Heirs of the Sun May Challenge Thread

Hey all!

I turned to NoFap because I was tried of struggling with P and MO. I had been using another program called Fortify for a while with some success, but still had struggles. On top of that, Fortify is focusing solely on Porn addiction and does not mention M. I go to a point where I was several weeks free of P but MOing almost daily. I had heard about NoFap and that it was against PMO, not just P. For that reason I decided to join.

At first, I was barely active on the forums. I would occasionally post on a journal and I used the emergency app frequently. Somehow I made it to 92 days no PMO, but I struggled with edging constantly throughout that 92 days as well as looking at P subs. I think it was somewhere in that 92 days or afterwards that I found out about Heirs of the Sun. I realized that if I was going to stop PMOing I need to have support and use NoFap to its full potential. For me, this me joining a group of people that were serious about getting rid of PMO in their life. I would like to say that I was active when I first joined, but I was not. I missed a deadline for the monthly challenge and I did not pay much attention to the group because of it. In that time, I was still struggling with MO and would fall every few days. That changed in the month of January I believe. I think that was the first time I decided to participate in a monthly challenge. If you look at my counter, you will see that I have not fallen to PMO since December 28 of last year. There is most definitely a correlation between my active participation on Heirs of the Sun and the fact I have not relapsed. Heirs of the Sun helped me realized that there were others fighting alongside me. People who could help me and who I could help as well. The monthly challenges helped turn my focus away from just quitting PMO to improving my life. The group gave me a place to be open and honest about my thoughts. It gave me a place to go to when my girlfriend broke up with me. It gave me a place to give back to the many people who have helped me in this journey.

I think it is clear from what I said above what I like about Heirs of the Sun: a community that is not only committed to not PMOing, but also to improving their lives. I love that we have challenges that we can do each month, but also that we have people we can talk to about the struggles we face.

Some of the hardships we are going through right now include lack of activity, high member dropout, and some prominent members leaving. I know some people want to have a large group helping a lot of people and that is a noble idea. My concern is that as the group grows, I am not sure the leaders of the group have the time nor the knowledge of how to help everyone. I say this a GL and leader of this group. After we added a lot of people and started the war, I started losing track of who all was a part of our group. For now, I look forward to getting to know more people in the group and in the Telegram chat. I am always willing to chat and help in almost any way.

The challenge I propose to the group is going without your phone or computer for one time each day. For some people this may be easy. For others it will be more difficult. I have been trying this for a while and really enjoy the results. This does not mean getting rid of your phone/ computer or going without it for an entire day, though you can do that if you wish. Instead, this means taking some intentional time to unplug from technology. For me, this often looks like going for a walk without my phone. The walk helps me reflect upon my day and what I want in life. As a Christian, I also use it as a time to pray. For this entire month, I will go without my phone for one time everyday. Maybe this will be added to a weekly or monthly challenge in the future.

Stay Strong!

 

My entire highschool life was crippling. I had trouble making new friends, I couldn't socialize, focus in class, read, study or function like a proper human being. Most people saw me as a smart kid growing up, but there was something missing; like the soul had been sucked out of me. I saw my peers get good grades, become school captains, be offered opportunities and it was depressing watching them all surpass me. I thought I was capable of doing what they did, but I had no energy or drive. Studying and being productive was painful. I was sleep deprived for the most part and had a lot of anxiety. There were some really good people who tried to be friendly to me when I look back, but I was too deprived to notice and responded disinterestedly. I could have made a lot of good friends, kept my girlfriend, get good grades and be in a completely different world now. One of my close friends is doing Psychology and Neuroscience at Monash University. I could have been there with her and we would be studying together. But PMO destroyed that, and I was completely oblivious for years. I'm not even that close to this girl anymore, and by the time I get into the course she is doing, she'll be finished. I'm years behind where I could be right now, and it's all because of porn addiction. I always knew there was something missing in me, but had no idea what. I felt that I was a strong thinker, but it was such a painful task to study or do something worth doing. All I wanted to do when I got back from school was indulge in pleasure and stay up late. Porn has stolen years of my life from me, taken away friends, grades, family and more.

