Automation Agency Concierge

Are you familiar with the concept of self-efficacy?

Self-efficacy is not only an important part of your reboot, but in your life as a whole. It refers to the set of beliefs you carry that determine how well you can take the course of action needed to deal with any situation. When you have a strong sense of self-efficacy, you can take on whatever they find themselves facing.

Men in the first phases of the Porn Reboot program tend to lack self-efficacy in regards to their out-of-control behavior. They may be high performers in other areas of their lives but they can’t seem to apply that same drive to their behavior.

Your out-of-control behavior affects many different aspects related to your sense of self-efficacy. For example, isolation, repeated failures, and negative childhood experiences leave you feeling incapable of handling situations. Of course, you’re going to have a limited sense of self-efficacy when you’re constantly struggling with these things.

How is Your Self-Efficacy Doing?

There are a few things you can check for in yourself to determine how your self-efficacy is doing. I’ve found three characteristics that men with low self-efficacy display in their lives:

• Living in a negative environment
• Dealing with depression
• Feeling a lack of control

How does each of these contribute to low self-efficacy?

Living In a Negative Environment

Living in a negative environment leaves you feeling terrible day in and day out. If you work a job you hate or you can’t stand your partner, you’re going to feel terrible all the time. When you’re surrounded by a negative environment you end up stuck in a negative cycle that you can’t escape from.

Dealing With Depression

Depression is a common thing for men who have a low sense of self-efficacy. Whether it’s situational or clinical, depression keeps you from achieving the things you’re capable of. It contributes to negative self-talk and holds you back from developing a strong sense of self-efficacy.

Feeling a Lack of Control

When you feel an overall lack of control in your life, you’re going to struggle with feeling like you can handle the situations you’re facing. You can’t alter the outcome so how would anything you do even make a difference? Men with a low sense of self-efficacy tend to feel an overall lack of control in their lives.

Rebuilding Your Sense of Self-Efficacy

The good news is you can develop your sense of self-efficacy. There are things you can do to cultivate it as you work through your reboot. What are some things you can implement to rebuild this attribute?

Learn From Others Around You

Start by modeling the people around you. There should be at least one person in your life that you can look to for guidance. Surround yourself with people who have a strong sense of self-efficacy and adopt their habits and behaviors.

When I was struggling at my door-to-door sales job, I went out with the highest performer in our company one day. I shadowed him for a full day at work and even spent the night before at his place to watch his habits. This guy was a practicing Christian who woke up early in the morning, prayed, and read a few verses to get himself in the right mindset. 

He was incredibly organized and methodical in his approach to work. He let rejection roll off his back and didn’t get emotionally attached to the outcome. He had a sense of urgency in his work and didn’t waste time. He just kept moving from home to home without getting down when someone declined his offer. I mirrored his behavior at work and found my productivity shot through the roof.

The same thing applies to your reboot. Look to successful members of the Porn Reboot group or men who have overcome their out-of-control behaviors. Model the things they do and you’ll find that your sense of self-efficacy develops as time passes.

Listen to Feedback

Constructive criticism is a great thing. Learning to take constructive criticism is even better.  It’s not uncommon for men to feel defensive when someone offers an alternative approach. If you get defensive whenever this happens, though, you’re never going to grow.

Listen to feedback from the people around you and you’ll find your self-efficacy skyrocketing in no time. There are dozens of men in the Porn Reboot group who can offer insight and input on your reboot approach. Taking their feedback and applying it to your life will make a huge difference.

These men know where you’re coming from and understand how you feel. They’ve been where you are and found a way to develop their own sense of self-efficacy. They have a deeper knowledge of your problem than anyone else in your life and can help you with your problem. The more open you are to feedback, the better you’ll become.

Surround Yourself With Community

Community is one of the most important ways you can build self-efficacy. They’ll hold you accountable, offer feedback, and build you up when you need it. The Porn Reboot Facebook group is a great place to find a community of men who understand the darkness of porn addiction and can help you escape it.

Building self-efficacy through community can make a massive difference in your life. Don’t try to handle overcoming your behavior on your own. Join us in the group today and let us know how we can help you! 

Mental energy is an important component of daily life.

You need it to organize your day, to focus on important tasks, and to fulfill your responsibilities. When you struggle with a compulsive behavior with pornography, sex, and masturbation, though, you’ve definitely noticed low energy levels from time to time. 

That sense of mental lethargy makes it difficult to complete the things you need to get done. This is awfully inconvenient for a high-performing man trying to take back control of his life. What can you do to manage mental energy during your reboot?

Now it’s important to note that there are a multitude of causes for low mental energy. Pornography addiction might be one part of a bigger problem you’re dealing with. But today, I want to focus on the problem through the lens of your pornography addiction and compulsive behavior.

What’s Draining Your Mental Energy?

Before you can effectively manage your mental energy you need to know what keeps it low. Porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior keep your mind active almost all the time. Whether you’re actively engaged in your behavior or you’re thinking about it, your mind is constantly consumed.

