People have varying goals and aspirations, things they want to see, places they want to visit, and hopes they want to see come to fruition. Maybe you want to have a family, buy a house, or start a business. Perhaps you want to move to a different part of the country or another area in the world.

At the same time, if you struggle with out-of-control behavior with porn, sex, and masturbation, you may feel hopeless about your future. You might believe that you’ve brought yourself to a point that you can’t come back from. Your future might look dark, dreary, and void of anything worth living for.

This is especially true for men early in their reboot. Most men don’t arrive at the Porn Reboot group until they’ve reached a low point. It takes a lot for a man to admit he has a problem and reach out for help. Some lose their jobs, some lose their homes, some lose their families, and some lose everything they have before they find us.

They come to the program simply hoping to end their compulsive behavior. They’ve likely tried at least a few different programs or approaches before. Nothing has worked, though, and their porn-free stints become fewer and further between. This builds a story in their minds that nothing will ever keep them from acting out or completely ending their behavior.

But then they find the Porn Reboot program and begin implementing the system in their lives. They find themselves able to live free from pornography, not because they’re forced to but because they want to. The future doesn’t seem as hopeless as it did before. They can see a light at the end of the tunnel, one with more worthwhile experiences than they imagined.

Here’s the problem with that mentality, though: the future never arrives. You’ll only ever find yourself in the present moment. I know this may sound a bit philosophical and woo-woo, but it’s true. You’re never going to find yourself in that far-reaching future; even when you get there it’ll still be now.

The only way to control your future is to control the present moment, brother. Whatever you hope to achieve in the future, take steps to achieve that today. Too many people view the future as a destination, an arrival point they’ll reach one day where all their hopes and dreams are fulfilled.

Sure, that may happen. You can take steps to set yourself up for the situation you want to live in. But at the same time, nothing is guaranteed. You could do everything necessary to build a successful life but there are always uncontrollable or unpredictable factors at play. And you never know when they’ll step in to disrupt your path.

You must release the false belief that your future is a destination. It only sets you up for failure. This is a more high-level approach for men who are new to the Porn  Addiction Counseling – Reboot system. It’s not easy to view the world this way and may even strengthen your sense of apathy if you haven’t yet gained a good hold on it. But it’s also one of the most freeing ways to move through life.

When you finally recognize that today is the only day you’ll ever have, you begin to approach each one with hope, enthusiasm, and love. Every moment becomes more precious to you. You embrace the fact that you never know when it will all be over and come to appreciate the true beauty of each day.

I challenge you to shift your perspective and take this approach today. I want to offer encouragement to my brothers who may feel down and out right now. There is hope and healing in the Porn Reboot program, something that seems so far off and impossible at times. But I promise you that we’re a group of men who have a solution that we used to think was impossible, too. I invite you to join us today.

The post Future is Not a Destination: Embracing the Present appeared first on Elevated Recovery.

I’ve noticed the same problems in many of the clients I work with, especially when they begin their reboot. It’s not a good thing when you want everything right now and when you need it to go your way.

Oftentimes this extends to wanting people to behave the same way you do. This creates a lot of frustration because people will never act exactly how you want them to. People are usually predictable to a certain extent, but you can never fully know what someone is going to do.

Intolerance and impatience are two of the most detrimental roadblocks to a successful reboot. I know this from experience because my impatience caused me to lose at least a few big opportunities in the past. I had to learn to let things play out the way they’re supposed to instead of the way that I believe they should.

Life doesn’t operate on your timeline; it operates on a timeline independent of your thoughts and feelings about it. Fighting against life only leads to frustration and disappointment. You must learn to detach yourself from expectations of all kinds.

Learning patience is a necessary skill in this type of porn addiction counseling. You’ll find that you don’t get everything you want the moment that you want it. This applies to work, to relationships, to developing skills, to success in your hobbies, and more. 

You can’t go out and expect things to change the moment you decide to do something. It takes time for change to take place. This means you likely won’t overcome your out-of-control behavior right away, which I make sure to emphasize in the Porn Reboot program.

It also means that the first woman you date during your reboot likely isn’t “the one” you’ve been waiting for. It means that you won’t bench press three places during your first few weeks in the gym. It means that you’re probably not going to be the star player in your rec league when you start playing.

