Make a plan and stick to it.

This post is about one of the ways I have found helps me avoid falling back into the trap of PMO. I make a plan to address, not the PMO specifically, but rather a plan to address the things in my life that lead me to PMO. I find that excessive stress, failures in relationships, loneliness, and self-inadequacies are the main things that lead to seek PMO as an escape. Recently I went 200+ days PMO free and then I had to reset, as part of the reset I decided to make a new plan to help so I wouldn't fall in an escape cycle trap. I thought I would share with you the details of my plan as it might give you guys some ideas on how to structure your own plans. First, element of my plan dealt with sleep hygiene, I decided at 10pm every night I was going to plug my phone in on my desk on the other side of the room. This is specifically to avoid the blue light that comes off the screen, and thus far (I'm a week into my reset) it has helped me get to sleep much faster. Second, I decided I would begin each week with a fast. Fasting helps your digestive system clean it's self out and is a way to help build self-control or at least that is my experience. Third, I am religious so I decided I would begin and end each day with a prayer on my knees, as well as read a passage of scripture. I believe getting in touch with the divine, no matter how you choose to do that, can help give meaning and purpose to the things you do, in my case resetting and abstaining from PMO. Fourth, go to the gym every day, physical exercise has been well documented in this forum and it has helped me immensely with my overcoming of PMO. Fifth, Mindfulness every day. This one is a new one for me. I have had an increase in work related stress recently, on top of a very recent failed relationship. These two things I believe led me to seek out PMO as an escape just a couple of weeks ago, after 200+ days. So, I decided to try mindfulness as a way to help decompress and deal with my stress. Thus far I have loved it. I feel loose and much more able to control my emotions each day as I begin my day with a 10 minute mindfulness session. Personally I use the headspace app for guided meditation and yoga. I would definitely recommend it to anyone at this point. Finally, I decided I would end each week of my resent with a post here on this forum to try and help others in anyway that I could. So here we are and that is my plan to help myself with this reset and I hope whoever reads this can gleam some ideas for themselves from this plan. Good luck you guys and don't hesitate to message me if you guys have any questions about make your own reset plans, I'd love to help.

Here is a list form of my weekly and daily tasks to help improve things in my life so I don't need to seek out PMO as an escape.

Weekly:
-Begin each week with a fast
-End each week with a forum post

Daily:
-Plug phone in across the room prior to 10pm
-Pray 2x on knees
-Read scripture passage each night before bed
-Gym every day for at least 30min
-mindfulness for at least 10 min every morning

Now go make your own plans for self management and improvement.

 

I'm glad I could help in some small way, many on here have helped me a lot.