The negative emotions and self-image caused by your behavior affect your mental energy as well. Men feel immense guilt and shame about the porn they watch or things they do, or the slips that happen when they try to quit.

There’s also the general exhaustion that comes from staying up late when you act out. You might try to go to sleep at a certain time but completely blow it and stay up all night watching porn. Of course you’re going to feel depleted when you’re getting terrible sleep.

All of this makes sense when you look at it from a biological standpoint. You’ve destroyed the reward system in your brain after years of compulsive sexual behavior. You need something really exhilarating to get that dopamine release you’re looking for. Your mental energy is drained in every sense of the word. So what can you do to bring it back?

How to Manage Your Mental Energy

As you start working on your energy drain, I suggest incorporating a practice I like to call realistic optimism. Realistic optimism is when you accept the reality of the world, whether it’s positive or negative, but maintain a positive, optimistic attitude. You continue believing that things will turn out well in everything you do, in every area of your life.

Realistic optimism also accepts the reality of your situation. You recognize that your compulsive behavior impacts every area of your life, too. Your potential, your work, your family, your spirituality, your finances, and more all feel the fallout from your behavior. But you still remain optimistic even in the face of this.

Men in the Porn Reboot program realize they’re going to have a difficult time at first, that their behavior won’t change all at once. They know they might have their head on a swivel or may objectify women at times. They’re going to feel the pressure while out with their friends for a night. However, they’re still optimistic that the system will work for them.

There are three steps to developing this mindset of realistic optimism. It’s difficult to adopt it when you’re at the very beginning of your reboot, though. You need to first control your immediate behaviors before these tips can be effective. Once you start to have a hold on the problem, though, you can try these steps out.

1. Implement positive self-talk

Don’t knock this until you try it. It might sound simplistic but the way you talk to yourself has a massive effect on your mindset. If you spend the day telling yourself that you’re a terrible person, it’s going to affect the way you see yourself. When you believe you’re a terrible person it’s harder to overcome your harmful behaviors.

For example, consider how you talk to yourself when you slip. Do you call yourself weak or a loser? Or do you view it as a mistake you made and encourage yourself to make a different choice next time? The second view of things is far more productive than the first. Practice talking to yourself this way instead of the first way. Remember that most of your self-talk happens subconsciously, too. You have to make an active effort to catch negative thoughts as they crop up and change them. 

2. Practice visualization

Visualization may seem like a new-wave approach to some of you but I’ve found it to be an effective practice in my reboot. The power of visualization runs deep. Your brain cannot differentiate between a vividly imagined experience and something you experienced in real life. 

It works for things in the past so why shouldn’t it work for things in the future? Think about a time you lost a job or someone rejected you. Everyone can go back to a point in their life where this happened and recall those feelings of shame, anger, and humiliation. When you call that memory to mind you can actually feel it, too. It’s a physiological response to visualizing that past experience.

Now take the power of visualization and direct it toward the future. Purposefully put yourself in a state where you imagine doing things like successfully overcoming an urge or experiencing a healthy sexual relationship with your partner. Visualize yourself having a fun night out with friends or performing well in your career. Use that mindset of realistic optimism to apply visualization in any area of your life where you want to be successful.

3. Learn effective time management

Effective time management is a crucial component of any successful reboot. Time management is something that can be pretty difficult to gain control over, especially at the beginning. You’re used to following any idea or whim that comes to mind, usually down a dark spiral of out-of-control behavior.

Instead, practice effective time management. Effective time management doesn’t mean only getting the tasks done on your to-do list, though. It’s about being able to do these things in an efficient and effective way while still deriving some pleasure from them. 

It doesn’t matter if you can fit everything into your day but don’t enjoy it because you’ll become resentful over time. You might not love everything you do but you need to find some appreciation for it so you don’t get irritated, say “forget it”, and go act out. Learning to effectively manage and enjoy your time will make a massive difference in managing your mental energy.

Taking the Next Steps

Managing your mental energy is some high-level reboot behavior. It’s okay if you aren’t successful right away. Continue practicing your skills and taking active steps to work on managing your mental energy. Over time you’ll notice that you’re more engaged and have more drive to do things each day!

We offer plenty of additional resources to help you along the way during your reboot. Check out our YouTube channel for hundreds of informative videos. Read through some of the posts here on our blog or listen to the Porn Reboot podcast that you can listen to on the way to work. Then meet up with us in the Porn Reboot Facebook group and let us know how you’re doing and whether you need some support!

As I promised you earlier this week, this is the next part in a series on the stages of the Porn Reboot system.

I’m breaking down each stage down into separate blog posts over the next few days. Consider it a quick summary of the Porn Reboot program to help kickstart or refresh your reboot. You can find the other parts here:

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5 is the final stage of the Porn Reboot process. I refer to it as the maintenance stage in your reboot. You’ve accepted your need for help, implemented new habits, integrated into a supportive community, and are on a track that works for you. Your focus now is to maintain what you’ve built so far and continue making small adjustments to keep growing as a man.

