The Lord of the Rings Challenge

Day 5

I figured i'm going to give myself a motivation boost by rewarding myself for every new rank in this challenge.



All guitar & climbing related stuff since those are the hobbies I want to focus on during my reboot. Pinned this to my Whiteboard on the wall so I see it every day!

What do you guys think?

 

That is a great idea, I made it pretty far doing something similar. Good luck!

 

I guess the counter will tell you my day as I am mobile right now. I just moved into my new rented apartment, which is great and awesome, but I still know so few people in this city that I still don't have people to go out with. A small intrusive tought came to me today to just relapse and at least feel good...But I guess we all know that good things never come easy, and I don't even expect good things... So I did some push-ups, a cold shower and just webt out on my own... it's not interesting, but it's something

 

Good call ! You know that we can feel things and that if we feel something is wrong usually it is. Got to trust your gut instinct... and me too I have plenty of unfinished movies because of the same reason as well as discontinued relationships...

 

Your fingers would remember their old strength better if they grasped your

Spoiler: SWORD

After a period of 2 years of constant learning and developing i assemblage some tips on how to make a successfull reboot. These are informations i collect from my own experience, the experience of other rebooters and literature on the subject. Read it carefully as this will lead you in the right path and safe tons of time and suffering. Words in bold are mandatory.


1 - Accept beyond any doubt that your an addict, not someone who has a bad habit. Quoting from the book "Wack: Addicted to Internet Porn" from Noah Church (free on his website).

“The following 11 criteria are inspired by the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) substance addiction diagnostic tool and with some adaptation each criterion applies equally as well to porn use (…). Make a tally mark for every statement that applies to you.


- You use more extreme pornographic material than you planned, use porn more frequently than you planned, or have used porn over a greater time span than you planned.

- You have several times expressed that you would like to quit or reduce use and/or have unsuccessfully tried to reduce or stop use.

- You spend an inordinate or inconvenient amount of time acquiring, using, and/or recovering from the effects of porn.

- You experience strong cravings for porn.

- You have compromised major obligations at home, at work, or at school due to porn use.

- You continue using porn despite knowing that it is consistently causing or worsening social or interpersonal problems.

- You have skipped or given up significant social or occupational activities in order to use porn.

- You use porn in ways or locations that are physically hazardous.

- You continue using porn despite knowing that it is consistently causing or worsening physical or psychological problems.

- You have acquired a tolerance and need more lengthy, varied, or extreme porn to feel the same or similar pleasure as when you first started using.

- You experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when you abstain and may use porn to alleviate these symptoms.


According to the APA, "As a general estimate of severity, a mild substance use disorder is suggested by the presence of two to three symptoms, moderate by four to five symptoms, and severe by six or more symptoms."


2 - Once you accept the truth of your problem, recognize that you can´t control PMO usage. don´t waste precious time of your life trying to fit porn in your life, you can´t control this thing. “Oh… maybe on these days, or only on that days….” Forget it. See for yourself, if you could control this you wouldn´t be an addict in the first place.


3 – the moment you realize pmo is deeply wrong, stop it at once. Don´t use any kind of excuses, especially the “one last time” excuse. Addictions are chronic diseases, technically you don´t know when it will be the last time. Relapses often happen in reboot. The difference is that if you allow yourself to “take a break” before starting the reboot or “i´m gonna fap just one last time” deep down you´re still seeing pmo as a positive behaviour. This will make the reboot much harder to accomplish because you have a positive belief about pmo. You have to see pmo by itself as a destructive behaviour, even one single time. So in a nutshell:

- pmo destroys your physical energy.

- pmo destroys your mental energy.

- pmo destroys your motivation.

- pmo makes you nervous and angry. Repeated use leads to social anxiety.

- pmo makes you depressed, destroys your self-esteem.

- pmo makes you sex obsessed, a pervert.

- pmo makes you see people as objects, destroys your empaty and compreension towards others.

- pmo destroys the affection for your partner, it makes you self-centred and resentful.

These are the main harmful effects, but there are many more. If you fall for any excuse to pmo, no matter what it is, you´re falling for the circunstance trap. The moment you use an excuse to fap today, tomorrow you´ll use another excuse. It´s only a matter of lying to yourself.


