Thrive Beyond Pornography

Feelings The big question that comes up as I coach clients, whether they are trying to stop an addictive behavior or they are just trying to show up as the man or woman that they want to be, really captures the battle that we have every day over who we are and the behaviors we exhibit. Why do I want … ? Why do I want to earn a million dollars? Why do I want to become a doctor? Why do I want to get married? Why do I want to have the big house? Why do I want to stop looking at pornography? Why do I want to look at pornography? Why do I want to stop overeating? Why do I want to eat that whole chocolate bar? Why do I want to be more successful at work? These questions are about feelings. They are about how we think getting something or stopping something will make us feel.  Whenever you can ask that question, you are really asking “how do I want to feel?” Because everything that we want is based on how we think it will make us feel.    I think this is a really interesting conversation to have And those feelings drive every action in our life. If you have ever spent time in sales, like I did, you know that your goal is to help the person buying have a feeling of one sort or another. When people feel the right feelings, they act.  Feelings drive you to do everything you do. Sex, food, warmth, shelter, survival, are all driven by our feelings. In fact, the latest research shows that when we block certain feelings, our desire to do anything essentially is eliminated.  What that means to me is that if we can create the feelings we want, we can create the life we have always wanted.  Ok, so, let’s talk about what a feeling is. For the most part, a feeling is a vibration in our bodies. Most of us think that our feelings are caused by our circumstances. We think that because we live in a certain place or we have a certain job or our spouse says a certain thing, that is what causes our emotions.  The truth is our emotions come from the thoughts that we have about those circumstances. For a long time, as I dealt with my pornography use, I used to think, I can’t stop looking at pornography. The circumstance of pornography hasn’t changed, it is still out there and it isn’t going away. But, rather than think, I can’t, I now think, I can look at pornography, but I choose not to.  That creates a feeling that I prefer, a feeling of success and a feeling of being capable. Which in turn, created actions that resulted in my being able to choose not to look at pornography.  The same goes for every aspect of our lives.  We can feel happy, or successful, or capable, or loved, or whatever feeling we are looking to feel when we want to.  does that sound a little off? Just think about it for a second. Everything we do, we do because of how we want to feel.  Sometimes that means that we do things that make us feel good short term, but have negative feelings long term and sometimes we do things that make us feel bad short term, but have positive feelings long term. Pornography users use because they want to feel good. Over eaters over eat because they want to feel good. Successful people perform their best work because they want to feel successful. Kind people are kind because they want to feel love. Weight lifters work out because they want to feel powerful. And so on. So, if you take a moment and think about what you really want, then go deeper and ask, what makes me want that, what do I really, really want. Then ask yourself, how you will feel when you get what you want, you’ll find that when you dig deep enough, you really desire a feeling.  Good news is that your feelings all come from your thoughts, and you get to choose your thoughts! If you want to change

This week on the podcast, my friend Natalie Clay interviews Darcy and I. It is a great chat and a great chance to hear from Darcy, who I talk about often but we don't hear from enough on the podcast. Thanks to Natalie for interviewing us and sharing us with her audience. You can check her out at natalieclay.com or listen to her podcast Couples Coaching with Natalie Clay. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/couples-coaching-with-natalie-clay/id1459950159 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/couples-coaching-with-natalie-clay/id1459950159)

Three key components of self confidence and why you need to cultivate and build them into your life.

