Tonight is כ"ג אדר א which marks the completion of 6 months since I started this journey.

Throughout the past 6 months I've experienced both amazing feelings of being free and dreadful feelings of being dragged back in and coming mighty close to falling. I think the number one biggest thing that changed in me was my motivation. Throughout the 15 years that I've struggled, although I wanted to stop for many reasons, the reasons were never emotionally stronger than my desire to watch pornography. Being that it was so, the best I was able to do was to tell myself that although pornography is what I want and need, I just can't do it. Too much of my life stands to be destroyed by watching... With this perspective in mind, I was at a huge disadvantage. Being that the only thing that ever was able to stop me from watching was that "I can't" all it would take to get me to watch was to convince me that although "I can't", I need it. Which was kinda true.

What changed in me was understanding how to create a strong emotional "I want" to stop, in place of my intellectual "I can't". Through tools I learnt in The Battle of the Generation book, I was able to understand that there is a deep emotional geshmak in not watching pornography. I would never have believed anything of this sort half a year ago, yet here I am writing these words myself - It's more geshmak to overcome the desire than to give in to the desire. Once I learned this, my motivation took on a whole different look. I really wanted to stop. For real this time.

Once I got to this crucial step one of wanting very badly to be able to overcome the YH I was able to do a "reset" on life. My life now had an underlying drive called I'm never watching porn, and I was quite happy about this feeling. I was honestly able to say to myself that I don't want to watch pornography. Some added bonuses that I got with this new perspective was that instead of forcing myself to get a better filter, I did it happily because I truly wanted to not watch pornography. With this new feeling I was also able to put a lot of kochos into shmiras einayim, as the geshmak I get from not watching porn I am able to get from not staring down every lady and girl that passes.

During the first few months of my journey the YH kinda left me alone. It came a time (about a month ago) when although I still had a desire to not watch porn, the desire to watch got even stronger and I had some really close calls. B'chasdei Hashem I emerged from that tekufa unscathed and stronger than ever but I definitely saw how the YH hasn't given up on me. Now that I am in a better tekufa I can look back and see how that rough tekufa was so different than in years past. Being that I had tasted the freedom and the enjoyment of overcoming the YH, I knew that it's possible to live without porn. Although the YH was pulling and pulling, deep down I knew the truth. In years past there was no truth, it was listen to YH or bust. I now knew that it's possible to live without pornography, and it's possible to overcome the YH. It was with this truth that was buried inside of me that I was able to use to ignite a raging fire to overcome him.

Wow! Powerful!

Thanks! Wishing you continued hatzlacha,

Can you do us a favor and chazer for us how you managed to get into that mindset?

Please don't disappear. There are loads of struggling dear yidden who need you buddy.

A real gem of a post! It's not just getting through the struggle, it's with a thought out mehalech! 

Wish to follow your footsteps! Keep on paving the way forward! and MAZAL TOV! 

- Yiftach

bright wrote on 03 Mar 2024 06:09:

There are a few steps that I took to really understand this perspective well, all things I learned from The Battle of the Generation book.

The first step was knocking out a misconception that I had always had. Being that porn and masturbation are big time issurim, I had always felt that staying away from these things put me on level with all the regular guys. If it's assur and I do it I'm bad, and if I don't do it then I'm just doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Nothing more than that. I no longer look at it that way, aside from the false thinking that your average guy doesn't have these struggles, there is also a large mistake in concept. To use issurim as the barometer to measure if I'm bad or average is destructive. The proper way to measure these things has nothing to do with assur and muttar, rather with what is hard and what is easy. If there is an issur that I have an easy time staying away from, then staying away is more an averagey type of a thing. I'm not really "doing" anything, I'm just staying away. However if there is an issur (or any behavior for that matter even if it's muttar) that's super hard for me to stay away from, when I stay away from it I'm not just average and doing what I'm supposed to be doing, rather I'm pushing myself to my limit which means that I'm positively doing something, I'm not just staying away from doing something.

The second chiddush that I learned was that every person has a built in super strong drive to feel good about themselves. One way to feel good about ourselves is through physical pleasure. However using physical pleasure to make us feel good is not nearly the strongest way to make us feel good about ourselves, and in fact it actually backfires on us. Using physical pleasure makes us feel good only for a really short period of time, and there is no lasting good feeling. If anything it leaves us hanging nowhere, feeling even less good about ourselves in the long run. Thankfully, there is another way to feel good about ourselves and that is through emotional pleasure. An emotional pleasure can make us really feel good deep deep down inside of us, and the feelings last way longer.

The third nekuda is that one of the strongest emotional pleasure in the world is felt when a person impresses himself. The way to impress yourself is by doing any action that you find hard to do. The harder it is for you to do any specific task makes you all the more impressed with yourself when you do it. When you do something that's hard for you to do, it makes you feel accomplished and fulfilled. It makes you feel mighty proud of yourself and there is a deep sense of satisfaction with what you just did. This feeling is incredibly strong, stronger and more geshmak than the best physical pleasure you can get.

To put this together in a nutshell... I really enjoy watching pornography quite a bit. Because I enjoy it so much, it's quite hard for me to not watch it. I now understand though, that because it's so hard to stay away, when I do stay away I will feel tremendously accomplished and I will feel an emotional pleasure that I can carry with me for a few days. This is the new perspective that I have been living with the past few months. Instead of having a choice of watching pornography which gives me physical pleasure vs. not watching which gives me just pain by forcing myself to not watch cuz it's assur, or cuz it'll destroy my life, I now have a choice of physical pleasure or emotional feeling good. I have tasted and felt that emotional pleasure and I know that it's better than the physical stuff.

It's no longer I "can't" watch porn, rather it's I "dont want" to watch porn. Living life overcoming the drives and urges is so much more fulfilling!

Masterpiece!!!

iwannalivereal wrote on 05 Mar 2024 04:55:

Incredible! I hope we will see this post on the GYE homepage and in a GYE email!

Hey we miss you!

a handshake warm
                         a smile warmer
      warms the heart in
ways that lift the spirit on a day where it's hard to take a step

if life is feeling a
                     new pulse-beat
                             a fresh contraction, new convulsive pushing  of the heart muscle against
                 Atrophy -
 then you, my friend, give me a push - a special antidote against
           weariness.

Living Real, Baby. Marbim Bisimcha!!!
מאן דבעי חיים

iwannalivereal wrote on 05 Mar 2024 04:55:

YOUR AN ABSOLUTE LEGEND!

iwannalivereal wrote on 05 Mar 2024 04:55:

WOW!
P.s. thank you to the people who posted here bringing it back up. I would have missed out on this priceless piece!

Captain wrote on 19 Mar 2024 12:18:

Miss you too friend!

B"h doing great. Getting pretty close to 200 days... I think that'll get me 2 donuts, although to get down two donuts in one sitting, idk... I just can't imagine 2 donuts fitting down there

iwannalivereal wrote on 19 Mar 2024 19:30:

I'm confused! Didnt you say your reaching 200 days, so why only 2 donuts??

Heeling wrote on 19 Mar 2024 19:43:

Well... You think think I should go for 200?!?