4 – Challenge everyday your beliefs in pmo. Write down all the typical excuses that you use before a pmo session. To each belief write a answer to it. Read the beliefs and the answers every day so to be prepared when the addict mind tries to lure you.

Have a vision of your goal. What rewards will you achieve when you reboot? Write the rewards and read them every day. That way you´ll have the goal in mind when hard times appear. It´s also important to believe that you can be permanently free of porn and masturbation. See the example of many sucessful rebooters and coachs.

Recall your personal values. Who is the "true you"? What moral values do you defend? Write them and read them regularly. Being aligned with your true self will help you stay in the right path, since PMO pretty much goes against all good values.

Being aware of your evolution is great to boost your motivation and keep the reboot improved. Write a daily journal detailing your day. What happened today? Improvements, failures, good things, bad things, etc. You´ll learn more about yourself in 3 months of journaling, than in 3 years of uncharted living.

Put inspirational pictures as wallpapers in all your electronic devices. This will help you stay focused and motivated.

Study about the addiction. Studying will increase your knowledge and determination on the reboot process. Cultivation is crucial to keep the reboot going. There are lot´s of free videos and ebooks on porn addiction so go for it.


5 – You can´t do this alone. Studies show that is very rare to someone to overcome an addiction alone, almost impossible. That´s because the feeding ground of addictions is isolation. So the treatment goes in the opposite direction. You need partners, groups, therapy, forums, whatever, do as you prefer, but stay in touch. Socialize is also needed to release dopamine in a positive way so make sure you have people around you, friendships fuels the heart and feeds the soul.

It´s important that you have an accountability partner on this journey. This will increase your accountability (accept responsability for your behaviour), increase the external pressure for your conduct, boost your motivation and win a source of feedback. Accountability is very important in this journey, stay accountable daily.

If you´re married i strongly suggest you come clean with your wife. By telling the truth about your problem she can be a source of support. It´s also better to know the truth from you instead of finding out. But don´t make her your Accountability Partner because she´s too involved in the problem to be objective (tecnically pmo is cheating). So just tell her your problem and that you´re on recovery.


6 – Willpower is good to keep the reboot going but it´s not enough because the addiction has a very strong pull. So create a triggers prevention system of physical barriers against PMO. Example: Install porn blockers on all electronic devices, use them with people around you, screens facing exposure, doors open, etc... You must identify all the situations that causes hesitation in you and create countermeasures before they become a real danger. The triggers prevention system must be adaptable, these means with time some situations will stop being a danger, while others will continue, and new situations can emerge as triggers. So pay attention and adapt your system as time goes by.

The countermeasures must be reasonable. Keep your life happy, don´t deprive yourself of anything or you might feel overwhelmed and prone to escape using PMO.


7 – Delete all porn/sexual material that you have. If you keep something with you that means you´re keeping the flame alive.


8 - Withdrawal is hard, sometimes harder than the addiction. But after some time the period of intense withdrawal ends (although withdrawal symphoms may occur from time to time as the brain is rewiring). For the hard withdrawal prepare yourself for fatigue, anxiety, irritation, deep sadness, insomnia, brain fog, headaches, etc... but don´t worry, after a while energy will start to rise and you´ll feel amazing . It´s worth all the efforts. To minimize withdrawal always stay well fed, hidratated, and build a good sleep hygiene. Sleep is very important because it´s one of the main sources of gathering energy so make sure you sleep well. Sleeping pills, vitamins, anxiolytics and antidepressives can also help.

Brain fog is one of the worst symptoms of pmo usage, so i recommend this technique to cope with it:




9 – Reduze alcohol and sugar consumption to a minimum. These substances drain your energy, promote lethargy, irritation and depression. Never get drunk. Excessive alcohol prevents the brain from rewiring, leads to more fatigue, irritation and brain fog.

Alcohol and substances that alter consciousness are very effective to destroy willpower and induce thinking errors. If you predict you´re gonna drink put away all electronic devices before and as long as you´re under the effect of alcohol. This simple act will safe you from a disaster.

Reduce screen time, wether TV, PC, mobile, whatever.... screens cultivate a passive attitude. They rob awareness and create dullness. If you want to interact with screens that´s fine but only for a specific reason, when that reason is over, the viewing must be over also. Another problem with spending too much time in front of electronic screens its because of the blue light they emanate. This can a create a syndrome called “dry eye” which can cause disturbances to fall asleep.

