I waited a bit to write this success report. I feel like something has really changed during past months, and needed time to process and put it into words. Here is my story. I accidentally discovered NoFap almost five months ago. I started a 90-days challenge and managed to endure until 120 days.
During April I started to visit the forum less and less often. Then May began, and things started to fall apart. I became indulgent, grew tired and my discipline got to a low point. I masturbated once without porn, then I started a full month porn binge. I masturbated a lot and watched a lot of porn. Over the course of 30 days I calculated approximatively 14-16 days of porn usage (prior to NoFap I used to watch porn on a daily basis, at least I cut it by a good half).
Before talking about the benefits of my streak, I want to point out some of the reasons of my defeat:
● After the first three months I started to move away from the “warrior mentality”, meaning that I stopped to think about my reboot in terms of day-by-day-struggle. Once you start NoFap, you fight against porn for the rest of your life. Every. Single. Day.
● My visits here on the forum became less frequent, then I stopped altogether. This was bad, since reading motivational posts every now and then has a powerful confidence boost effect. And confidence helps to build and enforce discipline.
I don’t want to digress about other aspects of my downfall. Since people would likely read this post in search for motivation, that is material for another thread. On the other side, here are the benefits that I am experiencing:
- More energy to do things. (I must point out that this benefit was the first one to be compromised after I masturbated during the past month. So I can personally say that masturbation affects in a negative way my productivity and work performance)
- More friends and a generally better social life. I am more talkative. During my reboot I spent more time outside socializing. I am no more hesitant to find myself in social situations. I stopped having my elitarist and arrogant attitude. I used to be very reserved, but now I share my thoughts more often;
- More knowledge. Instead of fapping I read a lot during my reboot;
- More healthy. I am more willing to cook for myself instead of ordering pizza 4 days a week (which I still consider ok, I am Italian afterall). I started to work out, jogging and stuff;
- I take much more care of myself, I trim my beard and cut my hair regularly. As a result I noticed an increased interest towards me from girls. I still don’t have a girlfriend, but now I am less shy and more capable of bantering;
- A more clear vision about my destiny. This may sound a bit awkward, but porn truly is a powerful social anesthetic. Add this anesthetic to influences from a massifying society that wipes away any form of creativity and non-conformal thought. Removing porn intoxication from my life helped me (among other things, mind you) to develop conscious thoughts. Now, at the age of 23, I have a renovated civic and political conscience. I am looking for a reason to live. And die. Something that goes beyond a dull corporate-slave employement.
If you are struggling during your reboot, hold on. It’s not worth to relapse, just to get five seconds of pleasure. Go back to all the material and posts you have read, especially the ones that motivated you the most. Never let your guard down.
LINK – NoFap Rise, Downfall and New Beginning
by Francesco
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