Relationships As I work with men and women, and their spouses, I find that one of the biggest issues that comes up is how pornography use affects their relationships. one thing that I often see and one thing that happened in my own relationship was that my wife thought that for her to be happy she needed to control me and my pornography use.  If you haven’t read that story go back to my blog and check out the one titled, “My wife used sex as a way to try and control me and I wanted her to” Lots of wives and husbands do this to varying degrees, especially when their spouse isn’t behaving in a way that they want. This is the rules part of all our relationships.  We have all these expectations of how our relationships should be. As I have learned and grown from a pornography user and now as a coach, something that each of us has to learn is that our relationships are just one thing.  They are our thoughts about another person. If you have ever had a boss you can’t stand but someone else loves them, you know what I am talking about, even if you have never thought about it this way. Another good example of this is our ward bishops. They can be figures that are beloved by almost everyone, but there are some that we just don’t get along with. And we also have ideas about who they should be and how they should behave.  As an example of how we think people aught to behave, When I was a young man I attended a youth conference where there happened to be a tv on in the lobby showing some Saturday night live reruns. In my house we had never been allowed to watch SNL because my parents had opinions about it. But there, in that lobby I saw a member of our stake presidency Julian Breillatt watching and laughing at SNL. Now, being the know it all teenager I was, I said something about how I was surprised he was watching it. and he responded that he loved SNL and thought it was very funny. Incidently, a number of years later, this same good man was the temple sealer who married my wife and i. My thoughts about what a member of the stake presidency should and shouldn’t watch were a manual of sorts for this man. But at that moment, I learned that I didn’t have to believe everything I thought about how others should behave.  I could just let people behave without having to judge them as fulfilling some arbitrary set of rules that I thought. Our relationships with others depend solely on our thoughts about that person.  What I thought about president briellatt watching snl could have been that he was a bad person and that I would never value anything he ever said again as a spiritual leader. Or, as was the case, I didn’t take his behavior to mean anything other than he was a man, doing the best he could. And when it came time for him to officiate in our wedding, I was happy to have a man who had been part of my life for many years there to officiate. When it comes to spouses, this same lesson can and, I’ll say, probably should, be applied for the sake of everyone’s happiness. Specifically, when it comes to pornography use, oftentimes, I find that spouses feel it is their duty to hold their loved one to a certain standard. And when that standard hasn’t been met, they are to punish, cajole, withhold affection from and judge the other party. So, in my relationship with darcy, I know that my relationship with her depends on my thoughts about her. My thoughts about her depend on my expectations of her and how well she meets those expectations. I also can’t have “love” for her, but that I have loving thoughts about her.  Because, as we know, our emotions and feelings are generated by our thoughts. So, when I think about her lovingly, I feel love.  I also know that I can’t be mad at her. I only have thoughts that create the feeling of being mad. I make me mad. Just like when I used pornography, she, her thoughts, were what made her mad. 

How to solve any problem: 5 key elements. I love all the great feedback I am getting about the podcast, thank you. Some of you make it the first thing you listen to each Monday morning to start your week out right. Somebody reached out to me about this week about the podcast from two weeks ago about falling forward and asked how they can get better at that.  And said, they were feeling stuck and didn’t know how to put that into play in their life. So, let me just take a moment here to remind you that you can hop online at zachspafford.com and set up a free mini session. I will help you out, let me hook you up. There is a link for the work with me button so you can just take advantage of that. I’ll also talk to you about options that you have if you want to keep working with me if you choose. My spots are filling fast, so I am thinking about opening up a group coaching program as well so more people can get better at the self mastery that we all are striving to work on.  It is gonna be amazing Whether you are interested in working with me or not, I’d love to do a mini session with you and help you out, so don’t hesitate to go there. So, today, we are going to talk about how to solve any problem by understanding 5 key elements.  All of the coaching I do stems from the model, which was developed by my mentor brooke Castillo, the owner of the life coach school She is a woman who I really respect for her work in helping people others work on how to become a better person and better at being the person that you want to be. I also work with a really amazing coach jody moore. Who is my friend and a coach who brought me the model before I knew really anything about being a coach and is now my instructor at the life coach school. I have yet to find a problem that this model will not work on.  So, if you think you have one that this model doesn’t apply to, then, sign up for a mini session and let’s give a test run and see. The idea of the model is that everything we deal with in life, pain, suffering, negative emotions, all come from something other than our circumstances.  The traditional way of thinking is that circumstances make us feel bad.  The model shows us that our feelings come not from our circumstances, but from what we think. That our thoughts generate our feelings.  So let’s start at the beginning of the model. The “circumstance” of our model. Let’s just define that.  a circumstance is a fact, it is what we consider the indisputable facts of the case. They are things that we don’t control and cannot change directly. Some examples of this are, the weather, other peoples, behavior, our past.  What do I mean that it is a fact, so this is something that is not up to interpretation and everyone can agree on.  For example, if you said to me, ‘I’m addicted to pornography’ that would not be a circumstance. That is a thought.  If you say to me, “at 2 pm I looked at pictures” that is a circumstance. It can be, essentially, proven. It isn’t subjective or someone’s opinion. Everyone would agree with it. Your car is a circumstance. weather is a circumstance. Other people’s behavior is a circumstance. You can’t control them.  The second part of the model is your thinking, your thoughts. I want to define what I mean by your thoughts, because I use this in my coaching a lot. This is a pivotal point in your ability to understand not only who you are, but also how you can change what you believe and think to become who you want to be. Firstly, thoughts are sentences that are constantly running through our minds. This is essentially the conversation we are having with ourselves.  Sometimes we are aware of our thoughts, but often, because of how powerful...