Use social media in moderation, social media increases the feelings of depression and loneliness. It releases dopamine (one of the feel good hormones) on the brain with minimal effort so it activates a quick reward system, similar to pmo. Dopamine is naturally released with good nutrition, sleep, physical exercise and everytime you feel gratified by something you did.

When you search dopamine in a quick reward system like junk food, alcohol, drugs, pmo, social media, etc… you´re not creating anything, you´re waiting for something to make you feel alive. If you repeat that behavior often, the brain will adapt to it and get hooked on the easy dopamine paths, craving for more. As consequence you´ll lose motivation to do other things. This is specially problematic for us since we´re trying to rewire the brain beyond dopamine rushs. So behaviours of excessive social media by association can lead to behaviours of pmo. Plus by increasing the feelings of depression, social media can in turn increase the tendency to fall into pmo.

Studies recommend a maximum use of 30 minutes per day, so use it in moderation.


10 – Practice meditation daily or any kind of relaxation technique. This is very important to calm the body against urges and help cope with withdrawal symptoms.


11 – Negative feelings are common triggers to pmo. This is a crucial part of the reboot because many times relapses happen to escape pain or discomfort. We have to deal directly with the parts of our experience that are unconfortable and cope with them in constructive ways. If we don´t deal with these feelings, at neurological level, the midbrain that is severely hijacked by pmo, will start to take over for the “excitement solution”. That´s why it feels we enter automatic mode just before a relapse, we are being driven.

If you feel bored, first accept it. Don´t run away from feelings. Then, tense your body up and follow the trail of inspiration. Think about several things you would like to do right now and choose the one you want the most. Even if you only feel a small pull, do it anyway. After a while your blood will start to pump and you´ll be inspired to do other things.

If you feel sad accept the situation that caused it. Change it if you can. You can also talk with someone about it and do something pleasant.

Stronger emotions like anger or hurt i recommend meditation. A good technique is the Breathing Space Meditation, it´s especially designed to cope with hard feelings:




12 - In the reboot you´ll have flatline periods (total absence of sexual desire) and periods of strong pmo urges. To deal with urges you must attend the three main axis that are off balance, in this order:

1 - Emotional - Calm yourself down. per ex: do the breathing space meditation.
2 - Mental - Engage in self-talk. Talk with yourself with 100% honesty, recognize what is going on right now, what are the consequences, and that you don´t want to give in.
3 - Behavioural - Change the circunstances that you´re in. Don´t run, do it firmly, heads up. Now do something to dissipate the remaining arousal energy. Examples: do light exercises, go for a walk, go outside, talk with somebody, journal, etc. it´s important to not push or punish yourself in this moment as that will increase the inner conflict and tendency to relapse.

When you feel grounded, carry on with your day.

Urges are fueled by sexual thoughts so don´t feed those thoughts, it´s very important.

Cold showers are particular effective to kill urges, boost your mood, increase alertness and release dopamine in a positive way so take cold showers in a regular basis.


13 - Do physical exercise regularly. This will release the “feel good hormones” – dopamine and serotonine – in a healthy way. Physical exercise is also good to release sexual tension that will build up as time goes by. Exercise is also part of the self-care habits that you need to implement for your life.


14 – Mourn the addiction. When we attain great lenghts in sobriety there´s an emerging sense that we can leave the addiction for good. This may create a feeling of nostalgia and that we should do one last time, to say goodbye. This is a disguise trap because using the addiction to say goodbye to the addiction is the addiction using the addiction to keep you IN the addiction. In other words, it´s an extremely refined excuse to pmo.

Instead, mourn the addiction in the right way, write a goodbye letter to porn. Be brutally honest. An addiction is also a relationship so cry your heart out, say all the things you want to say, and say goodbye. Then, like any other relationship, just stay away from it, and with time the emotional bond is undone.


15 – Create a new life. You´re not only abstaining from porn/masturbation, you have to replace those behaviours for others. Or else porn will return, no matter how much time as gone by.

So, after your self-care habits are well implemented (sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc...) and your triggers prevention plan is well defined and followed in a consistent basis, when all these cornerstones are in place (this may take months!), you will not need much willpower to keep them running, so you are now ready to channel your willpower to a new level of productivity.