As you settle into Stage 5, it’s also important to remind yourself that this is a new lifestyle. What you thought of as your porn addiction was actually a long-term lifestyle you spent months or years settling into. As you settle into your new approach to life, you have to remember the things that brought you here at the beginning.

It takes time for your brain to rewire, even after you have your new routine in place. You spend the first six months to a year discovering what works for you and building habits around those things. Then you spend the next year building reboot capital using those tools that make a difference in your life.

I’ve found that it takes about a year and a half to two years for a man’s brain to rewire. Even though it might take a shorter time for you to progress from habit change to lifestyle change to changing your self-image, the full process takes more time.

The Key to Success for Stage 5: Continued Growth and Development

After the first few months, you might feel like there’s nothing wrong with you and find yourself tempted to take your foot off the gas. You have great habits in place and enjoy the lifestyle you’ve developed. You’re proud of how far you have come and feel great about yourself as you reflect on where you were, compared to where you are now. 

Stage 5 is when the challenge of questioning your new path arises. You might wonder whether you still need to maintain certain boundaries, habits, or behaviors. This is a slippery slope to find yourself standing on. You have to remember that the positive things in your life are a result of the work you’ve done to remove porn and out-of-control sexual behavior from your life.

The key to success for Stage 5 is simple: continue your growth and development. Don’t take your foot off the gas when you feel complacency and overconfidence creep in. Look around and notice the incredible places your life is going, then remind yourself it’s going in this direction because you’re no longer wrapped up in pornography and compulsive behaviors.

Laziness is another threat to your reboot during this stage. You might take your reboot for granted and your boundaries start eroding slowly without you noticing. Maybe you stop being as intimate with your partner or fall back on quick dopamine hits like scrolling social media or binge-watching Netflix.

Cultivating awareness is a crucial part of Stage 5. You must look out for these small threats to your reboot. Now I’m not telling you that you have to be on and ready to go 100% of the time. There’s nothing wrong with taking a small break here and there. But when you find that you’re spending more time in front of the screen than out working to be a better man, there’s a problem.

Settling into a community like the one we have in the Porn Reboot Facebook group is a great way to keep yourself accountable during Stage 5. You can surround yourself with brothers who understand the struggle of overcoming pornography addiction. You’ll find yourself supported by men who have been there and you’ll eventually be the one to support the new men coming in.

Porn Reboot is the system that has the potential to completely change your life. If you haven’t decided to join us, now is the time. Watch a few of our YouTube videos, listen to a couple of episodes of the podcast, check out the other posts in this series, and join us in the Facebook group. Freedom from your compulsive sexual behavior is only a few clicks away.

As I promised you last week, this is the next part in a series on the stages of the Porn Reboot system.

I’m breaking down each stage down into separate blog posts over the next few days. Consider it a quick summary of the Porn Reboot program to help kickstart or refresh your reboot. You can find the other parts here:

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 5

Once you’re through Stages 1, 2, and 3, the basics are in place and you’ve created a solid routine for yourself throughout the week. Now it’s time to dig a little bit deeper. I like to think of Stage 4 as the late stage of the Porn Reboot system. During this stage, we identify, resolve, and stabilize any life issues related to your porn, sex, or masturbation problem. 

The Keys to Success for Stage 4

Once you’re at the point where you’ve created the right habits and built up a successful lifestyle, you start noticing other areas of your life that might have atrophied off to the side. These are things like your social life, your dating life, or your financial situation. Repairing these aspects will reduce stress and help you build a more well-rounded life.

What is the best way for you to address these underlying concerns?

Learn From People Who Solved The Problem

When it comes to fixing other areas of your life, my philosophy is that you should take the quickest route possible. I believe this means finding individuals who have already taken care of the problem you’re struggling with. You want to consult people who have faced it and successfully overcome it. Most importantly, though, they need to know how to teach you how to overcome it, too.

I’m not just talking about your reboot. I’m talking about your relationships, your finances, your fitness. Find an expert in the area you’re having a hard time with and seek their guidance. You can find a coach for just about anything today and there are plenty of qualified individuals who are available to help. 

I know a lot of men shy away from this. There’s a belief that if you ask somebody for help, then you’re either weak or you’re needy. Or that if you seek help from somebody who helps you kind of bypass the obstacles then it’s somehow cheating yourself out of the process. But these false ideas couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Why would you waste time fumbling when you can learn from someone who’s been through it before? You want to work smarter, not harder. These individuals have seen the movie before and are going to help you accomplish your goals while avoiding unnecessary pitfalls. They’re the perfect resource that can help get you to where you want to be.

I’ve shared before about my experience with mentors. I’ve worked with many different mentors over the years who each helped me with a specific area I struggled in. They helped me save time and avoid making mistakes that they made in the past. As long as I remained teachable and coachable, their input has made a ton of difference in my life.

