Ep 796 - How to quit porn in the next 120 days
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[00:00:00] Hey, hey, what's up, my man? It's Sathya Sam here. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that your day's going well. And I can tell you, it's about to get a little bit better. We're going to dive into some great content today. Before I do that, if you're not following me on Instagram, I've become very active there over the last, you know, 18 months.
The page has grown significantly. And I would love for you to be a part of it. Now, what do I mean when I say be a part of it? Well, a couple of things. Number one, we know that Instagram is inundated with all kinds of foolishness and nonsense that is probably not helping you in your recovery journey. So if you [00:01:00] want to insert some more useful and beneficial content for your recovery journey, this is actually a great way to do that.
And you could turn Instagram into something that's productive instead of something that's triggering. Okay. The second thing is that we are really trying to engage with our followers. So we're. Responding to comments. We get a lot of dms, you know, I mean, I mean we get hundreds of dms a day And we're doing our best to respond to people as much as we can So if you are, you know, maybe looking for some additional help you want to ask me a question or something along those lines This is a chance for you to do that and I would love for you to take advantage of it The link is in the show notes.
The handle is cynthia me sam We'd love to see you over there. Okay, let's jump into today's content. I'm going to pull this up here. I know that a lot of you listening are struggling with pornography or some kind of sexual sin. And what I wanted to make today is sort of like a shortened masterclass.
On how to quit pornography in the next 120 days. Now, why 120 days? [00:02:00] So there's, there's, there's a delineation here that I need to make. And then I'm going to answer that just straight up for the next 10 minutes or so. There's a difference between being sober and being free. So when I say quit pornography, I'm really talking about sobriety.
Of, in our coaching practice, 70 percent of our clients are at, at least two months of sobriety, two consecutive months of sobriety. By the time they finish our four month program, which is about 120 days long. So, this is the basis. That's why it's 120 days, because that's the basis of what we know. Now, are they fully free?
No, I don't think so. I would say most people need to have a good track record of probably one to two years. Of continuing their progress before we know for sure and so that's like we have clients who work with us for eight months 12 Months and you know, some clients have been with us from for many many years because they're they're not just interested in getting that initial breakthrough and saying I quit porn But they want to become better people They want to you know Make sure that that they're doing the preventative stuff and they want to continue to develop and grow So that's a lot of fun.
But what we're going to focus on today is the 100 [00:03:00] And 20 day period and what what can happen in those periods for you to really make sure you're actually quitting porn and experiencing at the very least sobriety and hopefully charting your course to one day be a free man. Okay, so. The first thing we want to do is we, we need to acknowledge that if we're actually serious about quitting something like whether it's porn addiction, I mean, that's porn addiction is a big one, but you know, whether you want to quit cigarettes, whether you want to quit anything permanently for the rest of your life in 120 days, then you have to be unbelievably intentional.
Okay. I'm making a pretty big push with my physique right now. I've hired a personal trainer. is intense. Okay. This guy was a bodybuilder for 14 years. He competed. He as, as dialed in as they come. And so I'm planning my food in advance. I'm meal prepping. I'm weighing my food. I have to hit certain macro targets.
I have super intense workouts. He wants me doing cardio and core five times a week. And he's got [00:04:00] all this stuff laid out. And I know for a fact that a year ago, if I had run into this guy, I would have quit probably the first week because I, I, I wasn't there. I wasn't, I wasn't there in my commitment level.
I wasn't willing to do whatever it took. And so again, I'm not going after some like quick transformation for three months. It's not going to last the rest of my life. I'm playing a long term game with this, with this guy, but he, he really has me focused on like some big pieces that are kind of a pain in the butt that kind of inconvenient.
And because I'm committed to the process, I'm going to carry it out. And I'm sticking to it and I'm doing it. But man, it's a huge adjustment and early in recovery. We find that's the steepest part of the learning curve is definitely the beginning. That's probably not really a surprise, but the point I'm making is if you want an outcome or you want to radically change things, you have to be intentional and you have to be committed.