So, what do you really wanna do with your life? What are your passions? Go for them. Plan your day and live your dreams. You have to gain enough passion for your new life to prevent a setback. If your life is not happy, by homeostasis your brain will not accept the change and will make you relapse, faster than you imagine. So time is not relevant, what´s crucial is what you do with time.

Another obvious remark of creating a good life is that wether you´re addicted or not, time is passing by. You can die at any moment. How do you want to live your life?


16 - Once you have attained a solid streak, especially surpassing the first month (which is the hardest) it´s simpler to attain greater lenghts of time. However this may create a sense of overconfidence and believe that you´re in control and you can soften your guard against pmo. This is a powerful trap in which many fapstronauts fall, including me.

When the days start flowing better that doesn´t mean you can ease your aproach towards pmo. If you start softening your attitude towards pmo, crossing your boundaries, start peaking, don´t work on your goals, getting bored with life, etc etc… your brain will rebel and turn to the "old dopamine solution".

A system must include :

- Mental system (daily accountability with your AP/ daily recall the nofap rewards and belief you can be free/ daily read your excuses (and answers) to pmo / etc)
- Self-care system (create a sleep system, nutrition system, health system, physical exercise system, meditation system, coping skills to handle sexual urges and negative feelings)
- Triggers prevention system (create and maintain barriers to all your known triggering situations)
- Personal career system (work on your career, dreams, hobbies…)

Craft your life to be a masterpiece. The life that you dream of. And nofap will reinforce that life. Only a system can give you a better happier life, and only a better happier life will make you stay with it, instead of going back to the “old ways".

Quoting JK Emezi, a porn rebooter coach:

“When you have a system, you will realize that your slip or relapse back into porn and masturbation did not happen randomly. A system shows you that your relapse began days or weeks ago when you stopped engaging the self-care behaviors that have been keeping you off porn.”


17 - The addicted mind will not break easily. it´s likely that you´re gonna relapse, relapse a lot. The key is too keep going, never give up. If you don´t give up you will make it. Garanteed. This aplies with everything in life. You just have to want it, badly. You will find a way. All the excuses that you put up “oh i´m not strong enough”, “not smart enough” “not good looking” “not rich enough”, “oh, i´m super addicted” “oh, i´m just unlucky” bla bla… it´s all ideas that are not tested, excuses to justify failure and make us feel pity while time is passing by. Plain and simple, if your not getting what you want, it´s not because of circunstances, it´s due to your lack of determination.

Perseverance is the game changer. So in each relapse try to know something about yourself, how your mind works, what are your triggers, etc... Knowledge is power!

If you relapse try not to binge (pmo multiple times), the bigger the binging the harder the withdrawal.


18 - Avoid any kind of sexual stimulation. Anything that we consciously engage with a lustful purpose: engage in viewing, hearing, touching... will make dopamine being released in a unhealthy way on the already unbalanced brain. Stimulation will increase urges and destroy motivation for other things (as pmo is still the main drive). So don´t believe your mind if it tells you to peak, it never wants just that. After that the addiction will kick in strongly and start drilling until it breaks you. The obsession will not stop. The same goes for touching. So don´t take the first step.

The ideal is to make a 180º shift on reality. Engage in totally different activities through the day. Luckly there´s a million to do things that have nothing to do with sex.

I recommend, at least, a period of 90 days totally clean from sexual stimulation (no porn, no masturbation and no sex). This will boost your reboot making it faster and stronger. Plus it will increase self-confidence because you will master yourself over any kind of sexual slavery.

When you have normal intercourse you can be haunted by a sudden horniness called “Chaser Effect”. This is a tendency to keep indulging the next sexual urges using PMO. So after sex, be on alert for the chaser effect.

If you do sex but thinking on porn that means you´re using your partner as an object. That´s a relapse.