Begin the Process of Your Personality Change

As you’re changing your self-image, your personality is going to follow suit. Some people might push back but there is nothing wrong with this at all. A lot of men are very attached to their personalities at first. As a recovering porn addict, though, you’re quickly going to realize that certain personality traits are no longer beneficial to carry with you moving forward.

The goal here is to create a positive change in your personality. This doesn’t mean your entire personality will change, just certain traits. You’re going to leave behind the parts that are no longer serving you and adopt better alternatives. Like developing your identity, your personality shift will continue throughout the later stages of your reboot, too.

Start Developing Healthy Relationships

Your personality change comes about as you learn to trust yourself. Along with this comes the ability to start developing healthy relationships. You’re recognizing how relationships work, from platonic friendships to romantic partnerships.

For example, you’ll learn to develop healthy intimacy with women, something you’ve likely struggled with for years. You may have started this process during one of the earlier stages but the later stages of your reboot are when you start to hit your stride. 

At this point, you have control over your sexual behavior and have started working through your unresolved issues. You have a stronger sense of self-esteem, more self-confidence, and your reboot capital is higher than ever. Your relationships are no longer based on a sense of groveling or neediness; you enter relationships with a level of comfortability with yourself.

Learn How to Express Your Feelings

Pornography and masturbation served as a tool for you to avoid your feelings for years. Now that you’ve removed that tool, your feelings have returned and you’re learning how to handle them. It’s an uncomfortable but necessary part of the process of overcoming your porn and masturbation problem. 

Stage 4 is when you start working on being vulnerable, open, and honest in your relationships in ways you never were before. It’s an ongoing process like many other parts of the Porn Reboot system. You’re not going to be forthcoming with your feelings all at once right away, but you’ll learn to shed those unnecessary layers one at a time.

Leaning In To Taking Risks

Another part of Stage 4 learning how to take risks. Now, I’m not talking about the same type of risks you would take when you were acting out in your compulsive behaviors. I mean taking emotional risks. I’m talking about the risk of being hurt by being vulnerable, by expressing your feelings. 

Another one of these risks is the loss of traditional structure in your life. You became used to doing the same thing year after year, trapped in a negative, downward spiral of addiction. You’re now moving away from that old structure, those past patterns that no longer work for you. 

Once you’re at Stage 4, you’re taking more risks and stripping away these unhelpful parts of the old structure. You have to change the structure of your life to make room for the new approaches. You’re interacting with friends differently, being more engaged with your partner, trying new activities, experiencing things you wouldn’t have before. This might feel like a risk at first but the longer you sit in that uncomfortable space, the more open your life becomes.

After you’ve made your way through these benchmarks, you’re finally approaching the final stage of your reboot: Stage 5.

For recovering porn and sex addicts, internalizing what a healthy intimate relationship feels can be complex. It may take some time to move through the shame, disconnection, and insecurities surrounding sex and porn addictions. Still, the hard work is worth the patience and perseverance that it takes to feel safe, connected, and affirmed in a healthy sexual relationship.

Men who become addicted to porn, masturbation, or other forms of sexual experiences may find that they cannot develop healthy, intimate relationships with their partners. In a healthy sexual relationship, both partners are aware of their physical sensations and emotional vulnerability, which creates a profoundly intimate experience.

Nurturing Yourself

Healthy sexuality works in tandem with self-nurturance. Experiencing authentic pleasure in a variety of ways is vital to finding joy in sensual and physical activities. Sexual addictions tend to cause tunnel vision, leaving no room for exploring alternate ways of pleasure exploration. Engaging in other intimate activities like taking a hot bubble bath, dancing, and massage can retrain the brain to accept intimacy and sensuality in different experiences.

Embracing Vulnerability

Often, porn addicts sexualize their feelings and emotions out of fear of betrayal. This form of protection from vulnerability is a type of self-preservation from abandonment and loss. In healthy intimate relationships, vulnerability is central to honesty, openness, and empathy, all necessary to form strong bonds. Embracing vulnerability is essential to developing the coping skills needed for contentment.

Healthy Coping Skills

Addictions can arise as a form of coping with the stress and pressures of life. Being able to cope with disappointment, loss, shame, and anger without resorting to sexual relief is an integral step in the recovery process. Healthy coping skills can be learned by actively participating in support groups, journaling, exercising, talking with friends, and practicing relaxation techniques.

Healthy Boundaries

Porn and sex addicts struggle with healthy boundaries; either they become too rigid or too blurred to keep themselves and others safe. Developing healthy boundaries allows safe space for emotional vulnerability, keeping extremes at bay. Finding the balance between excessive sexual energy, excessive tension, and repressed sexual feelings is crucial to controlling an appropriate flow of sexual energy.

Growth Through Intimacy

Overcoming porn and sex addiction is possible through the pursuit of intimacy, vulnerability, and self-awareness. Building strong coping skills and setting clear boundaries can provide the pathways through the stages of intimate relationships, promoting maturity, growth, and satisfaction.

