Day 70!

Today is day 70 for me and I am pretty stoked. I have been trying to get a new job for 2.5 years now (the one I have been doing for a while totally sucks), and 68 days into my 90 challenge, I finally received a job offer. I'm making substantially more money as a result.

Is there a correlation between the nofap and the new job?

Scientifically, I have no idea. But it's enough of a coincidence for me.

I think what helped me was that I finally was able to start being productive. All of those hours that would have been wasted on PMO were instead converted into job searching and networking. I had a lot more confidence in myself because with every day that went by, I was achieving that high of 1 more day added to my counter.

Was it easy? Hell no. There were moments when I was so close to relapsing that my brain literally felt like it was a balloon inside of my head getting bigger and bigger and that at any moment, it would explode. I thought my head was going to explode.

This forum helped a lot. Anytime I felt like I wanted to write about what I was going through, or look around for strategies that helped others, I jumped online. I had no qualms about how much time I spent on the forum. As long as I was on here and not fapping, it was a okay. Could I have been more productive doing something other than writing posts on nofap? Of course. But at the same time I would also have been in grave danger of relapse. So by all means, I advise spending as much time on the forums as you need if it really helps keep you from a relapse. Eventually, I will back off and diminish my nofap forum attendance, but for now, I'm all in.

20 more days at this point. The next goal I'm setting for myself in conjunction with nofap, is to be highly productive at work. I'm getting into a situation where people are actually rewarded for good performance, there is an incentive. Before, my employment situation was just I got the job and there was absolutely no chance for advancement, so there was no incentive to perform other than the minimal. As a result of my new job, I'll need to work a lot more hours and will have a little bit of a commute, but so be it, it's totally worth it and I'm thrilled this has happened. Just think, if I hadn't taken on the challenge, I would not spent half as much effort applying for the job or half as much effort preparing for the interviews, and I would have been saddled with the guilt/low self-esteem which would have handicapped me even further.

I think a big take away is that when you're setting out to overcome this addiction, you also need a secondary goal to set your sights on simultaneously.

For me, that was getting a new job. For some, it's getting in shape, meeting women in real life, studying for school, whatever. But if the only thing you've got going on is quitting fap without anywhere to expend all of the residual energy, then it will be difficult. It's already difficult, no matter what. People try and fail all the time. I've still got 20 days to go. I had urges at day 60 that almost drove me to relapse. One observation I can make at this point, from my own experience is that the urges don't get any weaker, at least at this point. But they do hit with less frequency.

1. Identify what your secondary goal is - where are you going to spend all of your extra energy?
2. Identify what your triggers are and come up with various strategies about how you're going to cope with the inevitable urges (preferably before you get the urges)
3. Come up with a concise idea of why it is you're undertaking this challenge - when the urges hit, remind yourself of why you've decided to take on nofap in the first place.

Good luck everyone and thanks for the support!!!