To some sort of a process. Okay, number two [00:05:00] is you have to understand you're not going to do this on your own. I'm so sorry, but if you've already tried a couple times and you've been unsuccessful in quitting porn, you're not going to magically just do it on your own. And you're definitely not going to do it on your own in 120 days.
So you're going to need to get some help. Now we'll talk a little bit at the end about what that could look like, but it's an important thing to acknowledge. If, especially if you're dealing with a timeline, like you have a wedding coming up, the very common one, or you want to propose, you want to get engaged.
But you want to make sure you got this taken care of or maybe you got a kid on the way and you're entering a new season of life or you're about to move or your career's about to change or You're about to start being more involved at church or you know More of a leadership role at work and you don't feel qualified like whatever it is If you're really serious about this, you gotta you gotta make sure that yeah, you're intentional and number two You're not just doing this on your own because you just can't afford to make those kind of mistakes or try to kind of slop your way through this.
Okay, number three is we want to make sure that you're building self awareness or you're establishing emotional fitness. Okay, [00:06:00] emotional fitness. The whole premise of emotional fitness is that is that we are apt, we are able to manage our emotions aptly and in such a way. That we can navigate the circumstances and the curveballs of life without tail spinning into bad thinking patterns, emotionally destructive cycles and ultimately addiction.
Okay. Emotional fitness. So to do that, we have to gain a better understanding of the thoughts that are within us and the emotions that we experience. Okay, thoughts are of the brain. Emotions are of the body, and we have to make sure that we're gaining a better understanding of both arenas to the best of our abilities, because without that, it is hard to be preventative in our approach, and we want to be preventative because we don't want to just get free.
We want to stay free, and that doesn't happen after you get your two months of sobriety or whatever it is for you. That happens as you get your two months of sobriety. You start with a preventative mindset so that naturally you don't have to make any major adjustments once you reach that [00:07:00] point. You just have to make some small iterations that allow you to further and deepen the progress.
Okay, number four is you're going to have to take a look at your past. Now we have a rule for this and the rule is that we only look at our past long enough to learn. So what do I mean by that? I mean, well, you know, seeing a therapist could be really valuable. Doing some coaching, going through some inner child work.
Could be really valuable some maybe ifs internal family systems model or you know, even eft emotional focus therapy There's lots of modalities. There's cbt. There's dbt. Those are all very good as well not as you know emphatic about your past and whatnot but there's you know, there's some some some some substance there but when it comes to porn addiction those kinds of things what we're really much more interested is is the parts that allows to reconcile parts of our past.
EMDR would be another one. All of these are great. You know, my personal favorite these days is inner child work just because our clients are being so impacted by it. It's like impossible to ignore and it seems to be more effective than anything else we've ever tried [00:08:00] before. So, inner child work goes a really long way.
Whatever it is. I guarantee you there are parts of your past contributing to negative sexual outcomes. And if you are struggling with porn addiction, you actually might be able to quit porn without going through your past. But that would only be sobriety. If you really want to be free, then you're actually going to have to confront those parts of your past.
And I wish there was another way to slice it. You're just going to have to do it. So it just depends on what you want. It also depends on how long you want that progress to last. If you're okay, just being free for a season, then yeah, you know, you can kind of do whatever you want. It, it doesn't matter as much and you could probably do DBT or CBT and not worry so much about that stuff in the past.
That seems messier, but if you're really serious about making a lasting recovery and you don't want this to come back again, The only way to do that is actually to, you know, really invest yourself into a part, some sort of process rather, that allows you to reconcile the parts of your past. Okay, number five is we want [00:09:00] to shift our identities.
Okay, shifting your identity and identity doesn't happen overnight, but You can get major momentum early on. In fact, shifting your identity is one of the most exhilarating things. It's just that it takes a long time for us to accept it and to do it. If you've identified as a porn addict, switching your identity to somebody who doesn't watch porn, that's hard work at first, but once the roots settle, it's invigorating.