19 – You can´t go back to porn. Why? Two major reasons:

- you´ll be an ex-addicted, always. That means you can´t have a normal relation with porn. if you engage in pmo, sooner or later you´ll become an addict, again. Quoting from a gambling disorder specialist, he wrote why ex-patological gamblers could never come back to money games. This naturally aplies to other addictions as they all have the same backbone:
"We talk about treatment and not cure because there´s a lot more data at neurobiological and genetic level that stated that dependency is a cronic problem, but not terminal. This means through treatment it´s possible to conquer life quality built on abstinence. (...) My 15 years experience dealing with dependency disorders makes me afirm that whoever had severe dependency can not attain the desired control to consume. Generally speaking it´s only a matter of time until the obsession, the compulsion and the impulsiveness return. These are the factors that lead to loss of control and priorities switching that caracterize this behavioural dependency, among others"

- in high speed internet, there´s an infinite suply of sexual material, new sexual material. Dopamine is released not only by viewing and fapping but also by searching novely. This means the search itself creates arousal. So once you give your brain a taste of the "stuff" it will crave for more, always more.


20 - 90 days usually is the standard time to lay the foundations on how to live without pmo. However experts estimates that an addicted brain needs 18 to 24 months to fully heal. Counting the days can boost your confidence but it also has down effects. Counting may create the sense that only when “that” specific day is reached everything will be fine, your life will be perfect. So you focus on the time and not the process, which is your life. This can make a streak harder to endure by putting extra pressure to reach “that” day and not reset the counter meanwhile. To avoid this trap see nofap as a lifestyle and not merely a time challenge. The challenge is for the critical 90 days shift. After that nofap evolves to a lifestyle.

It can also help to create two counters:

- One global counter or a calendar that indicates how many days you´ve been in the nofap journey (clean days and relapse days).

- One consecutive counter that indicates your consecutive days in the present streak.

Resetting the counter can be demotivating, it creates the sense that your recovery is on zero, and that´s not true. The more days you spend without pmo the more your brain rewires and learns to live a life without unnatural stimulation. By having two counters you´ll have a better sense of your growth.

In some cases fapstronauts report stress when they count the days one by one. If this is your case, then don´t count the days, just keep the starting date for reference.

Overall, don´t give importance to what day you´re in, don´t care about the 90 days. Addictions are chronic diseases so avoid thinking on absolute terms. Statements like: "i will never fap again" etc, these kind of thinking may help in the initial boost but in the end it helps the addiction. It´s an attitude based in the same impulsiveness that leads to pmo. Plus, when we´re certain that we will never do pmo again, and then we do, this will lead to frustration and confusion because we couldn´t keep our promise.

“Never” and “Forever” are the addiction favorite words. So instead of making absolute promises, it´s better to think moment by moment, day by day, "this moment, this day - no pmo". This will make you stay humble and remove pressure from yourself, allowing for the only thing you can do which is dealing with the present moment. That is the core of living in abstinence.


21 – Besides the damaging effects that porn does to the body and mind, there´s another problem much serious that goes through society. You see, we´re not really addicted to porn, we´re addicted to sexual stimulation - lust. We tend to internet hardcore porn because it´s the fastest, easiest and most graphic form of lust there is.


Sex should come in the context of a loving connection. Lust - whether from porn, softcore, prostitutes, our dirty mind, etc - reduces human beings to objects. We stop seeing a person as a whole and reduce it to it´s sexual feature. We´re using people instead of loving people.

Society has a great deal in why things are this way, we are constantly being bombarded by sensual materials, it´s everywere. And that is something we must strongly say “NO”. We should know somebody´s body when we are in touch with all the traits of the person. That creates a deep connection between two people and through it sex becomes a transcendental experience.

So everytime society presents you with the objectification of the body, wether from movies, magazines, internet, prostitutes, etc… turn your face away. People are not body parts, people do not exist to satisfy our needs. I have no doubt that the lack of compassion and much of the violence between men and women are deeply rooted in the way society encourages the reduction of people to objects.

So if you can see from this perspective, the attitude towards pmo changes from “fighting it off” to “giving it up” because it´s plain wrong.


22 – Sex industry destroys it´s own agents. Often porn stars suffer from emotional problems, some of them we´re abused as children, raped and during their porn career many turn to alcohol and drugs to cope with the shame and guilt.



The filming is very degradating for actors, specially woman, sometimes forcing them to painful, humiliating scenes. Many pornstars die in early age. Their deaths show a clear pattern of self destruction from carrying a burden: suicide, drugs abuse, alcohol abuse, sexual transmitted diseases. As one ex-pornstar said: “the industry picks people who are already damaged to damage them even more”.



So every time you click on the porn videos (or even paying for them) you´re giving views to a site that will be supported by ads. You´re promoting your own suffering and the suffering of others.


