Wisdom From a Sage

You learn a lot about yourself as a person on this journey. I've had my ups and I've had my downs, but one thing is for sure: after four years on this journey, I have failed. Now, NoFap, like any self-recovery effort, is an endeavor that can be resumed at any point. I could fail today and start all over tomorrow. I know now that I would utterly fail unless I had a well thought out plan and reason to push forward.

Why You Do Something Is Much More Important Than What You Do

I always rush things. It's the number one reason I've failed almost anything I've tried. I know that it's not because I'm stupid and that it's not because I lack some sort of talent. The simple truth is, most things in life worth doing require some serious commitment. You should never commit to something large before assessing how it will fit into your life. Worthwhile endeavors require too much time and energy to half-ass or just jump into. If you don't set goals for yourself, you won't accomplish anything. Go ahead, try it. Try to create a long term goal like learning computer programming or starting a business. Your excitement will carry you through the first few days and maybe even for a couple of weeks. However, if you don't set specific and tangible goals, you will never reach your target.

I've grown tired of failing, but I've learned too much to simply say "This time for real!" The truth is, I will fail every single time I try to blindly rush forward.

A Couple of Examples From My Personal Life

I've failed many things, but a couple of failures stand out among the others.

1. I created a semi-successful Instagram poetry page with 14,000 followers. For months I obsessively posted and grew my network--people loved my work. I never revealed who I was and because of that, artists and readers connected with my writing on a personal level. I didn't realize how much work the page would be and I grew depressed trying to manage everything alone. A month ago, I made some quick decisions that ultimately destroyed the page.

2. I opened up a Robinhood account over a year and a half ago. I had $5,000 in the account. The learning curve was steep, but I obsessively acquired knowledge--I was gonna be rich like Warren Buffet. Yeah, right. Seven months later, I made some good trades and my account had gone up to $7,000. I had made three day trades that week and knew that if I made another one, I would be locked into the stock, unable to sell until the next day because of a day trade restriction. So what did I do? I bought one of the riskiest stocks, knowing I could not exit the position if it began to tank--and, boy, did it tank. At the end of that day, my account value was $2,500. I had wiped out all my gains and $2,500 of my principal. I was distraught for months, but I didn't give up. I managed to raise my account value back to $4,000 before removing all my money.

I Don't Ever Give Up.

Here's the kicker, though. Despite my failures, I am not discouraged. I don't ever give up. Yes, I've been down at times because I've failed, but I realize that life's lessons will repeat until I learn them. I'm learning a couple of lessons right now. One is to slow down and assess things before making decisions. Another lesson is to choose my words more carefully because I've been known to hurt others.

Here's how you do NoFap. You do it for a week. If you don't make it a week, you slow down and assess what went wrong. Use that failure to make your next run more successful. Why only set the target for a week? Because if you make it a week, you gain the gratification of achieving something much faster than if you simply waited 90 days. And, in truth, you start to feel the difference of NoFap after a week. And if you make it a week, reward yourself.

The point is, learn from your failures. Write them down. I'm serious, write them down. If you just tell yourself "I've got it all up here," and point to your head, you're just going to forget all about it. When you write your failure down and create the solution right there on paper, you're committing to changing. You're committing yourself to not cannibalizing your Instagram page's success and you're committing yourself to not being locked into a risky trade.

Train Until Tomorrow

So you've missed some big opportunity. Your business failed or your Instagram page tanked. Here's the thing about life, it has benched you. It has taken you aside to teach you a lesson. Now all you need to do is train. You need to make sure you become better. Learn from all the mistakes you made. Feel the pain of every failure. The truth is, that stinging feeling will make you strong. It will make you brave. You'll rise from your shame and claim the reward you have struggled for--and you will deserve the reward. And if you rise from the pit of shame and get knocked down again, you simply learn that lesson and move on again, wiser and more humble than before.

There are many ways to look at this, but I prefer one that makes it about you. I think of it like this, these struggles are present to assess your worthiness of achieving your goal. The weak-willed are being weeded out by nature--they are doomed to fail. But you, you are not weak. You can do it. The truth is, even the weak-willed can do it. It's simply a matter of creating goals and sticking to them, not blindly following some whim. And, remember, if it's too easy, you're probably doing something wrong.