There’s a great quote that’s often attributed to Malcolm X:
“That which you do not hate you learn to tolerate.”
Now I don’t know whether that’s really one of his quotes. I searched online a bit and couldn’t find anything directly connecting it to him. But that doesn’t take away from its power.
What are you currently tolerating in your life?
I see men in the Porn Reboot group tolerating all kinds of situations. I’m talking about tolerating being in a bad relationship. Tolerating poor performance at work. Tolerating depression or poverty. Tolerating friends who aren’t going anywhere or family members pulling you down. Tolerating your pornography addiction and compulsive sexual behavior.
You’re probably dealing with at least a few of these things but what are you doing to change it?
The number of men I see tolerating unreasonable situations in their lives is mind-boggling to me. Why are you settling? What do you get from tolerating the situations you’re in?
No wonder you’re struggling with pornography addiction.
Maybe you’re in a bad relationship. You’ve been together for a few years or had a couple kids and your partner is no longer interested in having sex with you. She’s giving you all these excuses to avoid it and it feels like you’re pulling teeth when trying to get intimate with her.
Or maybe you’re feeling directionless in life. I speak to men in their late 20s and early 30s who are still struggling to find their purpose. They’re giving up on the serious projects they start or they’re not performing in their careers.
Perhaps you’re living in a permanent state of depression. You wake up day after day feeling down, questioning the point of life, wondering what you’re supposed to be doing. There seems to be no rhyme or reason in your life and you question your existence.
But you continue tolerating the situations you’ve gotten yourself into. You do nothing to change the issues at hand. Then you turn to pornography to distract yourself from reality. You use masturbation to numb the pain of what’s going on in your life. And on the cycle goes.
You need to quit tolerating what’s going on around you if you want to make some serious changes. You have to take control of your life and decide that enough is enough. But you won’t find the willingness to do something until you reach the breaking point.
If you’ve been around for a while, you know about my own experience with this. I was at the lowest point in my life before I finally left my pornography addiction behind for good. I woke up every morning in a deep depression day after day, asking myself why I even existed. It’s because I was tolerating multiple situations in my life.
For one, I was poor. I had very little money for a couple of years when I was younger. There were days when all I had left in my house was a box of spaghetti. The utilities were shut off from time to time. Sometimes I’d go hang out at my friends’ houses and eat whatever they had when I could. Eventually, I had become that guy who was just living off of other people.
I also had a hard time at my job when I was working in door-to-door sales. Lots of my coworkers thought I was slow. I didn’t like showing up at the end of the day because I hated being the guy who was always at the bottom.
Even my family who was incredibly supportive of me stopped expecting anything big for me. I was the guy at family events and gatherings who was the odd one that came out messed up. They had all accepted that I was going to do enough to just get by in life.
Still, I tolerated it for months. I didn’t do anything to change it. I would quiet the feelings of depression and anxiety with pornography and masturbation day in and day out. Until one day I hated how I felt so much that I was finally done tolerating everything.
And that’s the point you need to reach, too.
If you’re trying to escape the reality you’ve created for yourself, you need to wake up. You have to reach a certain point where you’re finally ready to look at your life. You need to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you’re tired of the situation you’ve gotten yourself into.
It’s time to face whatever it is you’re tolerating in your life. If it’s a bad relationship, you need to restructure that relationship or end it. If it’s sub-par performance at work, you need to talk with your boss about steps you can take to start improving yourself. If it’s simply reaching the end of your rope with your porn addiction, you need to take responsibility and make a change.
Tolerating your situation is a waste of your life. It’s settling for far less than you’re capable of achieving. Once you stop escaping your reality and find the courage to face it, you can implement a system that will change your life. There’s so much more you can achieve as soon as you decide you’re ready.