Like I can't think of another word. There's no feeling like it when you literally feel like, wow, I'm I'm a new person. I don't watch porn anymore. That is one of the best feelings in the world. And that identity shift needs to be part of your process. If you want to quit successfully in the next 120 days, without that identity shift, you end up changing behavior.
You build some skillsets. And for the most part you do okay, but you never really reach your potential or that true level of freedom because you're ultimately hindered by your lack of identity, your poor sense of self worth, whatever it might be. Okay. [00:10:00] The last thing that we want to do is we want to plug into community.
Now when I say the word community, I don't know about you. I think of a group of like 20 people or 30 people when in reality of recovery community could be as small as two or three people. You might have a spouse, you might have an accountability partner or a friend that you confide in. And maybe we'll count Jesus, you know, Jesus is part of a Trinity.
That's three. So, you know, that's five altogether. Like, I don't know how you want to do the math or how you want to slice it. But the point I'm making here is community does not have to be super daunting. And if it is a bigger group, honestly, I think that's amazing, but it doesn't have to be. Okay. But I'm telling you, if you want to quit porn in the next 120 days and you do these six things and you do them effectively, You will see results.
I can pretty much guarantee it. Okay, I'm not guaranteeing it, but I can pretty much guarantee it just to be clear for any legalities that might come from that. What I want to say, though, is if you want to stack the odds massively in your favor, and you actually do have a timeline that you're trying to hit for your recovery, whatever it might be.
The best thing you [00:11:00] can do is to get outside help. Now, I want to say, I want to just make it clear. I obviously have a conflict of interest saying this because I am an example of outside help. I have a coaching practice and we help men go through a system that I've designed to quit pornography in about 120 days. Whether you use our program or you use someone else's, you're You will not see accelerated results doing this on your own unless you are innately gifted. And if you were innately gifted enough to get yourself free of porn, you probably wouldn't have fallen into it in the first place.
So, what I'm trying to say is, if you're against the deadline and the clock's racing, go get the help. Because whatever it's going to cost you time wise, money wise, and effort wise, Will pale in comparison to what you're going to lose on the other side of that deadline So really be wise about this really be savvy and the biggest thing.
Okay, this is research based So now i'm going to i'm going to take off my conflict of interest and i'm just going to give you data okay in metrics What the research tells us is that if you're looking for a professional [00:12:00] to dive into interpersonal issues with, there's one quality that matters more than anything else for whether or not you're going to get the outcome.
Obviously, they need to be, you know, well researched. They need to have experience. They need to be proven in what they're doing. Okay, we're going to assume all those things are equal. The one thing that matters more than anything else is that you trust them. That you trust them because if there's something in your heart that you have a check about and you're not sure and you don't you Don't trust them It could really hinder you in your recovery journey now I will say you don't need to have 100 percent trust because you can't 100 percent trust someone in a professional environment until you work with them Professionally, but you probably need a good 80 percent trust where it's like, okay I know this person has my best interest in heart I know there's no fluff.
I know that they're good at what they do. They're going to help me get the outcome and their experience. If they start to check some of these boxes and it's just a matter of, you know, kind of testing it out now and seeing what it's like. That that enough is in place for you to go forward. Okay. So don't be a perfectionist because you perfectionists are going to talk yourself [00:13:00] out of getting the help.
Cause nobody's going to perfectly be trustworthy, but aim for 80 percent and then take it the rest of the way after, as you start to work with them. So look, that's everything for today. If you're looking to quit porn in the next hundred, 120 days, I'm cheering you on. I know you can do it. And I hope that these six things we outlined today.
Will help you and of course if you do want to check out what we're up to There's a link in the show notes. You can check out the free case study video We'd love to see if we're a good fit for you And if you think we are then you can book a call with our team We can answer any questions you have and we can see what it would look like to take some next steps So that's everything for today.
God bless you guys. Thank you for listening. We'll talk soon. Bye [00:14:00]
