Thrive Beyond Pornography

The urges are taking over my life – or that is kind of what a lot of us are feeling right now.

For a lot of us this last 2 weeks have been really challenging.

A lot of us are feeling trapped, stuck, and cooped up

This is driving a lot of behavior that we have not used to buffer in a long time.

For some of us it is eating –

A lot of people are going to pornography – the data indicating that people are visiting illicit  sites indicates a huge spike since the beginning of the covid outbreak.

A lot of that is driving overwhelm, frustration and shame

Our brains are really interesting machines.

They do a couple of things really well and then they miss a couple of other really important things if we don’t manage them.

So, the first thing our brains do really well, is they see danger in bad feelings. 

But something that is not a strength of our brain is distinguishing between bad feelings. 

Being chased by a bear feels bad. 

Being bored also feels bad.

Which one is going to kill you?

Your brain doesn’t know.

So it throws something out there to keep you from feeling bad. 

In the case of being chased by a bear, people have been known to lay down and play dead as well as run screaming or even to stand up and face the bear, dealing with it head on.

In the case of being bored, you have essentially the same three options, you can lay down and play dead, for me this looks  a lot like depression.

You can take off running, which is looking for adrenalin. So, food, pornography, social media

Or you can stand up and face the boredom, feel it and deal with it head on.

The big difference here is, when you face boredom, you know that eventually it will go away. That is not always the case with a bear. 

Now, if you were faced with a bear and you did any of those three things no one would judge you

So, don’t pile shame on to your choice of how you choose to behave.

Figure out how you want to behave ahead of time.

Build in time for boredom

Create. You have projects that you have been putting off. 

Engage your family

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Love –

As papi to 8 children I have been regularly faced with a significant load in trying to connect with my kids.

There is a lot that happens in life, there is a lot of living that 10 people do in one house, so there is constantly something to wash, clean, pick up, put back, get out, fix, make, build, take apart, and leave alone. 

The other day my oldest was really upset that he was having to participate in the chores around the house because he felt that it was unfair, he hadn’t created any of the mess and now he was being asked to clean up.

This is the part where I probably would have gotten mad at him, escalated the… we’ll call it a discussion, and told him off for how ungrateful he was being, how he was acting entitled and life just isn’t fair so stop whining about it and get it done.

For me, my children’s behavior has often been a point of both pride and a source of deep frustration.

It has meant that I was either a good parent or a bad one. It has meant that I was doing it right or that I was failing miserably. 

We used to go out with our 4 or six kids ( we don’t go out with all 8 at the same time these days partly because they are all at such different stages of life and the older ones often have activities). People would stop us so often and tell us what well behaved children we had. Sitting at dinner in a restaurant or grocery shopping was usually a high point because, in public our kids were kids, but the best behaved kind. 

They did what we asked, they sat nicely and had conversations with us and we all enjoyed being out together. 

These days we are all getting a lot more time with our children because of school closures and work from home or work shutdowns. 

For us, even though I work from home and we homeschool our kids, our lives have shifted dramatically from one of going to sports activities, church youth activities, seminary at 5:40 AM, our oldest going to work, our littles playing with the neighborhood kids and all the normal stuff that you do when you are a large family of highly social people. 

We now stay home more, our kids interact with outside people a lot less, practically not at all, in fact and we see a lot more of the inside of our home and each other. 

All of this leads up to the moment two nights ago when my oldest was what I would call excessively upset over being asked to clean up a mess that he didn’t make. 

As I stood there, tired from a day of work, with a tube of caulk in my hands because I was putting it on the baseboards that I had just replaced on the entire main floor, I looked at my son with anger and frustration welling up in me. 

I wanted him to just help, to just get it done, to just stop complaining about the work that was obviously going to need to be done by someone. I didn’t understand why he was acting like this and why did I have to deal with his bad attitude.

I could feel myself getting warm and I was seeing red. 

At that moment I realized something that I had been trying to do for a few months now. I was trying to see my children and everyone around me the way I wanted to be seen. And trying to eliminate what felt like near constant bickering among my kids when they are home. 

I realized that this was that moment where I could change the whole situation. I realized that love was the one thing that I needed to bring to the equation.

So, I just stopped running around applying caulk, even though it felt like there was a time crunch because that stuff dries, and I looked at my baby boy who is now the size of a grown man and I said, “It’s ok, I’ll do it when I finish this. You don’t have to.” 

