Discovering my potential through rebooting

[Dantes]

Thank you Fappy and Redalc! Yeah I agree with getting complacent, I feel like I'm on the first real plateau of this reboot. I won't call it flatline, as I see many guys here on a real flatline and they seem to be getting into pretty dark places with their thoughts. For me, it's rather that my progress is stagnating for the first time. I feel like I don't have the time or the energy for all the things I want to achieve right now. It might be that I'm trying to do too much at once, which is something I've ended up doing several times in the past.

Day 75

So three fourths to a hundred, currently days are going by rather quickly. Another very busy day, Went on to play tennis right after work and got back home at 8pm, and now I'm just laying down and relaxing for the rest of the evening. Still trying to find that determination I mentioned that I'm searching for.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 76

Days are zooming by. After work I had briefly time to make dinner and then went straight to tennis court. In one way I find this the perfect life for some period, but on the other hand I'm not making progress professionally even though that's what I would find most fulfilling. But you can't have everything at once. No struggles with PMO today, haven't even had time to think about PMOing.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Redalc]

Aren’t these days the best. When you are so busy being productive that you don’t even have time to think about struggles. Keep it up man!

 

[Dantes]

Agreed Redalc! Even though I mentioned plateauing, I still feel that I'm more certain of myself not relapsing, i.e. I'm beginning to grow more confident in my ability to stay clean. Especially when my days are filled with activities. But obviously, staying alert and mindful is as important as ever. Next weekend I'll be spending with my friends and will probably get drunk. And as mentioned earlier, hangover days are risky days for rebooting. So no reason to get complacent yet.

Day 77

So today I felt piece of it. In the first post I mentioned how I want to renew that spark inside, that for me represents being alive. So I went climbing with a close friend who I haven't seen for a while. We never talk that much on serious matters, but once we were driving home, the sun was shining and he played this new song he heard, I felt almost stunned. It was a vivid vision of rays of sunlight passing through the bridge we were driving on and I thought about nothing, I was just one with the moment. I think it was compilation of not listening to music for a while, good weather, seeing a friend after a while and something else. So yeah, feeling pretty poetic and sentimental about it. I don't even want to reduce this experience by comparing it to PMO, it was so amazing. Sort of like the ending in the movie Sound of Metal.

For a guy like me, the first instinct in these situations is usually to feel remorse and judge myself for wasting so many years of my life on something that prevents me from having these experiences. But right now I don't feel that. I feel grateful for myself, for persisting after so many failed tries. The contrast of grey existence during pmo life with the vividness of this feeling of being alive makes my feelings today all the sweeter. I may relapse tomorrow, after 90 days or after a year, but I promise myself this: I will never give up on breaking free from porn.

As you can tell, I'm feeling pretty good today. Perhaps this sounds a bit overwhelming or even frustrating for someone in a hard place, but it's truthfully how I feel right now. But I can't stand still right now, got to keep moving forward, slowly but surely, and to wish for more pieces of life to come.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 78

So back to the grind, or rather flow of typical days after yesterday's bliss. Nothing wrong with today either, did a lot of work today and exercised + played sports for 3 hours in total in the evening. My newfound sports-heavy lifestyle makes it a bit easier for rebooting imo, as I'm always too tired at the end of the day to relapse. Starting tomorrow I'll be spending the weekend with my friends and may skip a day or two and add up the posts later. But we'll see tomorrow.

Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Days 79, 80 and 81

So weekend was pretty fun, met some friends I haven't seen for a while. Today some hints of more urges, but nothing too tempting. Starting from tomorrow the week will probably again take me forward with great momentum with work and exercise.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 82

As I predicted, today I didn't have that much time to think about rebooting and thus no urges today. As I'm feeling more confident in my ability to abstain from porn, I'm still unsatisfied with my current productivity level. I haven't been keeping up with my "real life journal" for about a week now. I don't progress in my projects outside work. And that is the goal really, to realize the potential I neew to be able to sustain higher level of productivity over time. It's quite late already today, but tomorrow I may have chance to do something about my projects.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 83

