My Top Tips for leaving PMO behind

Hello. I have been meaning to post something like this for a while. It is my guide to nofap, based off what I have learnt from my journey so far. It contains advice on how to maximise the effect of nofap in your life, and how to succeed. It's no magic carpet. It's up to you to make the changes, but I hope I can aid you with some guidance along the way.

My top tips are:

1. Create a strong resolve

• Consider why you are here trying to quit porn/ masturbation. Write down why you are here and why you decided to take the nofap challenge.
• Write down why you want to stop masturbating/ watching porn. How is your addiction affecting your life? What can you achieve if you can quit?
• Write down what you’ve learnt on your journey so far. This may include identifying your triggers.
• Write down what you still want to achieve in yourself. This may include your career aspirations, or aspiring to improving your social life or love life. Or it may include how you want to manage yourself in future, or how you want to improve your self-discipline
• Write down any benefits you have experienced so far from abstaining from porn/ masturbation or from trying to improve your life.
• Consider how you would feel if you were to relapse. Note down all the reasons why you want to avoid relapse in order to realise your long term aspirations

This resolve will help you along your journey. It will provide you with motivation during the good days and the bad. It will serve as a reminder to how you want to improve your life. Look over it when you are facing urges, or when you are having a shitty day. No matter your present circumstances, there is hope for the future, and I hope that by realising your own potential, you can find the strength to move forward.

2. Start a journal

• I highly recommend starting a journal and updating it regularly. Updating daily is ideal. This forum is relatively predictable, in that you get out what you put in. If you update regularly, you will with time acquire supporters and friends. If you ignore your own journal, you too will be ignored. Others have no way of knowing how you’re doing if you don’t tell them.

3. Get accountability

• As indicated in point 2, receiving help from others is one of the most beneficial sources of motivation to continue on this journey.
• I suggest finding a like-minded person on the site, befriending them and staying accountable to that person. I do not recommend posting in the accountability section, rather read through other’s journals and try befriending them through private messages.

4. Make a strategy/ action plan

• This is one of the most important things you can do. Rather than focusing on what not to do, focus on what you can do to improve your life. This includes finding other activities to fill your time with.
• These activities will serve to let you form healthy habits in your life, and will, with time, naturally lead you away from more destructive habits like PMOing.
• Decide what activities you want to do each day, and endeavour to complete as many of them as possible every single day. Every new day presents an opportunity to improve yourself. Breaking it up into single days makes a long term goal seem more achievable.
• Make a weekly calendar and update your progress of how many activities you’ve completed each day.

It is up to you what you want to aspire to achieve each day, however I have found these activities to be the most productive with respect to nofap:

• Daily meditation
• Cold showers
• Doing some sort of exercise
• Keeping clean and tidy/ doing a household chore/ helping your significant other with chores
• Maintaining a healthy sleep schedule
• Practicing a hobby you enjoy
• Staying hydrated
• Eating 5+ fruit/ veg a day
• Practicing good posture

Note that it is not easy to maintain a schedule long term. It takes hard work and dedication. With time it will become a natural part of your life, however early on, you may have to force yourself to do the activities. The aim is not to complete everything on your list, but as much as reasonably possible. You don’t have to beat yourself up if you miss an activity. As long as the program is leading you away from PMO, or other destructive habits, it is working for you. With time, you should figure ways to improve your program.

5. Embrace the flat line

• Many guys hate the flat line. However if you welcome it, you’re giving yourself a free ride to abstain for a few weeks or more. The flat line is temporary. It is not indicative of any permanent changes. It is merely your brain adjusting to the serious changes you’ve made. Do not test things out to see if they still work. Just like an urge, ride it out until it ends. Even if you don’t feel good during the flat line, it is surely better than feeling terrible, and facing strong urges.

6. Understand that relapse is a choice

• Although the program mentioned above in point 4, allows for some leniency, I do not recommend giving yourself any leniency when it comes to porn/ masturbation. Some people on this site say that relapse is part of success. I would have to disagree. Relapses are mistakes that we make on our way to success, they should not be a part of the bigger picture.
• If you relapse, use what you have learnt so far to your advantage and start again. Re-consult your resolve and your action plan, how you failed or what your trigger was, and learn from that mistake in order to move forward.
• For every urge you face, you give yourself a choice. Do you give in, or do you outlast the urge? No urge is uncontrollable. No matter how shitty your situation is at the time, you can always make the right decision to walk away and stay clean.

7. This journey is not easy, but don’t give up

• No one ever said this was easy. In fact it’s fucking hard at times. But don’t despair. The deeper the hole you’re in right now, the greater the potential is to rise up and improve yourself. There is hope for everyone. If your situation is 10 times worse than the guy’s standing next to you, then you’ll have to try 10 times as hard, but the potential for success is the same. However, you’ll never know it if you quit. You’ll never experience that success if you give up.

8. Stay active on the forum

• Just as you would appreciate receiving help from others, give your advice to those struggling on the forum, or those who you think would benefit from your advice. Not only are you helping them, but you are also helping yourself, by cementing your own values, further strengthening your will to carry on.

9. Good luck

• I hope this advice will be useful to you. Let me know in the comments.
• I may share smaller details in future, as the devils are in the details. Especially with those points relating to how you can get the best out of what you’re doing in your program, while keeping it realistic.
• I would say, good luck- but really, do you need it? It’s up to you, and I believe that everyone can succeed at nofap no matter what their situation is. Go out and make it happen.

 

You're welcome guys!

 

Thanks Kurapika!