Then I put my hand on his shoulder with love in my eyes and went back to what I was doing. 

I had peace, in that moment. I knew that I might have to go back and clean up, but it was ok. I realized that no fight was worth that clean up. 

No amount of obedience is worth the conflict.  

Victim-hood and the blame game.

-      Not too many people think or express that they are the victim.

-      Not weakness, just our brain justifying our behavior

-      Indicators of victim mentality.

-      Blame

o  If my spouse would just meet my needs better

o  If I just hadn’t looked at porn that first time

o  If my church leaders would just help me more

o  The house clean on ramsey –

o  If only the circumstance was different

o  Ask yourself, do I blame anyone else for things that I don’t like about myself or my behavior?

-      Defensiveness

o  Byron Katie talks about defensiveness as the first act of war

o  That person doesn’t know my situation

o  My life is different.

o  No one else can understand what I’m going through

o  No matter what I do it’s never good enough

o  Zach driving

o  This is a place of defending your actions even though you might want to change but think you don’t know how

o  Ask yourself, is there someone in my life that is causing my pain?

o  

-      Complaining

o  I just can’t catch a break

o  Also, just plain negativity,

o  this is never going to work, nothing I do works

o  You feel sorry for yourself and feel trapped.

o  You know this person in your life, they are constantly looking to engage in a conversation that is negative..

o  Building a business has really challenged me in this area

o  I just have to ignore those thoughts and move forward with my best plans.

o  Ask yourself, do I complain    , do I excuse my behavior, are my thoughts and words negative?

o  

-      Key indication is that the stories that you tell involve “someone did something to me” “it happened to me”

-      “I was reading the news and the site showed an article that made me want to click further and that took me down the rabbit hole” – it just happened to me

-      Be careful about your words – look for a victim and villain

See audio

Action bias

We act in order to gain some sense of control or even to eliminate a problem

-      1 - Doing something is better than doing nothing

o  We see this in business where we begin looking for solutions before we have even fully developed what the problem is.

o  This is what we do when we are dealing with addictive behaviors.

o  Giving in to our urges is an action that we engage in for a variety of reasons – sometimes because we think it will make the urge go away or because we want to do it regardless of the consequences.

o  This also comes into play when we engage in distracting ourselves.

o  Keep ourselves busy – go run rather than deal with the urge, get busy with work rather than deal with the urge other distracting behaviors.

o  Or the classic, “im craving this, so I have to eat it.”

o  

-      12 - Others expect me to do something.

o  Soccer goalies jumping left or right when statistically they should stay in the middle of the goal

o  White knuckling is a form of action where we exert extraordinary effort to keep our urges and impulses at bay.

o  Others expect us to just do it, or in this case not do it. 

o  The action we are taking is fighting the urge

o  Holding it at bay.

o  

-      There is an alternative.

-      David Attenborough – iguana chased by killer snakes video. 

-      Narrates very little, at end says in a chill voice – a near miraculous escape.

-      That’s it,

-      Allowing the urge –

-      Just sit and watch it

-      Do nothing,

-      Observe – feelings, thoughts, urges

-      

Battle of the brains - why your lower brain hijacks your best intentions and you still buffer

So you have a problem.

We all do. 

We are trying to survive in a world where survival is virtually guaranteed

Infant mortality is down across the world

Life expectancy is up. Since 1950 when life expectancy was 45 years old to 2020 we’ve added nearly 30 years to the average life of a person.

Yet, with this survival going on we are also getting into things that are quote bad for us, like pornography, excessive eating, video gaming, over spending, and so many other buffers that keep us entertained in the very short term, but that bring a host of negative consequences in the long run.

Why? 

Because of the thing that got us to this point.

Our lower brain and it’s effective use of the motivational triad.

Ok, yes, all those words.

What ‘s the lower brain, why does it have a triad and does that involve nuclear arms?       