It was this "drive" I was missing. All I wanted to do was sit behind my computer every day, and everything, even going outside was painful. I was a wreck. A couple of times in the past, I went a week without PMO due to some injuries down there. I felt really good at the end of the week, yet somehow I completely missed it and never asked why. I didn't even have urges to look at porn by the end of the week, but I did it because I was bored. Well, this is how it is: When I had my girlfriend, I noticed that I would last longer in bed if I hadn't PMO'd in a few days. Then when I was seeing this other girl, I held off as long as possible for the same reason before anything happened. I started feeling really weird and energetic. During this time, I actually got in a habit of waking up at 4:30am coincidently, which was responsible for most of the benefits I felt. I loved being in control and productive so much, that I just had to figure out what I was doing right. I became obsessed with feeling any sense of power, so backtracked everything I did. I just felt so good, like movies were very stimulating to watch (especially action), I had urges to exercise. I couldn't stand still. Not a hint of laziness in me during those times. This was just what I needed. Eventually I googled something as simple as "does masturbating make you lazy" and found yourbrainonporn and NoFap. Click. All of my life struggles, explained in one website. This was treasure to me. I've finally found what was missing in my life.

I haven't really felt the same since I started NoFap (1 year ago), but I think waking up at 4:30 revved me up a lot more. Regardless, I feel good after a couple of weeks NoFap no matter when I wake up. I became obsessed with that feeling I found within me, and will do anything to get it back. I want that flame in me lit again, because life isn't worth living without it. Not only has my path to power led me to NoFap, but I've been on the path to self development too. I love reading and watching self help programs, learning about nutrition and anything that enhances my cognitive performance. But regardless of how good those things are too, nothing compares to what I felt in the past. I've changed and improved in the past year thanks to NoFap, but I still get impatient sometimes about failing my streaks. After failing a few times, I finally joined the forums. I noticed that the forums were very negligent, and I didn't get much of a response from the community, much like every other forum I've joined. I looked a bit deeper and saw 'groups', saw 'Heirs of the Sun', it looked like the only active group, I love Dark Souls, I clicked join. The group still wasn't much more active than the forum when I first joined, but since then it was made great changes. I hope I can help it get even better I think everyone should reclaim this 'fire' that PMO has distinguished from our souls. Stronger humans will mean a better world. But if I can't even help myself, then how can I help others?

 

I'm not sure how to do this without my normal depressive attitude taking over, but I'll try to restrain it at least a little bit. Much like Dark Warrior above me, high school is hell. Except I'm still in it. I'm just a soulless husk who can't focus on anything for even five minutes. I'm always sleep deprived and I barely have any friends, and the thought of me dating ever in my life? Forget about it. My social anxiety and general shy personality just make me want to cry in a corner instead of ask a girl out. I fight depressive and suicidal thoughts daily, and for the most part I'm losing that battle. The crippling loneliness that I have every day doesn't help either. Most of the time I just sit around and play video games or stay on the computer. If you don't count school I haven't gone outside for weeks. I don't have the will or energy to do anything besides slowly rot away... My entire family is addicted to something, my uncle is an alcoholic, my father overdosed on drugs until he died, my grandmother was a heavy smoker, and apparently I'm addicted to porn and like them I don't think I can actually quit. I'm just doomed to repeat this cycle forever like my family. I've always been religious but that doesn't really help when my mind and body are so weak.

I found Nofap through browsing Reddit like I do almost constantly. Most of the time I don't actually do anything on Reddit, I just push the random sub button until I find something. I found Nofap and was interested. My first reaction was both jealousy and self-pity. And to be honest my feelings haven't changed. I want the benefits so bad that I've hurt myself before for being unable to reach them. Even though I've only been on this forum a little while I've been trying to do Nofap for five months but I still haven't made it 24 hours without a relapse. It's so pathetic... Each relapse just sends me further into depression... I feel like I can't take it anymore sometimes... Sigh, dammit. I said I'd try to stop being depressed.

There's no big deep reason why I joined this group. I just spend hours upon hours at a time playing video games. And it just happens that I like Dark Souls (See my name). I just found the group on this site and I joined it. That's it really...

