Daily practice for fap prevention - how I made it to 1 year (and counting!) after 10 years of trying

This is a daily habit/practice/exercise routine that helped me stopped fapping for over a year (369 days so far) after more than 10 years of trying (and failing every time). Even more impressively, I did not even search for porn (let alone view it) for 134 days. I call this “zero tolerance” nofap because if you look at your internet history, nothing dodgy comes up, not even search keywords. This worked for me better than anything else I tried because it means you start every day prepared for temptation to happen (and believe me it will, if not today, then tomorrow or the day after) and with a simple contingency plan to combat it (the Nofap panic button).

Practice makes perfect

I got this idea from a post by Steve Pavlina about how to wake up when your alarm goes off – a major challenge for most people. In order to do something consistently, you have to practice it until it becomes automatic. So if you want to wake up when your alarm goes off every morning (rather than hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep like most people), you need to practice doing it when you are wide awake! It sounds strange but it works because it creates an automatic response in your brain - the Pavlov's dog principle.

What I am proposing is similar to this in that you practice avoiding porn/fapping when you are not experiencing any temptation so it becomes automatic when you are faced with real temptation. If you practice something before you have to do it in a match/battle situation, it is much more likely that you will be able to do it successfully. This is why sportspeople and soldiers do drills over and over again in practice so they are confident they can do it when it comes to the crunch. With nofap, temptation can come at any time and we need to be mentally prepared for it.

The Nofap Cycle

With nofap, there are a series of steps that have to happen before you actually relapse:

1. Searching for porn (e.g. typing keywords in a search engine or torrent engine)
2. Opening one of the result links (e.g. a porn site or porn torrent)
3. Viewing porn: opening/downloading/viewing pictures, videos etc
4. Fapping

To be most effective in preventing fapping (Step 4), you have to break the cycle right at the beginning i.e. before you even start searching. Just seeing the results from a porn search (Step 1) is enough to weaken your resolve – it is highly likely that you will click on one of them (Step 2) and if you do, it is almost certain that you will then go onto Step 3 and 4 – it is a VERY slippery slope. Each of these steps leads to the next as surely as night follows day so the only way to break the cycle is to stop it before it starts.

The Nofap Prevention Drill: practise 3 times daily

Here is something you can do every morning as advance preparation/practice for breaking the nofap cycle whenever temptation strikes during the day.

DO 3 TIMES FIRST THING EVERY MORNING:

1. Open your favourite search engine/torrent site
2. Type in your favourite keywords you use when searching for porn, however kinky they might be!
3. BEFORE hitting the search button (remember: even seeing the result links is enough to weaken your resolve), hit the Nofap panic button) – set this up as a bookmark in your browser so you can do this easily
4. Go back to Step 1

By practicing this 3 times every morning, you will be prepared in advance for any temptation that strikes you during the day – if you find yourself typing a keyword into a search engine, you will hit the panic button before the nofap cycle starts. By practising this every day, you will rewire your brain to hit the panic button instead of the search button, thus avoiding the almost irresistible temptation to click on one of those juicy links.

Whatever you do, don’t ever make the mistake of telling yourself: “I’m cured now – I can click on one of the links and will be able to resist the temptation to view the images/videos”. Believe me, this will inevitably lead to a relapse, if not today, then tomorrow or the day after.

Do this every day for the rest of your life

My final advice to you is to do this every day for the rest of your life, even after you reach 90 days or whatever your nofap goal is and even after you think you are “cured”.

Let me know if this works for you…

 

Hi JW,

I think you've hit the nail on the head there - the key thing is to hit the Panic Button BEFORE (i.e. instead of) hitting the search button. In your practice, type the keywords into the search engine but whatever you do, don't hit the search button as seeing the results will make the temptation to click on one of the links irresistible (either now or later).

If you think that getting up and taking a walk would work better for you than pushing the panic button, you could incorporate this into your daily practice instead i.e. type some words into the search engine (without hitting the search button) and get up and take a walk. The most important thing is to create some sort of automatic response to temptation when it happens.

The panic button worked for me because it is something you can do instantly, almost without thinking about it. Getting up and taking a walk requires a bit more time and might be just enough time for your subconscious to talk yourself out of it and hit the search button...

Regards

HW

 

thank you - did you try it out?

 

Hi,

I understand what you are worried about - that even seeing keywords can be a trigger - but the purpose of the daily practice was to be an exercise - however small - in willpower. Hitting the panic button 30 times a day doesn't take any willpower - you don't have to resist anything to do it - but hitting the panic button just before hitting the search button does and is like a training drill for real life - next time your brain goes on autopilot and starts typing in keywords, hopefully the automatic response you have practised 3 times every day will kick in. To me, typing in keywords is looking over the cliff but hitting the search button is when you start to fall over (and shows up in search history - typing in keywords doesn't!), so is the moment of truth when you can avert a crisis.

I think it is about finding the right level of willpower challenge - hitting the panic button AFTER hitting the search button (and seeing the search results) would be a greater challenge to willpower, but at least for me, I think this would be too high a level of temptation. But everyone is different - maybe for some people this would work even better?

Regards

HW

 

BTW I like your idea of a "fire drill" - I wish I'd thought of that way to explain it!