THE 100 DAY SPARTAN CHALLENGE (OPEN)

day 32 check in.

 

Check in day 10, I feel that I start to enjoy more the simple things in life. For example I was sitting in the bus today heading towards my sport match. And I was enjoying the view like never before. I really enjoyed it. It was just a nice landscape.

 

Check in Day 3

 

Daily check-in for day 6.

 

Don't be discouraged. We all have depressing and fearful times, and it can feel like an eternity while we're in it. Keep going and YOU WILL see the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Check in Day 50

Half way.

this is a wonderful development. I am happy for you!

 

Check In Day 50

I feel the glow inside of me spreading across my day. When I feel anxious, tense, fear... I just go internal for a moment and focus on the glow and it comes back. It’s really incredible. I don’t know how else to describe it at this time. Maybe in the future it will become clear. But it is almost like I am free from any feeling of wanting more or less of anything. As though I am in this strange place of feeling content. Not because of anything or anyone. But regardless of anything or anyone. It’s a kind of freedom I think. It is absolutely nothing like the early days and weeks. Something has changed.

Stay strong Spartans, heaven awaits

 

Thank you mate I need to hear that tonight

 

This weekend has been tough. Just fell back to day 0. Will I ever get rid of this?

 

Just keep going guys, failure is part of journey and your progress is never totally gone after relapsing. Just don't give up, you are in the right place to go for it again, good luck to you!

 

I ask myself what my priorities are. I just started going to a Shambhala meditation group and the instructor asks you to think about why you're there before the meditation. I am there to get myself straight and healthy. To discipline my mind and also learning how to make myself calm, to calm my irrational passions like addiction. I really didn't feel like going this morning for 2 hours of meditation in a group, but I'm really glad that I did now. I think that one major reason we fall back onto porn is that our lives are empty of meaning and purpose, purposeful actions. I'm still addicted to things like watching youtube and playing video games. My aim is to eventually replace these things with a more meaningful way of life. It's been really hard I think because I have believed for such a long time that I'm incapable of doing anything, and that I always fell back onto feeling victimized when life got hard. So in my mind the porn addiction is tangential or only a symptom of deeper issues. My question isn't if I will get rid of this, I'm wondering what my life will look like without it and what I should be doing to replace that.

 

thanks for the response. I have meaningful goals but it’s almost as if all of that is set aside when this passion takes place in my mind. I am a Christian and feel like a hypocrite. I am also a happily married man and feel like I am cheating on my wife with this. This causes an imbalance in my mind and life and yet I keep going back to it as if it is doing me a favor

 

I asked myself similar questions.

If addiction is the model, then I have to ask myself, what am I running away from? Because addiction is twofold. It is desire for the state created by the habit and also desire to escape from certain elements of life.

What I have noticed is that slowly, I am becoming more aware of the urge to escape. And in some cases I was not really aware or not really ready to admit this in the past. And slowly, when I become conscious of the people, places and situations that generate that desire to escape, I walk directly towards them. I move toward instead of away.

 

I don’t have a sense that I’m trying to escape. It’s more like an established habit, something that I’m used to and engrained through constant practice since teenage years.Sometimes I think it’s wishing that I had more girlfriends and sex when I was younger instead of holding back. In reality those thoughts and desires never matched up with my goals anyways so I know I shouldn’t regret it. Those thoughts should be irrelevant anyways because I’m married to a beautiful women that I wouldn’t trade for anyone or anything. It’s all a mind game that I’m losing right now.

 

I find that it can be difficult to know how to feel about this habit as well. I feel bad for doing it, and it makes me emotionally and physically feel bad over time. But I also really want to get over it as well because there's nothing positive about it, and it had the potential of ruining my life. I think that God wouldn't want us to feel too guilty about it because for one thing we know it's wrong, and that we feel powerless when we're overcome with it. This is where we're at on the path of our life journey and we just have to accept that. It's one day at a time, starting from where we are. Do you talk to your wife about this?

 

Appreciate that. I do but my wife gets upset and I understand why. It’s not really something that she supports and really wants me to stop altogether. Then at times I feel like I fail her, God, and even myself. I feel like I never recouped after going 21 days no PMO still. It’s definitely frustrating

 

based on reading posts from people who have gone longer than 30 days, it seems that this journey is one of self discovery. And that understanding comes with time.

I read a lot of posts to give me things to consider and contemplate. Knowing that there may be explanations that don’t sound relevant to me at one point, but may seem quite relevant later on.

One thing that seems constant is that the insights come with time and practice. And that some things may not become clear until a certain period of time has passed. Until the urges have been fought enough times that the individual is able to look behind the veil. Some answers simply can’t be read in a book or blog post. They have to come through direct experience because they are very personal.

I encourage you to continue with your efforts. Study your efforts. And your failures. You absolutely can leave this habit behind forever. Fix it in your mind. That you are done with this way of life. Everyday wake up and set your mind. Focus on everything you can do and everything you can avoid. Keep reading the posts by people who have gone 100 days. Listen to the description they provide of their new life. You deserve that. You can have that. You can be that.

Stay strong Spartan. We are all here to fight together!

 

I have gone 30 days without PMO as well. And I felt like a completely different person to who I thought I was. I believed that I wasn't able to overcome this habit. That belief in yourself being capable I think doesn't really click in until you do the thing that you thought was impossible. But now I know it's possible and that what has been holding me back is a very negative perception of myself, and also not so noble reasons like relying on others to comfort me and to fix my problems for me.

 

Well if you think of yourself as a failure then you will act out the life of a failure. But the only people afraid of failing are potential winners. And also get some perspective to get out of your head. Most people are actually suffering from numerous addictions and don't care or don't notice that they are addicted to something. And most people don't want to be better and higher quality individuals. Give yourself a break, you're being too hard on yourself. I know what it's like to hold myself up to impossible standards. But the thing about the ideal is that we have to apply the perfect to an imperfect world. We will never be perfect but that's not the point. The point is that we make efforts everyday to improve, and that any progress is a world of difference compared to the apathy of most people today. When I make little progress with PMO I think I've found it helpful to focus on goals I can make progress on.

 

Step over your failures! Just bloody step over them! What are you in this moment able to do? That's all that matters. Keep focused.