EDIT: Oh whoops, forgot a challenge proposal. Um, draw something. That's the only thing that I find fun, so maybe you'll find it fun too.

 

Hello brothers and sisters!
Why I joined NoFap:
Well, I decided to do it because I could not handle my challenge properly. My first attempt was without using NoFap, I just knew it existed but I thought that I would not need that. Well story proved me wrong, after the first day I started to look at P again, then I started edging, and so I relapsed at day 5. After that I continued to do it for some more days and then I told myself that I really needed to do more about this thing. So I joined NoFap, I had already checked some journals so the first step for me was to start my own journal. I felt a lot more of motivation and I restrained from watching any kind of P for many weeks, I was able to not touch myself for more than a month now. So I can say that NoFap is giving me a lot of what I need to win over this horrible addiction. NoFap is a lot about infos, motivation and beautiful people that understand what you are feeling and that are here to help you and give advices when you are in need of them. I can say that NoFap alongside with YBOP is changing my life into a good one, I do not feel anymore depressed, worthless and other worse things. Now I feel like I am worth to live my life, I am a good person to be with, and I have the control over myself. I must say that one of the best things that NoFap is teaching me is how to react to things that happen in life and to feelings and emotions, I was not good with those, but I am far better than before.

Why I joined the Heirs of the Sun:
It happened to read the journal of SolidStance(He is not on NoFap anymore, but his words will continue ti inspire me and others, for sure), and after reading the most of it I decided that I wanted to give more rather than taking from this community. In fact that thread is on my signature for everyone to reach(battle scars). So I joined the Heirs right away and started to share everything that I can. It is a strong group with so many good people, and it feels awesome to heal and helping the others in the healing process aswell. I am here to make the difference in the life of other people, as all the people that wrote here made the difference for me.

Challenge proposal:
Help a stranger. It can be done outside of your house, just anything that a person needs, help an elderly to carry something, help someone to cross a street, start to speak with someone that you feels is alone or sad, bring some food to the homeless(I plan to do that when I can), or you can help someone online. I discovered that I really like helping others, for example 2 days ago I met a guy over a random chat, he was into some bad fetishes, so I started to tell him about YBON and NoFap, and he understood what I was trying to do, helping him out. I saw in him my old me, and I thought "if only someone would have told me about this", he was understanding everything that I wrote to him, so he thanked me and told me that he was checking the websites. Maybe I have saved someone's life, I really hope so.

AVE

 

@Lord of Cinders Gwyn
I think you are far stronger than you give yourself credit. I was too afraid to tell anyone about my pornography addiction for some 8 years. I was deeply addicted and if I could go three days without a relapse I was lucky. But the duration between relapses is not the whole story. You've already taken a huge step by reaching out to people. I was far too full of pride to admit my struggle so I kept going through the motions and depression of my addiction. I have the similar feelings of envy and jealousy when I see and read peoples stories. I want to be there, not where I am now. But I keep working and pushing myself outside where I am comfortable.
I am not free yet, my counter demonstrates that, but I am so much closer to freedom than I ever have been. Little steps are still steps

My advice to you, for what it's worth, is to continue to pursue what nofap seeks to build in all of us. It's not just about not PMOing but becoming better people. I struggle with keeping focused on my goal and staying connected here. It's easy to sit in my own pit and watch the world go by..... I did for 8 years... We can't let ourselves stay in the never ending cycle that porn brings us in. Our anger and guilt about a relapse often just leads to another relapse. So much of that are just lies that keep us tied down.

Message me when you want, I may be busy at times but I'm willing to listen and talk.

Why did I come to noFap?

Well one of our group leaders PyroFighter told me all about nofap and the great benefits it brought. So I reluctantly, because I'm prideful, joined to see if it was worth it. It is. Heirs is great because of the leadership that seem to keep pushing everyone forward. Just having people on the group there to make me feel some sort of guilt and obligation which has helped me start new good habits and keep them. I want to be present and in the group and I want to change!

I believe that as Heirs it would be a good idea to pair new member with some veterans as accountability partners. Have them just post a message or on a thread to each other. This I believe would help both parties to be more involved and more focused on their goals.

