If you are just tuning in, up till the age of 23, I was a total failure- a direct result of my porn use.

You may be able to relate to some of the things that keep me down:

• Social anxiety: I couldn’t speak to strangers, let alone women. Due to my inability to keep a part-time job, the only thing I could do was a job that took anyone- door to door sales. I failed at that too because one rejection would knock me out emotionally for several days.
• Inability to concentrate: Do you have issues sticking to a task for long hours? I sucked at this. I couldn’t sit still in a class for more than an hour. After 20 minutes, I was done. All the jobs I took were boring and I dreaded showing up to work because I would hate being there within an hour.
• Mood Swings: Can you relate? I could go from excited to losing my temper and rolling in anger for hours- replaying an event in my mind over and over again. I’d wake up feeling the same way. As I mentioned earlier, I was frequently depressed and the hopelessness was real.
• Brain Fog: Simply put, I felt stupid. I mean, I know I’m not a disabled human being, but I really felt that way sometimes. I would decide to complete a college project and it was just so hard! Writing papers was like Frodo’s Journey In Lord of The Rings- epic and full of pitfalls. In all my years of college, there were probably two occasions I can remember where I sat down and knocked out a paper without holding my head in my hands in confusion.
• Lack of Motivation: I don’t even need to explain this one, do I? Excuse my language, but I didn’t want to do jack shit. Get a job? Nope. Go to class? Zero motivation. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I literally quit going to several classes in college because the first two classes bored me to tears. Pay bills on time? Nah. I’ll pay late fees.
• Irritability This was my trademark. I don’t even know how I managed to have friends. Maybe the weed I smoked back then made me tolerable. I would complain whenever I was asked to do anything. If something didn’t work out, you can be sure I would be the first person to complain.

These issues ALL stemmed from my compulsive porn use. I know because, once I quit porn, every single one of them disappeared!

I am far from perfect, but I have no social anxiety- in fact, I became well known in my company for my cold calling skills. Today, I can sit down and coach clients for ten hours straight with only four 15 minute breaks in between. I am extremely motivated to touch the lives of 1 million men by making them aware of the dangers of pornography and showing them the easy way to quit using the Porn Reboot system.

Brain fog was probably one of the first things that disappeared when I quit porn.

Studies have shown that this porn addiction effects our memories and focus in two main ways:

PORN DISRUPTS YOUR WORKING MEMORY

Pornography’s effect on your working memory: Working memory is basically a cognitive function which helps keep information in our brain readily available. By keeping important information available, you are able to access it quickly, and apply it when working on important tasks. For instance, if you work at a hectic job, or if you study a course that often requires periods of uninterrupted focus, your working memory is often needed. It helps you quickly decide which tasks are important and which can be moved to another time- these actions happen in seconds. This is crucial when eliminating distractions and staying focused on a task. For instance, if you are in college, your working memory helps you:

• Set plans to study and stick those plans until your exam is passed/ you achieve a passing grade
• Become a reliable group member and participate in achieving group goals in a structured way
• Staying focused on lectures from beginning to end.Having the ability to pull your attention back to a lecture even when it is boring.

When porn erodes your working memory, however, you instead:

• Often find yourself procrastinating or “cramming” right before exams
• Find group activities “irrelevant” and never pay attention
• Zone out by daydreaming or even fall asleep during lectures

For professionals, or individuals with full-time jobs, your working memory is negatively affected by your problems with porn and sex when:

• You experience problems breaking projects down into logical smaller steps
• You constantly underestimate the amount of time required to complete a task
• You find yourself losing your temper all time with your spouse and kids
• You are consistently late to work.

PORN AFFECTS YOUR ABILITY TO DELAY GRATIFICATION

Delayed gratification is your ability to put off a reward till later in the place of performing a more important task. A simple example would be the decision to eat a sweet dessert before or after your main meal which contains the majority of healthy nutrients you need.

Porn users have been found to have serious issues with delayed gratification. Inability to delay gratification leads to impulsive behavior. Impulsive behavior leads to lack of self-discipline.

My favorite definition of Self Discipline comes from Robert Ringer:

“ Self- Discipline- a single trait that every human being has the capacity to develop-gives me the power to outperform people who are far more intelligent and talented than I am. Self Discipline is about restraining or regulating, one’s actions- repressing the instinct to act impulsively in favor of taking rational actions that are long-term oriented.”

A key phrase in that quote is: “Repressing the instinct to act impulsively”. If biologically, porn has negatively affected your ability to control your impulses, you have a snowball’s chance in hell of developing self-discipline until your recover.

This study, published in Biological Psychiatry: http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(17)31005-3/pdf

The researchers investigated the relationship between dopamine receptors and adults suffering from depression.

They found that adults who suffered from depression and lowered receptor availability ( which can be caused by overuse of porn) were associated with “worsened episodic verbal memory and poorer executive function.”

In conclusion, porn not only makes your depressed, but it makes your memory worse AND affects your ability to get tasks done.

As I finish up this email, I’m going to leave you with a secret about recovery from porn as well as three gifts:

So many men- young and old want success in their lives. Whether its a thriving business, a job they enjoy, a partner or family to enjoy life with, healthy or feeling mentally balanced, happy and fulfilled most of the time; achieving these things takes work.

As Will Smith said:

“You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, worst, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.”

The secret is that the wall never gets built to completion. It was never meant to be so. You build the wall, then you die. The only thing you can do is make sure that the PROCESS is as mindful and fulfilling as possible.

When I began my recovery at age 23, I was FULL of ambition. Porn nearly took everything away from me. I just wanted to be done with it so that I could move on with my life. Because of my hunger for ambition and my lack of patience in recovery, several times during the past 10 years, I tore down the entire wall in self-sabotage and frustration- but I always picked myself up and painstakingly started again brick by brick. I’m 33 years old now- and I’m still building. The one thing that has made a difference – the one thing that makes waking up every morning worth it is the thought of laying another perfect brick.

Our time is finite. I know from first-hand experience that some people who read an email of mine or watched one of my videos last week will not open this one -because their time on earth expired over the weekend.

Begin your recovery today and actually enjoy the process. Enjoy marking a big red “X” on your calendar every night you go to bed because you just won that day. Tell your spouse and kids that you love them , and stay in control of your habits for one more day. You don’t know if you’ll get another.

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