it’s societies fault. “What can I do? I am a product of this place and I am just a normal guy. I have instincts and I have a healthy sexual nature and I am being taken advantage of” You say to yourself as you sink down into your habits.
Some people now get semi-political and fight the system. “Take down porn!” We get the idea that if we get rid of porn or reduce it’s omnipresence that all of our problems will be solved. What we don’t realize is that the problem isn’t with porn, nor is it with society. My friends, the problem is with us. This is usually the last place we end up. Once we realize that we are the problem then we can let society do it’s own thing and it will anyway. Again we can look at history and learn from the past. Big tobacco was fought after finding out smoking brings certain types of cancer. Big auto was fought after finding out cars really weren’t that safe. The list goes on and on. The truth is you could fight Big porn. Ya, you could spend years of your life and income and get a warning label on porn. “Danger: Using porn has caused some people to not think clearly or even become obsessed and masturbate constantly.” Would that make you feel better? Would you save lives? Probably not.
Saving people from cancer works in some cases, but I still smoked as a teen. Seatbelts are life-savers and police enforce the use of them, but does that stop everyone? No. And why should it? Remember people have to learn from hurt, pain and suffering. You can’t fight that and you can’t change it. Reality sets in and we learn that instead of fighting Big porn we should fix ourselves first and then go from there.
Motivation and Shutting Porn Out
Now you are pumped, I can feel it. At this point you have made it long enough for a streak to take hold and you are ready to run through a wall. You are at the stage of being blindly guided by motivation alone, pure motivation. Actually you can ride for months on pure motivation. You have got the best blockers that a browser can have, your phone is all locked up with your friends password and the sky is more beautiful than any sky you have seen before. What could go wrong?
Eventually porn becomes available. Some how the situation arises, possibly from an accidental search for shoes, and you find yourself looking at some porn. Image searches almost never can be fully blocked, apps on your phone can smoothly sneak past Open DNS filters and you end up with your heart about to beat right out of your chest and you get aroused. What happened? You were so motivated I thought you really had this? After being desensitized even a clothed women becomes enough. You relapse and the dark cloud of misery surrounds you yet again—and this time you are really confused.
Look, you can’t run from technology. The truth is we are evolving as a global community with the help of technology and it is really fascinating. One of the biggest lessons of nofap is the fact that blocking sex doesn’t work. You can’t succeed in getting rid of it unless you actually move to the forest and become a woodsman. That would be pretty cool but that’s not what you need. You need a way to be free of this habit and you need to figure it out fast. Delete your Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, all of it. Shut yourself off as best as you can. Any luck? Whoops, you needed Facebook for work, or even better your work is based on computers and you need technology to excel. Hi, welcome to the World.
Sorry, you can’t run from tech. Just like you couldn’t run from cars when horses were the mode of transportation, nor could you have run from T.V. when all you wanted to do was listen to radio. T.V. would be bad for sure. Get used to tech and get used to all the amazing wonderful things that come from it. This is truly an exciting time to be alive. Balance is key.
The end is in sight
I see most people get stuck here. This is one of the last stages nofap has to offer. At this point we start getting good at regular streaks and we can easily start to live a normal life. We make progress and we are ok with defeat. After a relapse we count the days and notice we got farther than ever and are going to get back up and go even longer. Not only is this one of the last stages of nofap, it’s the hardest.
Once we “reboot” a little, that is to say once we realize we are a normal dude and our normal self is pretty awesome, a relapse doesn’t actually take us that far down into mental anguish. What is happening is our mental state is done with being depressed and we pick ourselves up from a seemingly bad situation. In the end we come to realize that all the negative side effects from regular PMO was our poor self-esteem, poor mental attitude and inability to get out of the mud. You are evolving. How did you do it? From hurt, pain and suffering. You got burned so many times that now you keep your hand safely away from fire. You are tough and no matter what you are going to succeed.