Thanks everyone!!!!

 

I joined NoFap because I was a self help junkie all of 2014 and part of 2015. I have tons of self help books in my room that I have read multiple times. Now, self help books are great for getting started and building initial motivation, but they don't help much in creating actual change. Anyways, I was searching up ways to solve my social anxiety and somehow landed in NoFap. It seemed too good to be true. All I have to do was stop masturbating and I would a fucking beast? Nice. However, I soon realized that it was not as easy as I thought it would be. Though, I'm still here about nine months later. My prime motivation is social anxiety. I want to be a more confident person. I've always felt shy. I fell into the trap of believing I was simply a shy guy. Funny thing is, any time I get passed 10 days I immediately feel my confidence rise, so I know the confidence going up isn't bullshit.

I joined Heirs of the Sun because I needed change. I got to 35 days by myself, but afterwards I could barley make it passed a week. I realized that I couldn't do the same exact thing and expect something to be different, so I joined the heirs to see if it would help. It has helped tremendously. Just knowing the sanctuary chat is there if I need it is awesome. Plus the energy of unity and pushing forward that the group embodies is very motivating. However, I do wish people would be a bit more hard with each other. I feel like that is simply an issue with what people thing. Personally, I feel like everyone is too easy with themselves. Yeah, you shouldn't beat yourself up if you relapse and should continue pushing, but before you relapse you should be hard with yourself. "Don't fucking do it" "You will go back to being a chump if you relapse". Some might argue that the relapse will feel worse if people act like that, but I am under the opinion that being tough with yourself creates results. By the way, my current streak is the first streak that I have with this way of thinking, so I'm kind of talking out of ass here . Either way, it's just a thought.

Idea for a challenge: Cold shower everyday for 30 days. Although a lot of heirs do take cold showers, a lot of them don't. I haven't done the 30 day cold shower challenge, but I'd bet money that my streak would go smoothly if I did.

For the heirs, I think I'll post some motivational stuff in the barracks every week this month. I don't like going on the site too often because I don't want my life centered around NoFap since I think it will lead me to relapse. However, I can easily post motivational stuff since I am constantly looking at motivational stuff on my phone.

 

Well I started nofap to get out of my almost 3 year long heavy depression.
My life was a mess.
Then I found nofap and things started to get better, now i am doing nofap for almost a year and my life feels much more vibrant, but still i never reched very hight.
Also since I can sense how this habbit is messing with my dreams I got to exterminate it.
I joined the heirs because you guys with the telegram a such an awesome community that through contact I stopped feeling loneliness( i am not alone in this journey I got a whole group standing strong so I got to be strong as well).

Pretty much it.

 

Hi @Lord of Cinders Gwyn , I am sorry you feel so depressed and sad.
Have you ever think of doing some psicotherapy? I think it may help you cope with so much pain. It worked for me.
It is likely that you are using PMO to cope with all that pain an sadness, I used to do the same. Every time Infelt stress at work or at home, I got depressed and used to seek shelter in PMO. And this made me even more depressed, it was a negative vicious circle.
I feel your pain, which is very similar to the one we all felt here when we started this program.
It is a big step if you know what is triggering your urges, because this will allow you to be awake and kill those urges as soon as they appear.

I recommend you to create your own "Emergency Toolbox" with readings that can be handy to read when you start feeling urges to screw up.
I can share this post with you with my own Emergency Toolbox, it helped me a lot during the first few months, i had them in my cell and read them every time I started falling down:


https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.p...y-first-320-days-of-reboot.62938/#post-473978


I wrote some tips in this post that perhaps will help you too:

http://NoFap.com/forum/index.php?threads/tips-that-helped-me-to-start-my-reboot.46617/#post-330318

You can watch some interesting videos which are also very helpful in this post:

http://NoFap.com/forum/index.php?th...t-help-me-a-lot-during-my-reboot.39774/page-2

I also suggest you to read "Breaking the Cycle" by George Collins, it is a must-read if you are serious about getting rid of this addiction.

