When I don't feel like going ahead with a good habit, I ask myself 'What is the alternative?'. And the answer is a lack of discipline. Often, the answer is going back to the behaviours and identity I used to hold onto. Sometimes the answer is porn.

Quitting pornography is not easy. But it is worth it. And, throughout this journey you will face challenges. You will have to do things you don't feel like doing. You will have to deal with some uncomfortable emotions. But wow, let me tell you, the freedom and the feeling you get from being disciplined is so much better than that temporary, fleeting pleasure from porn.

Doing hard things is worth it.

Shame plays a huge part in addiction or any bad habit and in this episode I talk about my experience of shame and how to overcome it.

Today I talk about shame and how your porn habit has nothing to do with who you are deep down. Instead, it has everything to do with your upbringing and environment.

Feeling deprived of something creates more resistance, more frustration and ultimately - can lead to an inner conflict with no winners.

Throughout this episode, I talk about how to let go of this deprived mindset and how really we want to let go of these thoughts and replace them with ones that focus more on what we do want, and less on the thing we think 'we're missing out on'.

The reality is that we can always have porn. It is always an option. It is just not the right option.

I hope you find this podcast useful and feel free to get in touch with me at www.thomasmolyneux.com

Replace porn with whatever you enjoy doing instead... just make sure you're not getting crazy dopamine surges from it!

Our society is full of distractions.

Companies are desperately trying to grab our attention. Even worse, trying to get us to buy their products and services - many of which have a detrimental impact on our mental health and life.

Social media, fast food, pornography. Quick wins. Instant gratification. Huge dopamine spikes. Great pleasures.

But, is it all worth it? What is the cost?

Often the cost is the life we really wish to live. So, what the solution?

Not hating ourselves into better habits. Shame only makes things worse.

Using awareness and acceptance of our discomfort, we can rise above the temporary sensations which cruelly attempt to get us to give in to that which we know is bad for us.

You can do it and on the other end of discipline, we find freedom.

For help in quitting porn, get in touch with me at www.thomasmolyneux.com

Shame plays a huge role in preventing people from being able to quit porn.

The feeling can keep us stuck in the past and lead us straight back to where we don't want to be.

Letting go of this shame is really important in enable us to quit porn for good, embrace who we are right now and build confidence.

The good news is that you don't even need to quit porn to deal with shame better. You can deal with shame right away.

In this episode, I share my top 3 tips on letting go of shame and how this will help you quit porn.

Thanks for listening and if you get a chance, please leave a review - it would be massively appreciated.

So I've been experiencing a lot of benefits from quitting all artificial sexual stimulation recently and I am really excited to share this progress with you!

It wasn't long ago that I was in quite a bad place having returned to social media to seek out sexual content. 'Seek out' is the key part there. As dopamine is the molecule of more, it is always seeking. And so huge spikes of dopamine can be released by simply seeking sexual content on social media, even if that isn't what is regularly defined by others as porn.

The pathways in the brain are very similar. But, I lied to myself, and would rationalise by saying 'Well, it isn't porn'. But the truth is, it was basically the same.

Since my last setback, I have developed much healthier, better habits.

I wake up at 7am most days and do 100 push-ups, take a cold shower and then meditate for an hour.

This feels good.

In this episode I share my experience of getting past 5 weeks on semen retention / NoFap / Quitting Porn.

When you seek out porn and the eventual orgasm, you get a huge spike in dopamine. Your brain then processes this huge spike as a good thing and so a transcription factor called Delta fosb accumulates.

This leads to your brain putting a high value on porn and therefore future cues lead to spikes in dopamine, even before you go ahead and seek out porn.

So basically, the more porn you watch, often the harder it can become (At least from a psychological perspective) to quit.

However, there is hope!

I personally don't like the whole 'addiction' model much. It offers little value and makes quitting porn seem like an even more difficult task than it really is.

The truth is that self-compassion is needed to quit. So sure, you should totally aim to quit cold-turkey... but equally, if you do have a setback - don't worry about it!

We are all human, we all make mistakes. It's those of us who choose to never give up that will reap the rewards of success in the end!

In this episode I talk about what it really takes to quit porn and the downside of doing so.