-      Lower brain

o  Conservation of energy

o  Seeking Pleasure

o  Avoiding pain

Podcast - pain, process it so it doesn’t turn into buffering

·     We’ve talked about life being 50/50

·     Episode 12                  

·     unhappiness is half of life

·     I’m going to talk about pain – really, all negative emotions, lonliness, sadness, tired, upset, whatever you think of as negative emotions

·     Pornography users, over eaters, over spenders, video gamers

·     We do those things to buffer the feelings

·     Lower brain doesn’t understand that momentary dopamine leads to increased pain

·     Here’s what happens

o  Something happens to trigger the pain

§ – wife goes out for girls night, so you’re lonely

§ – you’re on a business trip, so you feel like you have nothing to do (translated – bored)

§ –  something happens at work, so you feel like a failure

§ Your kids behavior is bad, so you feel like a bad mom

§ 

o  You don’t know why you are feeling this - not because you don’t know what happened, but our minds are pretty good denial machines.

o  And we usually have habits that buffer away the moment so we find ourselves removed from the situation before we reflect on what went on.

o  Pain runs through your body

o  You resist the emotion by using–

§ Pornography

§ Food

§ Excessive spending

§ Social media scrolling

·     Using these to avoid feelings creates additional negative emotions

o  Pornography – guilt, shame, self-loathing, disconnection from partner

o  Food – guilt, shame, self-loathing, overweight,

o  Overspending – guilt, shame, financial worry, out of control

o  Social media scrolling – disconnected, envy, unconfident, depressed

·     All of these tactics create a long-term increase of pain, they don’t help you avoid it. 

·     We don’t usually think of the long-term consequences of our actions, especially when we feel pain. 

·     

·     Just like pulling our hand away from a hot stove, we react to pain in a way that provides immediate relief -

·     I took my youngest two to get vaccinated and they screamed and fussed and cried because they knew that getting a shot was going to hurt. 

·     What they didn’t think about and what they don’t have the capacity to understand yet that adults do is that momentary pain will greatly decrease the likelihood that they will get polio or measles or some other disease with long lasting effects.

·     

·     Now that is physical

·     But our brains don’t easily distinguish between physical pain and emotional pain.

·     When we feel emotional pain our lower brain wants to avoid it just as much as it does physical pain.

·     

·     We don’t usually choose to feel pain.

·     choose to avoid pain in the moment and magnify it long run.

·     Overeaters see this in their physical weight.

·     Pornography users see this in their self-confidence and in their relationships with their spouses.

·     When we scroll social media to excess we see this in greater depression rates and lower life satisfaction.

·     You can avoid the pain in the moment with a quick hit of dopamine, but that doesn’t remove the underlying issue

·     And more often than not, it magnifies negativity in your life

·     So, what to do about that.

·     Here are 4 things you can do to keep your negative feelings from magnifying your pain.

·     

·     1 – do a thought download when you start to feel pain

o  Get it out on paper.

o  You may not be able to do this all the time, but try it. 

o  You’ll begin to see the thoughts generating your pain.

o  The more you practice this, the more likely you are to succeed at feeling your feelings rather than doubling down on them through buffering

·     2 – own your pain

o  Understand and believe that your pain comes from your thoughts

o  Believe that your pain is yours and not because of someone or something else.

o  

·     3 – ask yourself questions

o  Is this thought serving me?

o  How can this pain help me?

o  

·     4 – invite yourself to let go of the thought

o  If the thought that is causing you pain is not serving you, let it go.

o  You may want to keep certain thoughts because that pain is useful or meaningful in some way. 

·     More than anything, feeling your pain in the moment rather than buffering it away with food, pornography, video games, social media or whatever it is that you use will make your life more full and allow you to enjoy the positive 50 percent of life more fully.

·     

Becoming the person you want to be is an infinite game.

-      Finite and infinite games are an interesting subject

-      I was listening to simon sinek and he talked about the difference between the two.

-      Finite games have set numbers of players, specific rules and an end point.

-      Infinite games have rules that may change, the number of players may change and the purpose of an infinite game is to keep the game going.

-      One night while traveling home from a single adult activity when my pornography use was weighing on me heavily, I looked out at the dark road and the distance ahead and felt a deep longing to be better.

-      As the highway hummed along under me and the solitude of the car pulled my thoughts deeper into my actions I prayed as earnestly as I knew how that if I could just not have this one problem, I would be a pretty amazing person.

-      What I didn’t see from that point in my life that I see so clearly now, is that becoming the person I want to be is not an arrival at some particular set of attributes

-      It involves so much more than that.

-      To become great at life we have to stop thinking about what we are doing in terms of arriving at an end

-      We have to think of long term, continued, and sustainable growth and learning.

-      So how does an infinite game work and how can you become a great player becoming the best version of your self that you can be. 

-      Five things have to happen to play in the infinite game according to simon.