Last but not least, I would strongly recommend you to take the NoFap Academy course if you can afford it. The course is great but the best value are the weekly video calls with @alexander (the creator of NoFap and NoFap Academy) and Mark Queppet, where you can chat with them in real life and listen to other guys's stories and problems too.

I hope that all this helps you to fight this shitty addiction.

Fercho

 

I was a PMO addict during 41 years of my life not even knowing that this was an addiction. I am bisexual and always thought that the depression and sadness was due to this sexual ambivalence. I was sexually molested and bullied when I was 10 at a school restroom by some classmates and I seek shelter in PMO to cope with that pain and shame.
This affected my relationship with my wife, I neglected her and was alway looking to be alone to watch porn and fap. I was addicted to gay porn and male escorts, I paid dozen of them and spent so much time and money due to this shitty addiction.
One year ago I was very depressed and by chance found the TED Talk video where Gary Wilson explains PMO. I was super surprised to recognize that I was addicted to porn and that a big part of my depression was due to this, nor than because of my bisexuality.
I discovered NoFap four days later, on May 12th, 2015, and since then I have succeeded to stay clean. This site and NoFap Academy changed my life forever. There is almost no day in the last year that I have not come to the site,mat least to read and likes me posts, if Imwas in a hurry.
I have not missed almost one week the video call that Mark Queppet and @alexander give every Wednesday at NoFap Academy, when they coach us and reply every question and give us support to continue this battle.
It has not been easy, but I am here, one week from celebrating my first anniversary of PMO free life.
Some days I still feel a bit sad, but it is nothing compared to how I used to feel: a big hand pressing my chest all the time. Most of the time I feel very happy and confident about the future as I have not felt in years.
I started healing with my traumatic past, and with my bisexuality, and I have not acted out with guys since then.
I like the level of participation of the Heirs of the Sun group. I created the Spanish Speakers group but the participation of the members is not so continuous , it goes back and forth.
It is truth that some members will be active for a few months and disappear afterwards, but this is how this site works. Some people fails to stay clean and gets discourage, some others succeed and prefer not to keep coming so they put all this addiction in their past.
My strategy is to stay connected so I keep my feet on the ground and avoid getting complacent, because complacency is the worst enemy on the long run. I've seen too many long-term Fapstronauts relapsing after more than a year because they forgot how dangerous and shitty is this addiction.
My recommendations: let's do challenges that force us to stay active, like a fitness challenge, ( riding bicycle x times per week, going to the gym x times per week, etc). One of the biggest tools that allowed me to stay clean is being active, leaving the computer and going out to "steam out" the stress, which I used to do by PMO
Keep doing this amazing work, Heirs of the Sun
Fercho

 

Hi @Knight Solaire , what is GL?
Which are your drawings?
Fercho

 

Challenge Idea: Reflection of being sociable.

Everyone will be at different levels on this, so it's not a competition of who is more extroverted, but how much room for growth you can find. Eg. Reflect on any anxieties, hesitations or anything you could have improved on when interacting with someone. Some people will have trouble just smiling at a stranger, whereas others might have trouble talking in front of an audience. Were you too awkward to keep eye contact for very long? Were you feeling nervous or anxious while speaking to anyone? Analyse and reflect any kind of weakness or improvements you can make while interacting with others, and post your thoughts on the thread. The aim of this challenge is to see how much you can grow in a month when it comes to approach anxiety, socialising, confident body language/eye contact, making conversation, etc. So basically, interacting and engaging yourself. If you're that awkward kid who avoids eye contact with everyone, start off by smiling or saying hi - then post about how it went in the thread. If you're scared of running out of things to say or not knowing what to say, start with some small talk - then let us know how it went in the thread. We'll be supportive of each other and provide constructive feedback. I doubt anyone here is a 10/10 socialist with 0 anxiety or discomfort being around people, so I think we could all make use of this. NoFap is already a great tool that gives us confidence in the challenge I'm talking about, so this can help to give us some incentive on NoFap itself. Every time we remind ourselves that we can feel anxious or nervous, it'll give us one more good reason to abstain from PMO. Sometimes we can get cocky about how well we're doing in life, and can convince ourselves that we don't need NoFap. Overconfidence is the most dangerous form of carelessness. It'll keep members who are going strong in their recovery vigilant, and members who are weaker in their recovery driven.