Another pretty busy day. I've felt quite energetic throughout the day, which I'm happy to see. Just before writing had some odd urges where my brain went: "why whoudln't I PMO, what harm would it do?" and even instinctively started moving my hand towards my pants. Damn. So the threat of relapse is still there, and all it will takes is one harmless slip or peak and the streak is lost. So after all, we can never let ourselves get complacent with rebooting. We are addicts, and for addicts there is no middle ground. The dopamine wiring of unhealthy porn and masturbation tendency in our brain will exist probably forever and though it will get weaker and weaker, only one relapse will light it up again.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Redalc]

Day 83

Another pretty busy day. I've felt quite energetic throughout the day, which I'm happy to see. Just before writing had some odd urges where my brain went: "why whoudln't I PMO, what harm would it do?" and even instinctively started moving my hand towards my pants. Damn. So the threat of relapse is still there, and all it will takes is one harmless slip or peak and the streak is lost. So after all, we can never let ourselves get complacent with rebooting. We are addicts, and for addicts there is no middle ground. The dopamine wiring of unhealthy porn and masturbation tendency in our brain will exist probably forever and though it will get weaker and weaker, only one relapse will light it up again.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

It’s frustrating isn’t it. Realizing that the urges won’t ever go away, instead it’s more of a continual determination to remember the consequences of giving in and fighting back against giving into those urges.

 

[Escapeandnevercomeback]

Day 83

Another pretty busy day. I've felt quite energetic throughout the day, which I'm happy to see. Just before writing had some odd urges where my brain went: "why whoudln't I PMO, what harm would it do?" and even instinctively started moving my hand towards my pants. Damn. So the threat of relapse is still there, and all it will takes is one harmless slip or peak and the streak is lost. So after all, we can never let ourselves get complacent with rebooting. We are addicts, and for addicts there is no middle ground. The dopamine wiring of unhealthy porn and masturbation tendency in our brain will exist probably forever and though it will get weaker and weaker, only one relapse will light it up again.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

Exactly, you got the whole picture of what we're dealing with. The addiction works like this: We have a brain chemical reaction to a stimulus. Which means we get a dopamine release in relation to porn. If we want to look at it this way: Porn is a button we push to release dopamine. Then the solution becomes clear: We need to starve the addiction to death and dopamine is how we feed it therefore we can't push the button. Porn means watching it, thinking about it, visualizing it, flashbacks, having sex thinking about porn, masturbating thinking about porn, wishing we could watch porn. All those release dopamine, the dopamine of porn I like to call it.

 

[Dantes]

Thanks for the responses Redalc and Escape! It really reiterates the importance of keeping the motivation for rebooting constantly in our minds. That is where I think these journals are so key, so we get constantly reminded of why we need to stay clean.

Day 84

Very similar day to ones before this, went to work and afterwards played tennis. Now spending the rest of the evening alone with the computer, which is a bit risky but right now feels manageable. It's easy to tell that this is my longest stretch without ejaculating for a really long time, as the urges are starting to find their way inside my head. There is no optino but to fight back, keep distracting myself and think about something else.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 85

A bit easier day today, since went to enjoy after-work beers with workmates so a bit less time spent alone at home. I've noticed that my body temperature is quite high, my hands are no longer constantly cold and cold showers each morning feel rather like a relief than a challenge. I'm assuming this is because of the t levels raising due to longer stretch without ejaculating. Interesting to see what other types of differences I'll observe.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 86

posting from a friend’s house. Visiting another town for the weekend because I’m attendong a sports event. Some urges in the morning, but after that haven’t had any time to let my mind wander around.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 87

I’ve spent the whole day with friends, so obviously happy times now. Not feeling any need to relapse, and no urges. Tomorrow the normal fight continues as I return home alone.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 88

I've been pretty tired today due to having less sleep than normal this weekend. This has lead to ogling in instagram, urges and less mature behaviour as well as overall lack of thought in my actions. As I think I've discussed earlier, sleep and adequate rest is vital for succeeding in rebooting. I'm a very bad sleeper, and I usually need to follow pretty strict bedtimes if I want to get at least some quality in my sleep. I know some people can get long sleep even after staying awake until 1-3 am, but I'm not one of those people. Sometimes it feels unfair, but I'm also in a privileged position in many other ways so I can't get too bitter about it. But yeah, will have to focus on securiing some more sleep now.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 89 & 90

90 days baby. After all the milestone kind of took me by surprise. Last couple of days have been harder already in terms of urges, and my self-discipline has been put to test. Today has already been a better day due to getting decent sleep last night.