As I promised you last week, this is the next part in a series on the stages of the Porn Reboot system.

I’m breaking down each stage down into separate blog posts over the next few days. Consider it a quick summary of the Porn Reboot program to help kickstart or refresh your reboot. You can find the other parts here:

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 3 marks the middle of the Porn Reboot system. It’s the midway point where you’ve made a commitment to long-term recovery and are ready to start taking action. The first thing we focused on was helping you recognize your behavior and habits. Then you moved into a place of acceptance of your problem and the fact that you can overcome it. Now it’s time to move into taking some action.

You’re at a point where you know you’re heading in a new direction, but it’s also overwhelming because you’re moving away from everything you’ve known. We do this through addressing and developing a new approach to habits, lifestyle, and self-image. This process starts during Stage 3. 

The Keys to Success for Stage 3

Your main goals during Stage 3 are:

• Developing a new identity
• Balancing areas of your Reboot Capital

How are you going to accomplish these things?

Developing a New Identity

Stage 3 marks the beginning of your new life. Sure, you started making some progress during Stages 1 and 2, but those were introductory parts of the process. You need recognition and acceptance if you want to make progress, but you also can’t make any progress if you don’t take action. Step 3 is where that action point starts.

You need to develop a new identity if you want to be successful in your reboot. This is where I ran into problems with other approaches, such as 12-step programs. In 12-step groups, you develop a new identity but that identity centers entirely around your recovery program. Your identity becomes that of a “recovered addict” and keeps you completely wrapped up in the group. When everything about your identity is based on your past behavior, it keeps you living in fear.

The identity you develop in the Porn Reboot program centers around your being a successful individual. In the past, you may have been introverted, angry, or a loner. Maybe you lacked control of your emotions, always felt stressed and overwhelmed, or simply blamed everything on a “high sex drive.” After moving through Stages 1 and 2, though, you now realize that it was all your compulsive behavior.

Now it’s time to develop a new identity. I’m not going to give you that identity, though, and neither will the Porn Reboot system. Instead, we’re going to guide you along the path of developing your own identity. You’re not going to become a carbon copy of everyone else like men in other recovery groups. You’re going to focus on the things that make you a successful individual in your own right.

Balancing Areas of Your Reboot Capital

The Porn Reboot system isn’t only about controlling your out-of-control behavior; it’s about becoming a better person as a whole. Building and balancing areas of your reboot capital is a key part of this process. 

Reboot capital is the term I use to describe the areas in your life that support your reboot. These are things like your health and fitness, strengthening your social life, or cultivating your spirituality. They’re the parts of your life that make you a well-rounded person, not just hyper-focused on a single aspect of your life.

Balancing your reboot capital is not a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing process throughout your reboot. But Stage 3 is when you start finding the areas of your life that you want to invest reboot capital into. 

You might find that spending dedicated time in the gym every day is an aspect that strengthens your reboot. Maybe you enjoy building out a deeper morning routine (something I like to call recovery time) where you get centered for the day. You might find that spending time with people who share common interests is something that helps you feel strong in your reboot.

Stage 3 is the time for you to explore various areas of your life that you neglected before. It’s also about finding which parts make you feel most like yourself and incorporating these into your new identity. Stage 3 is also about starting the process of balancing these different areas instead of becoming too invested in any one part. A recovered man balances the various areas of his reboot capital to become a whole person.

Recognizing the Potential For Relapse

Stage 3 is also the time when the chance of relapse becomes a serious reality. Relapsing at any point during Stages 1 and 2 is always a possibility but you’re still early in the process. Stage 3 is when you start making forward progress which increases the impact of a relapse. Understanding the causes of relapse that arise at this point can help.

Withdrawal

Men in the Porn Reboot system usually experience withdrawal symptoms during the first six months. They’re most intense during the first 90 days, but the period between 90 days and 6 months is also critical. Recognizing that you’re still in the withdrawal phase will help you be aware of a potential relapse.

Behavior Change

You’re going to experience significant behavioral changes during the first six months in the Porn Reboot program. Sometimes it’s hard for your mind to keep up with the incredible changes you’re making with your behavior. When your self-image can’t keep up, sometimes you’re still going to see yourself as a man who views pornography, even when your behavior doesn’t match that mindset.

Social Pressure

As you’re progressing in Stage 3 and starting to spend more time with people, you might find yourself around people who aren’t the best influence on you. These people who you’ve been friends with for years might not appreciate the drastic changes you’re making in your life. This could cause distance between you and old friends, or the loss of these friendships completely. Prepare yourself for the possibility of losing old friends, but recognize that you’re moving in a better direction without them.

As I promised you earlier this week, this is the next part in a series on the stages of the Porn Reboot system.