Edit: I know this may sound far-fetched and extremely out of a lot of people's comfort zones. If you can't manage to break a smile or say hi to a stranger, talk to people you already know and try to improve from there. Is there this one guy that you're 'kinda' friends with but don't really talk much? You can start by talking more with him. Even if you decided not to step up your game today, observing how you did and posting how you felt is still a good start.

 

Very nice drawings @Knight Solaire , you are a very talented artist. Do you work in the comic industry? You have a future there
Fercho

 

What made me join NoFap and the Heirs of the Sun?

NOTE: I am aware this is the same from the April thread. I am using this because I really cannot put it any other way better.

I joined NoFap and the Heirs because I was lonely. Because I have had little success with girls and have been rejected time and time again, which fucked me up emotionally and made me think all girls would never find me attractive. Course that is not true (I got into a holiday thing with a beautiful Spanish girl at Christmas a few years back) but my problem is/was that I have had little back home in the North of England. Seriously, this began when I was very young. When I was about 12 there was this girl called Danika who had red hair, amazing blue eyes and so on. For the first time in my life I was in love, or thought I was. I was infatuated. I was so afraid to f*ck things up with her, and I was also so incredibly introverted (more on that later) that I did not push hard enough. One day, when she decided to not talk to me, I decided to give her some space… and never talked to her in any meaningful way again. That really hurt. I had discovered porn a little while previously, when I was 11 in fact (which probably screwed my head up as well). I couldn’t fathom what I had done wrong.

Throughout the rest of my high school life, I could NOT let GO of my wish for her. She still was in my thoughts, as painful as they were, and I never gave up hope for a long time. I remember in desperation asking her out after a French class and getting brutally turned down. Now this spread across the entire school, and to a 14 year old kid who has traces of Asperger’s and was kind of shy, this was like a nuke went off with regards to my self-esteem. I took to porn as a refuge, where girls couldn’t hurt me or where I couldn’t fail, because there was nothing to gain aside from the wasteful 5 seconds of numbness my adolescent self was capable of. I saw the popular boys getting these amazing girls, and my confidence sank even lower. Safe to say, I have suffered from depression in the past, and am still haunted from time to time even today at 16 (was worst at 15, during GCSEs).

A few times in the far past I was caught, and told it was bad and so on by my parents (of course, I kept watching it anyways). Porn had and did make me chicken when it came to actual girls, and was probably exacerbated by my mental state and so on.

Essentially, I turned to porn to escape the lack of human love, warmth and contact I was not getting at all (from my family, yes, I was getting enough - I mean in terms of the opposite sex), which was only made worse by all these hormones coursing through my body. Knowing that girls in my year were getting up to stuff which the jocks and so on made me feel worthless, undesirable and ugly. I felt like I was always going to be alone, always sad, single and never going to feel the touch of a girl and experience those things which are so human and real. The same thing which led to me crying myself asleep countless nights is what made me watch porn. I would want some of those girls, but knew in my subconscious I would never get them in my room. My life was not good because my success with girls was not good. My goals were not as important as finding a girlfriend, and thus I gave off incredibly desperate vibes which I believe still linger in the same girls today (doing A levels at the same school, so most people are still here before moving to university) although I am a world away from that timid little kid.

I am now realising that girls do not come first, second or even third. My goals do. My life purpose does. My ambitions, dreams and vision for the world do! Becoming ubermensch (above/super human, Nietzsche had some powerful ideas) is a primary goal of mine. Strengthening my mind, body and soul into a disciplined, unstoppable goal-driven juggernaut is something I want to achieve. Becoming the best version of me (mentally emotionally and spiritually) is my No1 purpose in life now. I have places to go, an impact to have on the world, and any girl that is lucky enough to see how far I am going to go (which I already can see) can take it or bloody well leave it. I’m not stopping for anyone. This quest of self-improvement is what led me to NoFap, and the potential for us men (and women) is unprecedented. If we know the reason WHY, we can endure and overcome ANY barrier.

 

I'm a little late for the May sign up, hope there will be a June challenge.