[speak.aditya.asia] -Diary- Road to Glory[24M]

"Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth."
- Mike Tyson

Had a relapse today after 35 days of Nofap. Starting this diary to vent out my thoughts and make myself accountable. I have been trying to help other people in their journey while I myself was struggling. I thought maybe it will be a good way to increase accountability. But today while reading a topic written by @neveragaintw about how planning is vital for a long nofap journey, I realized that-

  • I didn’t have a concrete reason to be on nofap which will hold me back and support me in fighting these urges.
  • As the days passed I started becoming over confident and all this lead to be an inevitable disaster.

Now, I have decided to focus more on addressing the issues and the reason behind this addiction rather than blindly fighting the urges everyday without any cause and strategy. What is it that I want to achieve through this, how can I leverage this energy to be more productive and how can I be honest to myself rather than burying my head in the sand and thinking everything is fine.

I dont want any superpowers, I just want to be a better ‘ME’.

If anybody wants to add then my sharing code is 46b729.

Its day zero, its the worst. Already ashamed of myself for giving in to temptations.

Let’s begin from tomorrow.

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Great idea! I just realised we are the same age, at a similar point in our manhood in a sense. I think you are wise to look what might be causing you to feel this addiction and compulsion rather than blindly fighting it as you say.

It is important to acknowledge the way you see yourself and the way you treat yourself to understand more about why we get addicted to things. A big factor in addiction is trauma. Trauma can be very small or very big but all levels of trauma deserve some attention or else they become trapped in your body and cause you persistent pain which eventually makes us turn to addiction to alleviate this pain we are avoiding.

The key to overcoming any suffering that is trapped within your body and causing you to be less than you can be is to find this feeling via talking or writing about your painful experiences you may have had in your younger or maybe older life and when the associated pain from recalling these experiences arises you must not run away or distract yourself from it but instead allow the pain in. It will be scary and you will probably want to run but if you can relax and feel the pain and any other difficult emotions that come up then you will not be running from anything anymore and this healing should make you stronger and any craving will have less power over you as a result.

I know this is all a bit off topic this thread is about your journey and your experiences but I felt like sharing this bit of advice in this moment based on what I have learned about addiction and especially what causes addiction. You are on the right track looking more at the root of the problem rather than fighting the symptoms (the addictions as a result of), there may be less short term advancement but if you can heal whatever is messed up at the root then your quality of life can be improved forever.

I support you in your journey to come and I think no less of you for relapsing, I hope you find the strength to keep fighting for a better future for yourself :facepunch:

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@petrassib the things you said about trauma is something to think about. Not at all off topic, i need all the things which can help me addressing all the factors which can act as triggers in the future and I must have a way to supress them… Thanks for taking out time to write this, and thanks for that message on the message board too… That too was much needed…

I want to know what drives you to fight those urges, what are you seeking out of this journey? What’s your ‘Why’? Please do tell whenever you get time…

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I’ll try to keep it short because I feel like the spotlight should be on you in this thread but I’ll try to give an answer here if it may help.

I quit masturbation because I want to be free. Free from pain and suffering. Free to love and care for myself and those who mean the most to me. I realised during this journey that quitting masturbation would not free me from suffering but instead clear a path for me to free myself from suffering.

Societal pressure to be a “man”, get women, be emotionless, make money, care for no one but yourself. Family pressure to amount to something, continue family traditions, be an active member of the family, make everyone proud. Pressure from myself to realise my creative potential, to be very athletic, to be confident and to be lovable.

Without realising it I was suffering under the weight of all of this pressure. The more I suffered, the less weight I could bare. I quit masturbation with the hopes that it would give me “superpowers” and “cure” me of this pressure and pain and I believed it would for the first few weeks.

It did not do that, what it did do was give me enough strength and vitality to be able to dig deep internally and display my insecurities and my suffering to myself. The strength it gave me allowed me to experience this pain without running away and afterwards grow stronger than ever before. Because the true “superpower” does not come from hyper masculinity or abstinence from masturbation, it comes from the capacity to be fearlessly vulnerable in each moment.

I started NoFap to escape my pain and instead it helped me to accept it.

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The day after a relapse is the easiest to go through. Kept myself busy all day long, in addition to the morning workout I will now do half an hour of functional training in the evening to release all the excess energy which was leading me to edging.Though the brain still has the audacity to offer a trip back to the Dopamine Land but it is easy to say no to it and the brain seems to be chill with it as it got its share the day before. I have decided to shift focus from counting days to focus more on churning out maximum out of the day. Today the first thought as I woke up was that of the relapse and that I lost all the progress. I felt as vulnerable as I used to before starting out on this journey. I had so much to do and so much to think about. I followed my daily routine more strictly and it felt a bit easy to be in control of my mind.