But if you learn to be patient and stick with things, you’ll find that the results become more incredible as time passes. The more patience you have with the process, the more you’ll grow. If you develop the ability to carry out consistent actions you’ll be shocked at the things that will happen.

The old adage is right: patience is truly a virtue. It’s not easy to be patient at first but learning the skill will make a massive difference in your life. This is true for anything you set your mind to, from your reboot to your relationships to your career to your gym routine. No matter what you do in life, learning to be patient with the process will make all the difference.

The post Impatience is Not a Virtue: Embracing Patience in Recovery appeared first on Elevated Recovery.

Some men were more overt about placing blame while others did it subconsciously and may not have noticed. Either way, these brothers are all wrong. Pornography is NOT the problem. You might think it is. After all, isn’t that why the Porn Reboot program exists in the first place? But it’s not. Pornography is not as powerful as you think it is.

Think about it. Pornography has existed for much longer than you can imagine. Porn came about as soon as men realized they were able to draw on cave walls. We have ancient dick art on the walls of caves that date back hundreds of centuries! You might think porn is the issue but millions of people watch it without responding to it the way we do. While the detrimental effects of porn are another conversation entirely, it still doesn’t have the same effects on others as it does on men with out-of-control sexual behavior.

If you still believe porn is the problem, you’ll keep yourself stuck in the cycle of porn addiction. It probably feels like an endless problem because you’ll see it everywhere if that’s what you’re focused on. Things shown in television programs are increasingly lewd, Hollywood can get away with more suggestive scenes in lower-rated films, and some social media posts are as close to porn as you can get. I’m not denying that temptations exist, brother. I’m fully aware of everything that’s out there. But so long as you continue believing that those temptations are the problem, you’ll continue acting out time and time again.

You’re looking at the wrong problem, brother. 

The problem is not pornography.

The problem is that you are using pornography to medicate.

It’s not the porn that keeps you trapped in the cycle. It’s the emotion that comes up right before you turn back to porn to keep yourself from feeling it. You can’t treat the problem when you still believe it exists outside yourself. The moment you stop treating pornography as the problem and recognize the problem for what it truly is is the moment you begin to reboot. 

Remember that we treat slips as data here at the Porn Reboot program. I’m not interested in porn so much as I’m interested in what led up to it. I don’t mean the conversation with your buddies at the bar either, the one that got your mind racing and led you to relapse the minute you got through your door at home. I’m interested in the in-between: what emotion did that conversation spark and what were you trying to medicate by watching porn and jerking off when you got home?

It’s not the porn, brother. Your buddies at the bar can go home and leave PornHub running on their TV without a second thought, but not you. And not me, either. We aren’t like those guys, but why? If it were the porn itself, your buddies wouldn’t be able to control themselves with porn on the TV in the living room. So why can’t we?

It’s the emotions we’re using porn to medicate.

You must recognize that the problem lies within yourself, not on PornHub or YouPorn or Instagram, or Hollywood movies. It’s not the women at the gym or women at work or women anywhere. 

It’s you. 

That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, though. It doesn’t mean you’re evil or pathetic or weak-willed. It simply means that you don’t respond to porn the way that other people do. But it also means that it’s your responsibility to find a way through. And it’s relieving to know that I’m the problem, not the porn because that means I am also the solution.

The same applies to you, brother. If you are the problem then you are also the solution. Your freedom from out-of-control sexual behavior doesn’t sit with any of the porn sites or social media or what women choose to wear. Your freedom from out-of-control behavior is within your power. It’s up to you to recognize that truth, take responsibility for it, and get into action.

It’s also relieving to know that you aren’t alone. You may feel like the only person in the world struggling with this problem, but if you were then the Porn Reboot program wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t have pages of blog posts, hundreds of YouTube videos, and millions of podcast downloads. The problem affects thousands more men than you, brother, and all it takes is a quick look in our free Facebook group to realize you are not alone.

I invite you to take responsibility for the real problem and to join us on the path to freedom from out-of-control behavior with porn, sex, and masturbation. Once you accept that you’re the problem and recognize that you’re also the solution, you can only go up from there. Join us, brother, and find the freedom you’ve been searching for. It’s right here; all you have to do is join in.

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