4 ways to keep your cool and be happy at Christmas. Christmas is a time of excitement and expectations Trees, lights, presents, food. Also a time of difficulty for lots of people who struggle with depression, addiction, loneliness 1 – don’t expect others to be different than they normally are. -      Today is our oldest’s birthday -      He didn’t get out of bed when I called him for his 5 am swim practice -      He threw a tantrum when I tried to get him to complete his chores. -      he was demanding of my phone. -      He was the same him that he always is. -       2 – don’t expect yourself to be different than you normally are. -      I woke up this morning with a pile of things to get done -      I did not start doing them until well after 1 pm -      By Christmas morning I will get as much done as I can – I might fail -      I am not yet the person that I want to be -       3 – be prepared to be disappointed. -      You might not get the gift you want -      Your kids might not take the picture that you want with the smiles and looking at the camera -      Your parents or in-laws will probably still be who they are, so they will probably be exactly the same people they are on other days of the year -      Be prepared for someone to say something rude -      Recognize that you won’t be able to change anyone this holiday season – despite what you may want 4 – remember that your thoughts are what create your feelings. -      Thoughts are the cause of all our emotions. -      For me this has always showed up in terms of what people say.  -      I have observed that for me, when someone says something, it can easily be interpreted differently by me than it is by someone else. -      You can take the thoughts that come and use them the way you have -      Or you can create deliberate thoughts that serve you better -      You have to program those thoughts into your brain and into your life with repetition to build a new neural pathway that is stronger than your old thought -       -      Here are some thoughts that you may want to try on this holiday so you can feel the way you want to about the time you get to spend with your family o  Everything is as it should be o  It was meant to happen the way it did o  You/he/she is exactly as you/he/she should be o  Love is always an option o  I’m responsible for everything I think and feel o  No one can cause an emotion inside me o  People are allowed to behave the way they want o  I am enough o  Nothing has gone wrong here. 

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-      Opposition in all things -      How often do you think you will feel good? – what percentage of time? -      What percentage of time do you think that you feel bad? -      What does it mean to resist feelings? -       When you resist feelings, you are not only denying yourself negative feelings that may serve you, if you feel them to their fullest for a short period, but you are likely also not able to feel positive feelings that may well serve you too. -      50/50 rule is that half the time, no matter what, your life is, no matter who you are, you are going to feel negative emotions. -      We often feel like there is something external that is going to make us feel like we have “arrived” -      Truth is, that the guy who makes a million dollars a year has just as many down days as a guy that makes $35k -      The woman who weights 125 has just as many down days as the woman who weights 250 -      We want to think that we will not have negative emotions because negative emotions are bad in our mind and that means that there is something wrong with us. -      It is a lie that people who have x don’t have negative emotions. -      Negative emotions are part of the package of opposition in all things.  -      What negative emotions are you trying to avoiding when you are buffering with pornography or other things? -      What negative emotions are you creating when you buffer with pornography or other things? -      What positive feelings are you reserving for when you overcome your pornography use?

I can’t keep going like this. Darcy caught me.  I had been looking at inappropriate pictures on my company laptop when she thought every thing with my pornography problem was behind us. We were suffering through a really difficult miscarriage and I was turning back to the old things that made me feel better whenever I was feeling less than good. She was furious.  She threw that laptop down the stairs, along with some laundry detergent and my dignity. I was caught. Being caught is a terrible place to be. There is not a thing that you can say that really makes it better. There is not a thing that you can do to make the other person trust you again in that moment. It is the point where you feel your absolute worst while someone stares at you feeling your absolute worst.  It is the dream where you find yourself standing in front of the entire class in your underwear, except you are in real life feeling just as exposed and the other person hates you for it. This was the moment that I broke my wife. The woman who had, up to this point seen me as an amazing husband.  When she tells this story, she talks about me being the guy that our friends would tease because I was always up, changing diapers, putting kids to bed and helping with the babies.  I think I am that guy, in part because of my pornography problem.  I think I am that guy because, at least in some way, I am trying to make up for being rotten and broken on the inside, so I make myself look awesome and helpful on the outside. At least to my wife.  At least until I got caught. What is terrible, is that getting caught in this moment was not the moment that I can tell you that I changed and started getting better.  This was not that moment.  This was a moment that made me get worse.  This was the moment that made me turn inward and become more sneaky. Made me stop allowing my wife to see the real me.  I stopped sharing Zach Spafford, vulnerable, loving husband. I started being a character in my own marriage.  I became a guy that never failed at anything.  I would mess up at work. I wouldn’t tell my wife. I would mess up with pornography. I wouldn’t tell my wife. I would be stressed. I wouldn’t tell my wife. I would be depressed. I wouldn’t tell my wife. That moment was the moment I turned inward. I became a perfect guy outside as best I could so that she wouldn’t have to deal with my weakness because she couldn’t handle it. I’m not proud of it. But it happened.  This is true for so many people that I work with. What if my spouse is never going to be ready to forgive me and be my partner again in every way? The truth is, you need to be honest with your spouse. Not because your spouse deserves your honesty, although there is an argument to be made there. Telling the truth is about being the person you want to be.  Building the person you want to be is about being conscientious about behavior that brings us down, and tears down our sense of the greatness we have within.  So, I want to talk about building you.  This is the topic of today.  I told that story because I didn’t get that I wasn’t becoming someone. I was building someone. Tony robbins has a documentary on Netflix called “I’m not your Guru”. There is a lot of swearing. Near the end he says something that struck me deeply, he said, “I constructed Tony Robbins,” “I created this motherfucker standing here.” When we create, construct or become the person we want to be, it isn’t an accident. It has to be done deliberately. 1.    Determine the virtues you want to have Benjamin Franklin, Early on in his life he deterimed 13...