I had a great deal to reflect about today, to make sure that I actually believed that the reason for which I started this was a problem for me or I just felt it that it is a problem at a superficial level. Why did I start entertaining the idea of edging when I knew that it is a problem and will one day lead to a relapse? Where did I go wrong? How to move on now and what will I have to do to make sure that what happened yesterday will not happen again. I have tried to find out some answers for each of the questions but I will write about it one by one to keep the post short and to make sure that I am not giving a lot of time in writing this Diary.

My reason -
-A bit of a preface about the addiction-
I have been indulged in PMO for more than a decade, it was my escape from every little and big problem which I faced in life. It became a routine thing, come back from school, PMO, then continue with days work. I used to perform miserably in every facet of my life. No interest in sports, no necessity of having any goal or aim in life.
In the past three or four years I started realizing that I am becoming a person, the likes of which I used to hate in the past. I acted weird in front of women. I could not go more than a year in any of my relationships. I get bored really fast from a relationship. It felt as if that the things which happens are not what I expected out of a relation. And as a result had break-ups which I couldn’t handle emotionally and had quite a few emotional breakdowns. I started avoiding any kind of contact with women. My view towards the opposite sex changed and I started objectifying women. In addition to all that my focus got deteriorated, I started smoking and then drinking a lot. Couldn’t handle even a slightest of adversity in my life.
Sense dawned upon me after seeing live examples of people failing miserably in life due to similar things which I am doing and the end point of my journey is going to be the same I somehow stopped myself from falling down further. I was able to improve on every aspect of life but couldn’t do anything about my view towards women and constant lustful thoughts in my mind. Every little stimulus acted as a trigger and then I had to PMO to get rid of that.

Cutting it short, After giving a lot of thought today I tried to reinstate my reason for doing this is-

  • to remove lust completely from my system
  • to change my view towards women
  • to gain control over my body and mind
  • to stop myself from enjoying momentary pleasures and rather focus on long term goals which gives actual happiness instead of this fake one.

I hope this time I will stay true to my course and wont give in to temptation and instant gratifications.

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Got some more things to keep in perspective from this.

We keep doing it without realizing how badly it is fucking with every aspect of our lives. Almost every negative habit can somehow be related to this, procrastination, impulsiveness, poor lifestyle etc. and all this in turn starts destroying our relations and desire to achieve anything.

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Once again the fight to be productive was on today, tried to tackle my addiction to phone by turning it off while I studied. Man the addiction is real, I wanted to check it every once in a while and I felt agitated when I realized that it is switched off. I still couldn’t finish my daily target as I felt tired due to the addition of functional training in the evening.

Though the urges were almost non existent today but still I noticed some triggering events which used to lead me to fap. One thing is for sure that I can’t get over this addiction by just not fapping. I may recover or improve on it by creating a new life rather changing my thinking gradually, where it is easier to not get aroused very easily.
Today I tried my best to remind me again and again that I need to see everyone with the same perspective as in men and women. I shall not see each of them differently. It helped a bit, maybe continued efforts in this direction may help me in embedding this thought in my system.

I got to increase my productivity and improve time management too. And I definitely need to improve upon my sleep timings, i am shrinking it down to a concerning level.

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You are doing a great job!
have the same problem. I think it’s not possible to change the productivity from one day to the other to a perfect level. I too don’t have my phone near me and it kind of stresses me out.
I started about 2 weeks ago to try to focus on only one thing at the time. It takes some time but you will see that it will be easier every day.

Keep going like this and it will be much easier in the near future

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Now I am feeling that the last relapse was necessary or else I couldn’t have tried to connect with the addiction at this level. The problem with just ‘not fapping’ is that you keep thinking about not fapping all day long and ultimately you fap because all that irritation and frustration needs to go somewhere but you haven’t provided any. Was lucky to read that post of yours about planning though else I would be repeating what I knew best.

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It took me pretty long to get this insight too :sweat_smile:
I remembered what I forget in the post before. About the going to bed thing.
I started to make a fixed habit that I close my computer and turn of my phone at 11pm. I then get myself 30min to calm down (a bit of reading and some stretching) and then I go to bed.

I feel so much better since I have this habit. I don’t stay up 'till 2 am anymore and I wake up so much more refreshed.
It takes some days or weeks to get this habit. It stressed me out at the beginning since I thought that I remove 3 hrs of productive work time. but it makes you so much more efficient and happy

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I will try to do it, its only possible if I completed my daily targets before that time. And I might need to cut off caffeine in the evening. Sleep is really essential, my focus is taking a toll due to that.

definitely no caffeine after 6 or 7 pm.
it destroys your sleep and you will feel even worse the next day

exceptions are possible if i really have to get stuff done but not more then two days in a row

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Day 3
Had a lazy day today, though I did most of what was in the to do list but felt a bit low on energy. Its highly unlikely that it is due to nofap, it may be because the intensity of workout has increased and also I am sleeping less. I felt rather uninterested towards studying today as all I had to do was to revise things which is my least favorite part, thats an alarm for me that the routine needs to be rejigged. I’ll make one before I sleep. And I’ll sleep early too.