I’m breaking down each stage down into separate blog posts over the next few days. Consider it a quick summary of the Porn Reboot program to help kickstart or refresh your reboot. You can find the post for Stage 1 and Stage 3 here:

Stage 1

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

The first stage of the Porn Reboot system involves recognizing your problem and your need for help. Once you start the withdrawal process and begin learning to manage those symptoms, you’re ready to move into Stage 2.

Stage 2 is where you finish cognitively and emotionally processing the situations that brought you into the program. Perhaps you were struggling with porn-induced erectile dysfunction and it affected intimacy with your partner. Perhaps there was some porn-induced infidelity and your relationship has reached a crisis point. Maybe you spent a lot of money, lost something important to you, or were let go from your job due to your behavior.

Whatever the crisis is, Stage 2 is when we finish processing it. We work through the stressors that brought you here and get you to a place where you can start logically processing the program.

The Keys to Success for Stage 2

Like Stage 1, there are a few crucial goals you have to accomplish to be successful during Stage 2:

1. Accept your behavior

2. Accept that you can live a new life

3. Learn the skills you need to function without porn or masturbation

Let’s get a little more in-depth on what each of these goals looks like.

Accept Your Behavior

Accepting your behavior involves letting go of a lot of the old ideas you might have about pornography addiction and recovery. Maybe you picked these beliefs up at a 12-step group or through work with a therapist. There are other methods to recovery out there but Porn Reboot has a specific way of approaching it with our clients.

For example, one thing you need to let go of is the habit of counting days. It’s something a ton of men do but I don’t think it’s a helpful approach when it comes to rewiring your brain. I don’t believe in it and I advocate against it for men in the Porn Reboot group.

You also need to shift the idea that this is an all-or-nothing thing. Men come in thinking that they should never slip, not even once, and that if they do then it’s all over. They beat themselves up and throw in the towel, not understanding what a detrimental belief this is.

These are only a few of the things that stand in the way of you accepting your behavior. It’s hard to rewire your brain after carrying these ideas around for months or years, but it’s crucial if you want to be successful in your reboot.

Accept That You Can Live a New Life

Men often arrive here feeling exhausted and defeated. Porn Reboot is probably not the first method you’ve heard about or tried. Compulsive masturbation and pornography addiction are difficult conditions to live with. They wear you down and they wear down the people affected by your behavior. 

Men often believe they’re beyond the point of help by the time they get here. But I promise you, brothers, that you can live a new life. You can find freedom and relief from your compulsive sexual behavior. Until you accept that you can live a new life, though, your false beliefs will hold you back.

This goal is a critical part of moving forward with the program. Once you realize that you can have a new lease on life through Porn Reboot, you can start making progress and moving into the next phases of the program.

Overcoming Denial

Stage 2 is also when denial starts to creep in. Even after you accept your behavior and  the fact that you can overcome it, at some point you might feel this was all a big overreaction. You start wondering whether you made a big deal out of nothing. Or you start feeling shame creeping in and want to deny that you ever had a problem in the first place.

Overcoming denial is crucial before you can move onto Stage 3. You have to understand and accept the crises and unwanted situations that your compulsive sexual behavior got you into. You’re going to have to face the shame at some point if you want to work through your problem with porn and masturbation.

Justification and rationalization are the creeping killers of your reboot. It happened to me time and time again at the beginning of my reboot. The earlier you learn to control and overcome this creeping denial the better. Denial may sneak in at various points during later stages of your reboot but by that time you’ve learned to keep these feelings at bay. 

Once you’ve completed these goals, it’s time to move onto Stage 3.

As I promised you earlier this week, this blog post is going to be the first in a series on the stages of the Porn Reboot system.

I’m going to break each stage down into separate blog posts over the next few days. Consider it a quick summary of the Porn Reboot program to help kickstart or refresh your reboot. You can find the next stages here:

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

The first stage of the system is what I call the “pre-reboot.” You’ve found our system and started checking out some of what we offer. You start reading some blog posts, watching a few YouTube videos, or browsing through our podcast episodes. 

Maybe you’re communicating with me or one of our Reboot Strategists to see if you’re a good fit for the Porn Reboot program. But you haven’t fully committed to the system and you haven’t yet implemented it in your life.

Stage 1 starts here. It’s the point where you haven’t started the actual reboot process but you’re taking the first steps toward finally controlling your behavior. 

The Keys to Success for Stage 1

I like to look at Stage 1 with three simple goals in mind:

• Start to recognize your compulsive behavior
• Agree to learn how to control your behavior
• Manage your withdrawal symptoms and the crises that brought you in

To accomplish these goals, there are a few things you need: hope, trust, and allowing others to help you. It’s okay if these things don’t come naturally to you. Most men arrive at the Porn Reboot program feeling isolated but self-sufficient, insisting they can handle things alone. But if you want to beat your out-of-control behavior, you’re going to need some help.

Hope is the first key to success. Without hope, why would you even bother trying the system out? You have to hope and believe that the Porn Reboot system can work in your life and help you end your out-of-control behavior. 

