There are many tools, tactics, and tips that I’ve personally used to successfully overcome porn addiction.
This post will look at 3 of those tips that I believe to be the most effective.
But before we go any further, I wanted to thank you guys for reading. We’ve seen some decent growth in the past month or so. Know that your support, for me and for each other, is greatly appreciated. And that I’m rooting for you, bro.
Overcome your porn addiction with meditation
Let’s start with one of the most powerful tools that every dude can use to overcome his porn addiction for good – meditation.
Meditation isn’t just a good thing that we can be doing for our personal improvement. It has many practical uses in the daily battle to beat the Porn Demon. These include but are not limited to:
- Mental clarity (which often counters brain fog)
- Self-awareness (understanding yourself and realising what you actually want)
- The ability to catch yourself
Catching yourself
One of the most powerful uses of meditation for NoFap is being able to recognise when you’re starting to slip and to catch yourself before you fall. Simply having the ability to notice when you’re thinking of porn or feeling the desire to PMO can prevent 9 out of 10 relapses.
If you can realise in the present moment when on the path to PMO that this isn’t what you actually want to do, if you can realise that the thoughts and actions you’re following now will lead to relapse, then you can stop yourself before you go any further.
It’s a form of defence, a tool that’s always available. And it can never let you down. The worst it can do is make you aware that you’re on the path to relapse and let you decide what to do – and then for you to decide to carry on down that path.
So if you don’t already practice it, get into the habit of 10-15 minutes of daily meditation. Your life will change as a result.
Use exercise to keep the Porn Demon at bay
Exercise is both useful proactively and reactively for managing your urges.
You can do regular exercise, such as going to the gym, to proactively control your energy and minimise random urges. You’ll also be improving your health and willpower levels, both of which help massively in this fight.
Exercise is also useful in the moment after you get an urge. Doing pushups can be one of the most effective ways to release sexual tension. Pushups are an action, an active thing you engage in, which means you aren’t ‘bored’ or unoccupied, thus reducing the risk of relapse.
If your hands are free, and you’re horny and bored, relapse is only a quick Google search away… But if your hands are on the ground, and you’re pushing yourself physically and mentally, well… that would make relapse pretty hard, huh?
You don’t have to do many pushups, either. Doing just 10 pushups is absolutely fine. If you can, go until failure, or until you feel the urge no more. It’s more about the principle – doing something instead of relapsing. And it helps that this activity releases the energy that would otherwise be spent elsewhere.
On that note, you can use an If-Then Implementation Intention to do pushups whenever you feel an urge. That would look something like this:
If I feel an urge to relapse, Then I will do pushups until I feel the urge no more.
Then all you need to do is actually follow that intention and do the pushups whenever you get an urge.
Tracking and managing your triggers
This is something that I’ve talked about in detail in the past, both in blog posts and in Become Triumphant – The Ultimate Guide. Tracking and managing your triggers is likely the most practical way you can overcome your porn addiction.
Before you can track and manage them, you first need to identify your porn triggers. You do this through self-awareness (meditation really helps here) and keeping a record of what caused a relapse whenever one happens. I recommend using a spreadsheet for this.
After that, you can track how often these triggers happen. Is it regularly, such as daily or weekly, or is it irregular and uncommon? The more common and regular triggers are the ones you should deal with first.
To deal with them, you have two choices. Before you can manage them, though, you need to know whether it’s a trigger within your control or outside of your control.
Examples of triggers within your control are:
- Seeing a photo of an attractive girl on social media (unfollow accounts or delete social media)
- Seeing NSFW content on Reddit (unfollow inappropriate subreddits or stop using Reddit)
- Being alone and bored (find something to do or hang out with a friend)
Examples of triggers outside of your control are:
- Random sexual arousal / sexual tension
- Interactions with other people
- Ads or other forms of marketing
Once you know which triggers you can control, you can remove those relapse triggers. Without those triggers, you’re much less likely to relapse and thus better able to overcome porn addiction.
For the triggers outside of your control, you can reduce the likelihood that each trigger happens by controlling yourself, your environment, and the situations you’re in. If you have a friend that always shares his sexual endeavours, and this is known to cause you to relapse, then it’s best to minimise encounters with that friend, for example.
Take Action – 2 minutes
Decide which of these three tips will serve you best, then make plans for implementing that tip. And make sure you actually follow through!
And those are the 3 tactics I’ve successfully used to overcome my porn addiction for good. If you start doing all of these, I promise you’ll start to make progress on your NoFap journey that you’ve never previously experienced.
I hope that’s been able to help you, man. And thanks again for your support.
Are there any other tips that you’ve found extremely useful in overcoming your porn addiction? Let me and your fellow brothers know in the comments below.
Until next time, peace.
James