-      1. You have to have a just cause.

-      2. You have to have trust in teams

-      3. You have to have a worthy adversary

-      4. You have to have existential flexibility

-      5. You have to have the courage to lead

1 – just cause – you have to have a cause that is so just, right, or important that you would willingly sacrifice for it.

-      As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints there is a lot of moral guidance about the cause we work for.

-      Eternal life is a just cause that we look to willingly sacrifice for.

-      An eternal family is another.

-      The just cause for most of us is our desire to be in concert with our Heavenly Father. 

-      We believe that is the most important thing we can do, because we believe that it will bring joy into our lives.

-      There are lots of great just causes. The work you do could be considered a just cause.

-      The United states was founded on a just cause – it is about an ideal, so amazing, so important that we may never achieve the ideal in this life, but we will give our all to it while we can.

-      This is what give’s us purpose. The striving toward an ideal. Sacrificing for a greater state of goodness.

-       Simon talks about it this way, he says, “imagine a world that is different than the one we have now, that you believe if everything that you did in your organization went perfectly, that you would contribute to the building of that world.”

-      Moroni or Ether not sure if Moroni is just quoting Ether here or inserting his commentary on what Ether wrote but this is what he said, “…whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God”

-      So, for those of us who are constantly striving to become masters of self and build up who we are into the best version of the person we are, we are striving toward that vision of “a better world”

-      That is why we work to give up our addictive behaviors, why we strive to teach our children the gospel, why we accept callings at church that we don’t feel qualified to do or that we simply don’t want to do. 

Number 2 – Trusting teams

-      This one as Simon explained it did not have a readily apparent application for those of us working to become masters of self. 

-      As I listened, however, I saw some clear patterns of requirement parallels between the business world that Simon talks about and our home lives.

-      Just recently one of our children had been granted a privilege that I don’t think they merited.

-      Immediately that child abused the privilege, like within 15 minutes. 

-      Previously I would have probably laid into the kid. 

-      Told them their behavior was unacceptable and removed the privilege and really gotten upset.

-      However, over the last few years, I have been seeing this child as someone who needs to be trusted even though they make mistakes, because if I don’t teach them to trust they will not rise above their current level of behavior.

-      Simon talks about this as the trust in teams that we all need to have to play the infinite game well. 

-      We need to create and foster a team atmosphere within our lives and specifically within ourselves that does not lose it’s cool or ostracize those who make mistakes.

-      That includes ourselves. 

-      Beating yourself up is not usually helpful. 

-      That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences, it just means that treating yourself or others as irredeemable because of a mistake that was made creates an atmosphere where you begin to lose at the infinite game

-      Rather, accepting people and recognizing that they are truly doing their best will foster greater love and acceptance as well as give everyone around you a self driving thrust to be better

-      I don’t think this child should have this privilege. I don’t really want to police this privilege because it is more energy than I want to spend on the issue. 

-      But recognizing that I am playing an infinite game where growth and learning are more important than rules and Arriving, I felt that it was important to re-entrust this child with the privilege for his sake

-      There are consequences for the abuse of privilege, but there isn’t a sense that the person is irredeemable, broken or wrong.

-      This, in the long run, creates that sense of control and decision making that we all need to become better at who we want to be. 

-      Partly I do this for myself. I want to be able to trust them. I want to have them as part of my life team in a way that I believe I can trust them.

-      Same goes for our own behaviors. When we work to ask ourselves, what can I do to make my life and the lives of those around me better?

-      Rather than, berating ourselves and hating ourselves for slipping up and saying to ourselves we are broken because we weren’t perfect

-      We create a loving, team environment that we and those around us want to be a part of.

-      That is the kind of place where people can say that they are messing up and they need help and help will always be given.

-      

-      That is the kind of thing people will sacrifice their time, talents and energy to perpetuate. 

-      Because it allows people to exercise their agency to be themselves, even if that means that they sometimes mess up. But when they mess up, we still love them. 

-      That is why that is winning at the infinite game.

-      And we have to trust ourselves as well. In the same way we trust others, build them up and believe that they are doing their best, we have to believe the same about ourselves.

-      When we do, we can look at our mistakes objectively and without shame and figure out better ways to move forward with our lives.

Number 3 – worthy rival

-      I think by this point you can see that the only true competitor in an infinite game is yourself.

-      Lasting as long as you can and being the best version of you is not about any one except you.