I share plenty of success stories across my various channels, talking about men just like you who never believed they could control their behavior. Start by watching, reading, and listening to some of these stories. Hearing the real struggles from other men should set you on the path to realizing that you can reboot, too.

Allowing others to help and support you is the next key to success. You probably haven’t told anyone about your out-of-control behavior yet. If you have, you’ve kept it to a close friend or two who you know won’t judge you. But you need to allow a wider range of people in to support you through your reboot process. 

Before I started my reboot, I thought I was the only man dealing with this problem for so many years. I carried so much shame and guilt for not being able to control my sexual behavior. Now imagine my relief when I finally discovered how many other men struggled with the same problem, too. I no longer felt strange or weird; I was surrounded by men who understood.

I understand how challenging it is to allow people to help you at first. I didn’t want to let anyone in when I first started. We’re used to handling things on our own and solving our problems on our own. But you’re not going to be able to deal with this problem alone. You can’t progress past Stage 1 until you allow others to help you.

Finally, trust is the key that ties everything together. You need to trust that a system can work for you and trust in your brothers who are here to help you along the way. You don’t need to start the program with full faith and trust but I ensure you it will settle in as you make progress. No one here in the Porn Reboot group has to do this alone. We support one another through the process and we’re here to support you, too.

Once you’ve completed Stage 1, it’s time to move on to Stage 2.

“How do I know where I stand in my reboot?” 

I get this question often from men in the Porn Reboot program. They’re men who read this blog, watch my videos on YouTube, listen to our podcast, or receive our email newsletter. It’s not that they haven’t made progress; I speak with men in all different stages of their lives. But they have a hard time figuring out where they’re at with their reboot in general?

Sometimes they’re in another form of therapy or participating in a 12-step group. They might follow multiple modalities and get lost in the messages they hear from all these different avenues. These men are making progress but seem to lack a wider perspective or view of the bigger picture.

Are you struggling with this, too? I want to break down the process of addiction to reboot in three steps. Before I go any further, though, I want you to realize this is a very simplified version of the process. It’s going to make things seem easier than they actually are. 

There is a ton of work to be done when you zoom into each step and I’m going to dive into deeper detail here on the blog over the next few days. Before we get into the details, though, I want to give you a birds’-eye view of the process. It helps to know where you’re at when you start feeling lost along the way. 

This breakdown should give you a straightforward set of benchmarks to measure your reboot progress. In the Porn Reboot program we start off first with your habits, then we work on your lifestyle, and finally we address your self-image.

1. Habits

We’re going to start by building great habits. First, you’ll look at your existing habits and consider how you’re handling things right now. What does your environment look like? How are the boundaries you have in place? Which coping skills do you use to manage your emotions? What kind of accountability do you have?

You’re not going to progress very far with the bad habits you’ve spent years building. We’re going to wipe out your old ones and build a new foundation based on productive habits. A strong foundation makes the difference between getting stuck in a cycle of slips and finally gaining control of your out-of-control behavior.

These aren’t only habits surrounding your porn addiction or sexual behavior, either. The habits we’re going to look at are things like the foods you eat and how much exercise you get. We’ll address your sleeping patterns and daily routine. Building consistent healthy habits creates a sense of discipline and regimen that’s necessary for long-term recovery from your behaviors.

2. Lifestyle

Once you have your habits in place, we move into working on your lifestyle. Your lifestyle includes the people you surround yourself with and the areas where you spend your time. The people and places in your environment play a significant role in the way you behave. If you’re struggling with an out-of-control behavior, that means you need to fix some part of your lifestyle.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “You’re the sum of the five people closest to you.” Who are the five closest friends in your life right now? Are they people who share the same ideals and goals as you or are they pursuing a path you’re trying to step off of? What about the spaces you spend time in? Are these moving you closer to or further from your goals? Do they support your new habits or make them harder to adhere to?

If your friend group and environment aren’t conducive to your reboot, you need to make some changes. This is a challenging part of the process because oftentimes we become comfortable in our environment, even when it’s holding us back. But you have to let go of things that no longer serve you before you can move forward.

3. Self-Image

After your habits and lifestyle are in place, now we start addressing your self-image. Habits and lifestyle are external factors but self-image is when we move inward. This involves things like the way you see yourself, the beliefs you have about yourself, how capable you think you are, what you feel you deserve, and more.

Looking at our self-image pushes us to dig into the deepest parts of ourselves. Porn addiction and out-of-control sexual behavior can cause detrimental effects on our self-image. We can correct these misdirected beliefs but it doesn’t come without work.

The final stage of your reboot progress involves this self-image work. This isn’t a one-and-done thing, either; self-image work is an ongoing process. You build self-esteem through esteemable acts. The longer you stick to your habits and adhere to your healthy lifestyle, the stronger your new sense of self becomes.

Where Are You At?

Identify which of the above aspects you’re working on to measure your reboot progress. If you’re still adjusting your habits, you’re at the start of the process. Once you’ve moved into the lifestyle portion you’re beginning to make some real headway. As you arrive at the self-image portion, you’re now digging into the deeper parts of your reboot.