I just write about gym and studies because that is pretty much everything what I do everyday. My social interaction with people these days is next to none because I don’t want to waste time in going out and hanging out with people for no purpose and everytime it leads me to drinking and smoking. So bear with me.
Urges were nonexistent today and I even found out a way to not get aroused by women very easily. I have decided that whenever I will come across a situation which may trigger me, I’ll just start thinking that the person in front of me is a human. I will unlearn what I used to think about women by telling myself again and again that there is just a human in front of me. It may sound silly but it actually worked a lot of times today.

I also kept my mind away from any kind of lustful thoughts, as soon as I started thinking something on those lines I took a step back and started thinking about studies instead.

This diary have proved to be helpful so far, it is helping me in reminding about my promise made to myself and helping me in remaining conscious at all times.

I read something strong today. “You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”

It’s a timely reminder that it’s not our problems that defeat us, it’s our inability to come up with resourceful solutions to them…

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Good thoughts bro!

We all are human, people with feelings too.
Always remembering this help us to show empathy, respect and true love for our fellow humans, and we get more happy in return.

Let’s keep going! Sometimes we can not control what happens around us, but we surely can control how we will react to it.

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A note to self for realizing that I am being passively productive for a last few days.

The world is bigger than you think it is, it is more than what you have assumed it to be. You dont need to be afraid to explore more, there is nothing to fear about. No one can do anything to you unless you let them do it. It is not they who have hurt you, it is you who let them hurt you. You became so sensitive that every little thing started to hurt you. Rise above this pitiable thinking of yours that you are entitled to anything. It is your own vibrations that others receive and respond. No one owes you anything as you already know. You should live in the present, stop thinking about each and every action of yours. Yes everything has consequences, but making a choice in present is what leads to those consequences. Make right choices rather than thinking about the consequences. You are killing yourself by letting your past haunt you. You are doing injustice to yourself by letting the things which happened earlier stop you from taking chances and risks in your life. Always trying to be safe and running away from being vulnerable. You being of importance is not that matters, you being productive is what matters. Productivity is important, productivity leads to progress and progress leads to achievement. It is not easy, you will not get anything by being passively productive, you will not get anything by acting like you are being productive. This feeling of getting validation from others and letting other people know that ‘Hey, look I am doing something productive in here’ is not letting you enjoy your productivity. First of all they dont care what is going on with your life and secondly why should they? You have constricted yourself in a stable environment, you have stopped growing mentally, you are just putting in information and thats about it. There is being no practical use of that information. You have got stuck in this point of your life. Getting a degree or some letters prefixed to your name is not your lives purpose, though if that what matters to you, then it isn’t going to actualize unless you stop reaching for the end result and rather make every second of your day productive. The distractions are all just giving you immediate gratification which is not adding any value to your life, your career, your growth. Its kind of a junk food which is tasty at that moment and is as empty as that funny video on youtube which just made you laugh like an ass for a second and then it all just vanished. You are back to your present stagnated life. It did not add any value neither it would yield any future benefits for you. It led you no where.

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Very true! It does feel like PMO when I spend time watching cat videos on YouTube and then when I’m back to work, I realize, I have wasted so much time. And this wasted time won’t ever come back. Thank you for sharing your ideas.

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Wasted one more day, was on YouTube the whole time. I will not sit on the bed to study from now on.
Getting irritated easily, not sure if it is because of pmo. Urges again were non existent today.
Its extremely important for me to study, and I know that but at the time of actually studying I find something easy to do like youtube, or I make some impulsive purchases online, or suddenly I have a startup idea. This must end.

Planned a bit about what is needed to be done. Tomorrow’s a new day, I am going to make the most out of it.

Maintain an hourly timeline journal. And then read it next day and reflect upon it. And it looks like a visual chart or graph that gives you an insight into your own wandering mind. I’m currently dealing with this too.

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I am going to try to make the hourly journal from today…

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Use timestamps in every note entry. That’s crucial. For example, 29th April 2018 9:57 AM : distracted, watching YouTube, not working; 29th April 2018 10:30 AM : wasted time on YouTube, now back to studies.
If you obsessively document your activities by time-stamping them, you’ll be able to visualize how you spent your day. This will forcefully bring your attention to respecting time and make you aware when the car is diverting and going off the highway and what should you do about it.
Extraordinary dysfunction needs extraordinary measurement to stop and resolve the issue. You’re either obsessed to be number 1 or you’re taking a back seat. Overall you’re going to learn to be very punctual, time conscious (whole India lacks this mind you :grin: ) and gain freedom from mental distraction.

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