There I was, laying on my bed naked. The urge to masturbate to porn fueled my decision making. The mission was 90% complete. There was just one decision left to make: Am I going to do what I know is best, or am I going to ignore that voice and let empty pleasure take priority?
For the record, I have nothing against porn or masturbation. This moment was about me, not the activity.
The truth is that I knew, deep down, that masturbating was not something I wanted to do. Said another way, the more loving, self-growth related choice was to break this pattern and walk away.
Breaking old patterns can be difficult. We typically label these as bad habits. Things like overeating, procrastinating, and things that generally make us feel good in the short term, but hurt us in the long term.
What is most puzzling is how we seem to keep our old patterns going despite knowing it's not what we want to do, and promising ourselves we'd be done with it.
So...what's the solution? How do we break free?
You may not want to hear this, especially because it's extremely straight forward and doesn't make it any less easy, per se.
The answer is this, when it's time to say yes to new habits, and no to old ones, the key is exactly that: say yes to the new habit and say no to the old one.
Now, here's a piece of advice to help raise your awareness so, that when the moment comes, you can anticipate what's to come and prepare yourself.
Inevitably, your old pattern is going to call your name. Not only is it going to call your name, it is going to rush your body with feelings that literally motivate you to follow through with your old pattern.
This is what's missing with the habit you want to build. There's a lack of habituated good feelings that motivate you to follow through without having to force yourself.
That's why saying no to old patterns is challenging. You must be conscious enough to say no, in order to combat the unconscious pattern motivating you to say yes.
Cause that's what's happening when old patterns keep running our lives. We're at a low level of consciousness, which means little to no power over unconscious behaviors.
This is why we'll literally eat until we slightly vomit. This is why we'll seem to sabotage ourselves even when we obviously don't want to do that. We're simply not in control of ourselves at times.
It's not going to happen any other way. Either you take charge of yourself, and say no when it's time to say no, or you'll forever be run by patterns that you wish would change, but never will. Not unless you take charge and say no.
You will instantly take your power back when you say no. And you will continue to lack power when you don't.
That's what's missing in your execution. When it's time to turn left, we turn right. And that action is on us. It might hurt at first. In fact, it's GOING to hurt at first. We're used to quitting when it's actually time to keep going. So yes, it's going to fuckin hurt at first.
You have the plan in place, but when it's time to actually execute, you don't make the right choice.
That's on you.
When it's time to say no, you say "fuck it." There's no secret in that. That's YOU.
You can do all kinds of stuff to try and trick yourself, or even influence yourself to say no, but when push comes to shove, saying no is going to be the only real antidote. And saying yes (to the right action) is what will create change.
I know...
It's not sexy...it completely invalidates your desire to blame something else other than you...and it ends your need to keep looking for the right solution to your problem.
The thing you need has nothing to do with "knowing" what to do, the thing you need is "doing" what you know to do.
Stop complaining. You already knew that, right? Yet you're still here trying to figure something else out. There is nothing else to figure out. You have all the right answers, and even deep scientific answers to those right answers.
There's nothing left to know.
You either transition to the next phase or you don't.
Do what you know, or don't.
And the only thing you need to do, if things continue to stay the same, is look at the film.
When it was time to turn right, did you turn right or did you turn left.
When it was time to say no, did you say no or did you say yes.
So...what are you going to do?