Remember – your reboot isn’t a race. Measuring your progress isn’t a way to get ahead of schedule. It also doesn’t mean you’re failing at the process, either. You must be patient with the system and allow yourself to move through the stages at your own pace. There’s no wrong way to reboot; as long as you’re continuing forward to gain control, you’re doing right by yourself. 

Every week I get messages from men explaining the importance of having a reboot coach.

They insist they would not be in the position they’re in if they did not work with somebody on ending their out-of-control sexual behavior. Sometimes they’re referring to their job or career. Other times they’re talking about their relationship with their spouse or their children.

But for the most part, it’s really about how they feel. They describe feelings of freedom and peace of mind. They no longer have to worry about everything that comes with a porn addiction or sexually compulsive behavior. 

Since I receive these kinds of messages so often, today I want to cover the benefits of having a recovery coach. I don’t even mean in the Porn Reboot program specifically; there are plenty of different kinds of recovery coaching services available. From general life coaching to group coaching and more, every man can find the right fit for his situation. 

Are you considering hiring a recovery coach? Whether you’re considering the Porn Reboot program or not, understanding the many benefits of recovery coaching might help you make your decision.

1. You learn to develop a mature relationship with your sexuality

A lot of us whose addictions to pornography began at an early age carry a similar immature view of sex. Sex is all about excitement. It’s about feeling a different way. It’s about distraction. It’s about having fun. 

The truth is, while sex can encompass all those things, we’re usually missing the important aspects of sex. Things like connection, things like intimacy, and even things like spirituality, when you go deeper into it. 

Everybody has their own relationship with sexuality. I’m not one to tell you what your relationship to sexuality should be, either. But a good system or a good coaching program will help you develop a healthy, mature relationship with your sexuality. This is crucial because sexuality is a very important part of our lives as men.

2. You learn to create healthy, satisfying relationships

One of the greatest challenges I experienced was learning to understand intimacy. Ending my behavior and rewiring my brain was difficult, but understanding how to build healthy relationships was a whole new level. 

I was still very reactive during the early stages of my reboot and I experienced a ton of anxiety surrounding intimacy. I spent two years going out, dating women, and getting into relationships, trying to figure out intimacy. Even after that, it took a couple more years for me to truly understand it. 

The different coaches I had during those stages helped me understand what was blocking me from building intimacy with women. It wasn’t until I rewired my brain and experienced connections with women without the tangles of sexuality that I finally learned how to create healthy, satisfying relationships. 

3. You start creating big but realistic goals

You probably start your reboot with some lofty goals. You’ve spent so long trapped by your addiction that you’re ready to finally chase some of those dreams you’ve put on hold. But you might set yourself up for failure if you set the bar too high right away.

A recovery coach will help you create these big goals you strive for but ensure they’re still realistic. You want to establish achievable goals so you don’t give up on yourself before you get there. Having the outside guidance that a recovery coach offers is crucial when you’re still not sure how to operate without falling back on your out-of-control behavior.

4. You learn how to control your out-of-control sexual behavior

This might seem obvious but it shouldn’t go unsaid. Learning to end your out-of-control behavior is the most important thing you can do. Until you get your porn addiction and sexuality under control, it’s going to affect every other area of your life.

A good recovery coach will guide you through the process of learning to control your behavior. The Porn Reboot system is a proven system based on a scientific approach, but there are other methods, too. Not all men find success from the same techniques. As long as they help you learn to control your out-of-control behavior, though, continue with that recovery coach.

5. You rebuild your self-esteem and get rid of shame

We’ve spoken about shame a lot, but let’s speak a moment about your self-esteem. Self-esteem, or how you feel about who you are, has been obliterated by your out-of-control behavior, by the type of pornography you watch, by the relationships you’ve been in, by your inability to control your behavior.

All your perceived failures result in having a terrible sense of self-esteem. This lack of self-worth leads you to isolate yourself from others which only makes it worse. Trying to rebuild your self-esteem alone is difficult. You need to find someone you can respect, trust, and look up to who will guide you through the process.

An effective recovery coach is going to help you shatter that sense of shame and rebuild your self-esteem. They’re going to teach you to overcome those limiting beliefs about yourself so you can step into the understanding of your capability and importance.

6. You surround yourself with a network of supportive individuals

Any recovery coach worth his salt is going to encourage you to surround yourself with men who understand and support you. Trying to control your out-of-control behavior on your own is almost impossible. You only have a certain amount of time with your coach during the day or the week. You need to have support outside of those coaching sessions, too.
One of the biggest benefits of recovery coaching is learning to surround yourself with a network of supportive individuals. Whether you come to join us on the Porn Reboot group on Facebook or you find another method that works for you, you must get in the middle of a group. You never need to deal with your struggle alone again; in time you’ll find many men who know the struggle themselves and are ready and waiting for you to join in.