-      Brooke Castillo talks about doing things because she wants to see how much she can get done and how far she can take her growth. 

-      That is the purpose of the infinite game.

-      Simon talks, however, about a worthy rival

-      You know what this looks like if, in your life, you have that friend or family member that you love dearly and you are always trying to be as good as they are in your life. 

-      Hopefully they feel the same way as you

-      But you look up to them, strive to be amazing like them, and you are constantly trying to out do them. 

-      The key here is that Seeking out their competition makes you better not bitter.

-      Sometimes that will be an older person who drops out of the game before you, sometimes that will be a peer, sometimes it will be a younger person you get to admire as they grow.

-      What you have to remember is that this is about sharing, helping, growing – not hoarding, undermining, and shrinking your competition.

-      Number 4 – the capacity for existential flexibility

-      I have to say, when simon started talking about this, I had to look up existential and I still didn’t know what he was saying.

-      After working through it a couple of times, What I believe he is talking about is flexibility to adapt to the changing world in order to continue to exist and keep playing the game.

-      For companies that means being able to innovate and change as times do. 

-      One example of this is Kodak.

-      If you are not familiar with Kodak, they used to make film, then they discovered the digital camera.  

-      Then, for 10 years, they buried the technology.

-      They chose to keep it all under wraps until someone else figured it out rather than become the market leader and an innovator. 

-      Kodak went bankrupt because of that decision.

-      In our personal lives, what I take this to mean is that we need to be ever growing, learning, and building on our life experiences in such a way that we play as long and as well as we can.

-      For those of us who believe in eternal life, this is us living and growing to live the high standards we set for ourselves, so we can return and live with our Father in heaven.

-      Here simon talks about blowing up companies for the sake of innovation, but what does that look like for an individual .

-      Being willing to change your whole identity is enormously difficult as a person. 

-      I was coaching a woman recently who as she thought about a major shift in her career, “I don’t want this to be our identity”

-      Simon sinek makes the argument that for businesses to be the best they can, they must be willing to be flexible enough to change their entire identity. Kodak going from a film company to a digital camera company for instance.

-      I would argue, that to live your best life, you must be willing to change your entire self image and what you believe others image of you is.

-      You have to be willing to go from, zach Spafford, insurance guy, to zach Spafford LDS life coach for men and women with addictive behaviors, including pornography.

-      In fact, this was one of my biggest struggles in deciding to talk about my difficulty with pornography. 

-      This wouldn’t just be my job, this would be my identity. Something that I can’t escape on vacation and something that will follow me everywhere.

-      The risks are enormous, including money wise.

-      But the rewards are innumerable and extraordinary, including money wise.

-      

-      Number 5 - You have to have the courage to lead

-      In true leadership, even without titles or positions, we prioritize people over every other motivation.

-      This courage to lead, in our own lives, is where these principles come together.

-      Imagine how difficult it is to make an existential change with your just cause in mind

-      Some of you don’t have to imagine.

-      My wife, for instance, had one of those moments in her life, where she found and then joined the church of jesus Christ of latter-day saints.

-      She did this at great personal cost – her family wasn’t allowed to be at our wedding in the Chicago temple. 

-      For someone who had, their whole life, dreamed of having their father walk her down the isle, this was a tremendous blow.

-      Not only would Jim, my father in law not walk her down the aisle, not a single member of her family except darcy’s sister in law michelle would be at the temple on our wedding day. 

-      But she did it because she believed at the time that it was the best way forward and it was the way she would build her capacity to become the person she wanted to be.

-      Courage is also the place where we leave our need and desire to be right and are willing to admit to ourselves and to others that we don’t know what we are doing and that we need help.

-      When we can admit to ourselves that we aren’t the person we want to be, yet, that is where we begin to see a path forward to becoming that person.

-      That courage to lead is really more about honesty to others and one’s self than it is about almost any other thing. 

-      Rather than hunkering down in how right you are and, often by default, how wrong something or someone else is, being able to admit you may be wrong and objectively adjusting your views will do more for you than anything else on this list.

-      It is also the most difficult thing to do.

-      Partly because when we admit that we are wrong, deep down, we think that it means something about us that makes us a terrible person.

-      But those of us who practice the art of being wrong on purpose, find that it is pretty liberating. 

-      It also makes people more willing to listen to you. 

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Check out Darcy and I discussing trust, intimacy and connection in our relationship.