The challenge with this stage, and really that of all other stages, is that we haven’t yet begun to work on other aspects of our lives or on our character. Remember that myopic young person vision that we talked about? We sort of did it with this bad habit. We focused on it so much that we didn’t realize we have way too much time on our hands. We didn’t even notice that while we were doing good it wasn’t from permanent change, it was just temporary progress. That’s where self-help, self-empowering communities comes in.
Finding your purpose and meaning in life
The last conclusion of this habit, and that of all other issues we face in life, is the realization that PMO, or gaming or gluttony, is all a necessary step in our own evolution. All of this pain is actually there to help us. This is the stage of change. This is the learning that most people fail to experience. Why? Because it doesn’t just equate to young men and porn. This is a much larger issue that relates to how we handle life, how we think of ourselves and how we deal with stress. Most people will never make it to this stage fully.
“But you said earlier that we would all stop eventually.” Yes, PMO, I believe, will not be conflicting us forever and there is a breaking point for a lot of users. Mostly as a natural maturing that takes place. What I am talking about is the followers in life. The people who eat too much junk, who turn on the T.V. right when they wake up, who get angry in traffic, who never resolve issues with family members. All these forms of problems carry over to the unhappy person, with or without porn use. They help reduce the person’s self-image, they help destroy the person’s resolve and most importantly they turn the person into a non-believer. Not everyone is ready to change the way they are and even though we may defeat PMO, the next challenge awaits us patiently. If we don’t figure out our core values then the next challenge in life will bring us down again.
Kind of sad, right? Well it depends on how you look at it. In the bigger picture, no, not really. We are all doing exactly as we should be in our stage of evolution. You see, you can actually replace this article’s use of PMO with any other vice. Any form of weakness could be applied and it comes with the same stages. The key to not relapsing again is to uproot any and all forms of wrong behavior from your life. Once we change the way we handle stress, once we are able to love ourselves and others, once we are able to become a productive member of society and contribute, then we will not be conflicted anymore. The simple way of saying that is: Grow Up.
Finding yourself is not easy, it takes an extreme amount of work and resolve. But the final conclusion is: that’s what needs to happen. Eventually porn will seem dull to you. You won’t even have time to think about it. Don’t you want to move on from this chapter? Isn’t this struggle getting lame? I know I am tired of talking about it. There is so much to do and experience. Imagine never getting in a serious fight with someone. Imagine being so grounded and well behaved and powerful that you eloquently resolve situations right as they come up. The art of relating to other humans is really very fun and becoming that person is exciting. That is what you have to focus on. That is what nofap should be about, not about not-masturbating but becoming the person who isn’t interested.
Desire is life
Desire is what wakes us up in the morning. We won’t be able to destroy desire no matter how hard we try; what we must do is redirect it. We have to change our values and make our actions reflect them. Those that get stuck again and again have not yet reconstructed their value system. In fact, reconstruction of one’s self-image happens regularly for truly effective and powerful people. Sometimes I go through weeks of daily reconstruction. We must ask ourselves constantly: “What am I about?” “What do I value” “Who am I?” These are powerful questions to ask yourself. Just when you have an answer things end up changing, but that’s the fun of it all. That’s the excitement that life has to offer. Think about the future. One day someone is going to ask you how to do something and someone is going to need you, I promise you that. Be someone who can be counted on and trusted. I trust you already since I know what is inside of you—I want you to see it for yourself.
Man of Honor
After we get out of this challenge we have many other experiences ahead. Becoming the man we idolize is a matter of effort, dedication and constant reminder. The mysteries of living a courageous life unfold as we take each day and make it our arena for success. There is no dull moment if we are totally present. Build, create and invent at every opportunity you get. Live life as a man of honor and let go of fear and regret. Our confidence and understanding of the mind, the path of nofap and our eventual mastery are what each and every man stand for and it’s what makes us stand out. There is no doubt, no guesswork and no wonder about where we are going. Success is inevitable for each and every one who makes the conscious decision to reflect on our situation, understand what the real issue is, work hard constantly to rebuild our self-image, expand our mind and the minds of others and live the best life possible.
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