23 – Some teories sustains that masturbation by itself is harmless and that´s why many youngsters engage in it. Other theories, especially asian tradicional medicines, states that masturbation is detrimental to both body and mind and should be avoided. This is the stance i defend. Masturbation it´s perfectly normal when exploring the body through puberty. It´s also good to have sexual education which helps understand the body functioning, reproduction, pregnancy, sexual transmitted diseases, etc...

But gaining awareness doesn´t mean indulging in self-pleasure. If we´re single, isn´t sexual desire an appeal to find a mate? A calling? When we turn that appeal towards ourselfs, we inverse nature, we block ourselfs from authentic human relationships. We don´t need people anymore. This leads to lack of self-confidence and isolation.

Plus, being a solo act, we can easily use masturbation to cope with hard feelings the same way we did with PMO, and since masturbation also deals with fantasy, we can naturally be tempted to use PMO again.

Semen is an extremely powerful substance that consumes many body resources to be produced. If stored, it´s raw energy can be transformed into a powerful lever for any activity, an energy powerhouse. This is a process called “sexual transmutation” and lot´s of people practice it with amazing results.

If we don´t satisfy our sexual urges nothing bad will happen. On the contrary, we will grow in happiness, clarity, strenght and confidence. A drop of semen is a drop of your vital energy, if you´re gonna leak it let it be with the person you love


24 – the reboot should be your top priority in life. It implies 100% commitment and real work. If you don´t take it serious you´ll not make the shift. If you take it serious, like if your life depends on it, the change is at your hand. You´ll become a new person: happy, faster, stronger, smarter, confident, atractive, social, carismatic. You´ll become a high successful person and there will be nothing you can´t accomplish, because after conquering yourself you can conquer anything.

Quoting some successful rebooters:
"Nofap will make you live the life that you dream of"
"In nofap you´ll be so happy that you won´t know what to do with yourself"

I wish you the best luck, strengh and focus my brothers. Believe in yourself, you can do it.

Last edited: Mar 22, 2021
THE LORD OF THE RINGS CHALLENGE
"Let today be the day you love yourself enough to no longer dream of a better life. Let it be the day you act upon it" S. Maraboli

 

Day 0
Its a process.

I had another late night slip up which has happened twice to me now. So I know I need to make changes there. Can't be wasting my time on the phone like that. No matter, just gotta keep my head up, move forward and move on.

 

Saturday check in

Kind of a lazy day, but a good one. I prayed, did some rather informal meditation, read a little, and helped a friend move.

I am still feeling good, but also starting to feel some horniness (not so much porn cravings per se, but I'm still on the lookout).

 

Good idea indeed

 

day 24

 

Day 111

 

Day 1 complete. Better a foul living orc than a soulless specter of evil like a Ringwraith.

 

321 days

 

AWESOME!

 

Day 0
I'm giving meditation a try

 

I did a 60 minute power zone ride. Today is 90 minutes.

 

Checking in on Day 5. I've finally managed to start a second streak after a week of resets. It took me far less time to start over than I did before which assures me of progress but I am deeply frustrated over it. Lately I've changed my perspective about myself and my life which was an eye-opener to say the least. The ranks don't matter to me anymore, neither should the counter. The counter will be there as a reminder of the days, but it won't be used as a stepping stone for my progress.

There's a difference between the amount of time spent in a streak and the amount of time spent improving one's life. Would you rather have a streak of 100 days and spend none of those days improving -- or would you rather have a streak of 10 days and spend all of those days improving? My old streaks were defined by the former, but now, my streak is defined by the latter.

I won't be checking in daily. That's pointless and it'd be used as a way of ego, again. I'll be checking in from time to time; after all, I need to improve my life -- not talk about how I'm going to improve my life.

 

Day 104 no PMO. I find it helpful to come here every morning first thing and read all the posts I have missed for the last 24 hours. Thanks for posting! What you are doing is helping yourself, me and I assume others. Keep up the good work!

 

5 days. Running + push-ups + sit-ups, just like all previous days. This orc feels ready to evolve into a uruk-hai now.

 

327 days dwarf king
402 days no PMO, semen retention

 

Day 13
Still in it!Very tough couple of days.The urge is still there but MUCH weaker.Not letting my guard down tho.