365 days porn free. It’s just a number but it’s a good one, I freely admit.
I don’t have time to write an essay but I will say this:
Reboot Nation is part of my success. Not sure how much but a large chunk. Let’s focus on what a “reboot” is. It’s about stopping just about everything one did that was destructive to oneself and by extension to others. When you reboot you are trying to get back to factory settings. In our world getting the brain to function as it did before we screwed with it. It’s probably technically impossible to find factory settings because that was when we were children. But we all know most of our failings. Remembering all of them, or dredging them up, is actually nigh on impossible.
So we learn a few things from that:
1. Perfect is the enemy of good. We can be good but we can’t be perfect. Seeking perfection is a waste of time.
2. Being true to oneself sounds obvious but is so hard. We, some of us, have almost no idea who we really are because we had become such distorted feeble people. I am still working on this one.
3. Fixing ourselves, when there’s so much to fix, is exhausting and frustrating. Temptation lies around every corner. Rebooting is really hard when there’s so much to correct. So we focus (or I did) on the porn problem. That’s probably similar issue for most of us here. Different levels of addiction but all addicted.
4. Staying off porn is really hard. I focus not just on the negative, but on how I feel having kept away from it. The first few weeks are borderline hell. But as soon as you recognise some difference in yourself, hang on to that for dear life. This is what you will become. You’re a better person. You may feel like hell, you may be biting off your nails, but you are fixing your brain slowly but surely. That’s an overused phrase. Slowly is important because there’s a long road ahead. But the word “surely” is vital. It’s definitive, it’s an absolute certainty. Your brain will get better as long as you stay disciplined.
5. Anyone who has trawled through my journal will know I am a strong advocate for no masturbation. Or at least keeping it to a bare minimum. Is that hard? Oh yes…..really not what I was expecting……new feelings came often….some were amazing core feelings, some were frustrations that could not be described, some were flatline asexual feelings that make you wonder if you’re still a man. No masturbation is just something I advocate, but I accept it can be too difficult for many. But consider what your brain wants and what one gives it by masturbation not to porn but probably to fantasy. To me the reboot was going to be way slower if I masturbated , say, weekly. So I did it about once a month….but also I tried a three month stretch without (August, September, October). That was one of the most difficult exercises I have ever done. My brain rebooted massively during that time.
Going to write more later - this is sort of part 1. Thanks guys. I will talk about you lot in part 2.