So I have just completed my first thirty days. Everyday I gave myself a score for various things from 1 to 10. The things I asked myself daily are below. Overall mood: Amount of energy: How busy are you: Are you busy with ministry to others today: Attraction to my wife: How is your bible reading/prayer life: How captivated with the love of Christ are you now: Desire to PM: Confidence I will be PM free today: Confidence I will be PM free this week: Confidence I will be PM free this year: The results were interesting. In graph 1 you can see a loose negative correlation between my energy levels and my desire to PM. This tells me that I am most susceptible from slipping off the bandwagon when my energy levels are lower. Despite the low coefficient of determination I never had a desire to PM greater than 5/10 (average) when my energy levels were 5/10 or higher. This proves that having a good nights sleep and eating healthy is critical to Nofap success. A lot of people on NoFap forums say that PMO causes them to be lethargic and tired. While that may be true to a degree, my study suggests they have confused cause and effect. In Graph 2 it shows my confidence that I will resist PM for the day increases when I am most busy. The same trend is evident with 1 week and 1 year resistance confidence. All this shows that idleness is the breeding ground for failure. So Nofappers, get busy with meaningful work. Start some personal projects that will benefit others. It will distract your mind from desiring other things. Graph 3 shows my desire to PM throughout the 30 days. I did not take data for some of the days, hence why there is a gap. Looking at this graph it is notable how peaky it is. On days when I have strong urges, I need to remind myself that they can go away as fast as they arrive. It is also notable that the urges don't decrease in time. If we on NoFap think that there is a magic number of days when we will no longer be tempted we are sadly mistaken. We must exercise strength of character everyday and remain vigilant. One of the things I have noticed that perhaps the statistical analysis doesn't show is that I have had the strongest urges at around day 20 and in the late twenties. Looking back at these times I was not diligent to avoid eyeing up girls. In the last few days I was invigilating exams at my university. There is nothing to do for three hours but to sit in a quiet room and watch students sit there exams. In those times I found myself mentally undressing the most attractive female students. Because they were busy with their heads down I wasn't even worried about being caught oggling at them. In the days that followed I felt close to being triggered. I am realizing whether we relapse or not has little to do with how well we avoid triggers but rather on what patterns of behavior we follow. There is a lot of talk about triggers on the nofap forums. My question is, when the trigger was pulled, why was the gun loaded? I do see the irony in this analogy, but I hope it gets the idea across. We are feeding the beast if we objectify women in our thoughts. Let's take every thought captive and run the race with endurance (2 Corinthians 10:5). What has been most staggering though from my cognitive assessment approach to Nofap is there the inherent lack of correllations or patterns. Each day has its own challenges that must be overcome. I hope this was of some help to the rest of you. Be sure to check out my journal by clicking the link under my avatar.