90 days - recap and thoughts

It feels good to set a goal and reach it. I feel that in some ways I had very fortunate starting point for the reboot. I do reasonably well economically and have a girlfriend. The 90 days wasn't hardmode and I had sex several times. I also had an athletic lifestyle to begin with and I think exercise was a huge contributing factor for my success by draining my excess energy.

To be honest, I don't feel any superpowers. Maybe they are a bit more subtle things that will become more evident in the long run. For example, I have been reasonably comfortable with talking to girls already before rebooting so I haven't spotted a huge difference there. The benefits I do feel are better energy levels, less worry and no more overall sense of guilt. But as for discovering my potential and reaching my goals, I haven't seen any miracles happening. I still procrastinate and feel lazy. This might not be the most motivating thing to hear, but that's my current feeling. It might also be that I'm starting a longer flatline period here. But I also know that 90 days isn't enough for me. So based on these observations, I won't be posting any success stories just yet.

My suggestions for getting started with rebooting:
1. Journaling every day. Otherwise it's hard to make a habit out of it. It's okay to miss some days, like I did too, but the intention to post every day was still there and it worked. There were times when I thought about PMOing and then reversed just because I had to think how I would explain it here, no matter if nobody reads this thread.
2. Blocking pornsites and social media. Ogling girls on instagram is basically porn in a small scale. You are developing fantazies about girls inside your head and that's not too different from porn. I deleted instagram app and blocked the website on my laptop. I can still visit instagram on weekends via my phone's browser, but during weekends I'm usually with my friends or gf so there's no threat of relapsing. I obviously also try to avoid soending any excess time on pictures involving provoking stuff.
3. Exercise and sleep. Exercise drains your excess energy and makes you sleep better. Sleep strengthens your mind (you make worse decisions when sleep deprived) and makes it easier to resist urges.
4. Minimizing time spent alone. If you want to maximize your odds for success, spend the least possible amount of time alone. None of us are so desperate as to PMO in company of other people. Also, you learn to extract dopamine from your relationships rather than from PMO.

So what now?

The next goal is 180 days. It would be a huge shame to come this far only to give up rebooting. I have to be honest, right now I don't have the same sort of motivation I had in the beginning, but I do have the routine of rebooting ingrained within me and that's more important. I laid down the tools of rebooting above and in the next 90 days my plan is to focus less on those things. I know have some knowledge of the basic tools of abstaining from porn. What happens next is that I'll move my focus more on getting rid of procrastination and working towards my personal goals. So from now on, you can expect more posts on productivity and my personal projects. Maybe that doesn't fit right into the scope of this forum, but it's all part of filling that gap that porn leaves behind. Obviously there will be stuuf concerning urges and who knows if I'll relapse already tomorrow, but the intention is to divert the main focus of this thread to self-development.

What remains now is to find something with which I can reward myself on the milestone of 90 days. I haven't been too good on rewarding myself when I achieve something and I'd like to change that.

But as always, see you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 91

Once again the basics show their power: one night of decent sleep and working out in the gym made me feel awesome this evening. After work I almost passed out on the sofa but luckily I managed to force myself out of the house. During the day I noticed myself to be quite susceptible against urges. Especially as there were somewhat triggering moments at work today. But the one takeaway from this day is to never overlook the basics. From now on, I'll include the following as basics: exercise, books and sleep.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 92

Writing this while driving to visit my gf for a longer weekend. Just a simple realization I had while sitting in car: I think I’m beginning to have some affection for myself but I still have long road ahead in terms of respecting myself. In other words, I need to think about ways to increase my self-worth. I’ll just store this thought for a later use. Otherwise today was busy, and pretty ordinary.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 93-95

So I spent the weekend with my gf and some friends. Not one moment spent alone, so no real urges. Had quick sex once with my gf during this weekend. Pretty nice weekend after all. Will report more on my thoughts later.

See you tomorrow
Dantes

 

[Dantes]

Day 96

Back to everyday life again. Today sucked at work, as mondays usually do. In the afternoon went to play tennis, and after that came home super tired. After that I had some pretty major urges, I really felt the need to PMO but managed to stay alert, came here and read some journals which helped to let the urges pass. I'm feeling pretty low on my energy right now so I don't feel like contributing any major thoughts on this journal either. Maybe later.

See you tomorrow
Dantes