This podcast is for pornography users and their spouses.  Today we are going to talk about boundaries, and specifically, what they are, what they aren’t and how to set boundaries that you can be happy with so you can move forward into having the relationships you want to have with the people around you. This is really for you couples who are dealing with pornography and are looking to create boundaries that will help you grow and improve your relationship, rather than separate and divide your relationship. In discussing this I recognize that it is not always the man who uses pornography and not always the woman who needs to set the boundaries but I am going to probably stick to those lines for the sake of simplicity in this discussion. But know that I understand that, even though I will talk about husbands or men as the pornography user and wives or women as the boundary setter.  Also, you can use this to set boundaries in any part of your life, not just with someone using pornography. If you need to set a boundary with your mother-in-law that she calls before she comes over, these principles apply. Just discussing it specifically in relation to pornography because I want to give you tools to help you in that struggle. I’m also going to note here that boundaries are a key component of any healthy relationship. So if you think, “I can’t set a boundary around this issue because that is going to cause my marriage to break up” or some other very difficult or unpleasant consequence is going to happen, you may be right.  You have to be willing to set boundaries knowing that there may be unpleasant consequences and this may create a rupture that could be difficult to repair.  When you set boundaries, you’re are choosing between feeling unhappy because you don’t have a boundary, which could be a long-term situation where someone walks all over you and setting a boundary that you have to maintain, which may cause some short-term unpleasantness through difficult interactions with the person who may not want to respect that boundary in the beginning. What is a boundary? Effectively, a boundary is a line in the sand that you choose to say, this line isn’t to be crossed. We have boundaries everywhere in our lives and society. Your home has a boundary that you expect people not to cross.   For my father-in-law, his house boundary is not just the outside edge of his yard, but if you park on the street in front of his house, he will go out and ask you to move your car. That is his boundary.  Inherent in a boundary is the idea that, if you cross this line, I will do x. In the case of a pornography user, in my case, my wife had a boundary that if I used pornography, she would not choose to be intimate with me until she was ready. That often meant that I had to wait until she initiated intimate contact, even holding hands or a kiss. Some of you listening to this might be saying or thinking, That’s not fair, my wife can’t withhold her wifely duties from me. Or maybe you’re the wife and you think, I can’t not take care of my husband’s needs, then he will act out more.  Maybe. That is for you to decide, because when you set boundaries you are setting them for yourself.  When you set a boundary, you are taking care of and protecting yourself. So, if you are the wife thinking, “I have to take care of my husband’s needs and give him sex whenever he asks for it, even if he just used pornography” that may be ok with you. But, if you feel like you are being used, or manipulated, or are resentful as you do this, then I think it is time to set a boundary. Because you are not protecting yourself and as a result you are doing something that creates bad feelings rather than build up the relationship. So, you need to be really clear about what your boundary is.  Most of us have a boundary that we will not allow anyone to hit us. That is...

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Choices – the way forward. Finding your way is a matter of choices and making the ones that you believe will bring you the most happiness. So, I often work with young men who are just about to graduate high school and, for members of the church of jesus Christ of latter day saints, that means that they are getting ready to choose whether they will serve what we call a full time mission. That means that they will spend 2 years away from family, away from girlfriends, away from college studies and sports and they will go out to a place they are assigned and share the gospel of jesus Christ with complete strangers, sometimes in a language that they will learn that they have no experience with. When I was young boys went at 19 and girls at 21, now those ages are younger, boys can now go at 18 and girls A lot of these boys are struggling with anxiety, with pornography, with knowing if they will be the missionary they need or want to be. Just a note about my show notes. they are essentially the outline and notes that I use to do my podcast. I don't edit them once I finish the podcast, so they are here for you as is and to give you a little glimpse into my mind as I do the show. They aren't a word for word transcript. Enjoy! I had a conversation with someone just today about the choices that he is making and why he is holding back from moving forward with his life because of the overwhelming feelings that he has. He said to me, Its hard to find motivation to go to school when you don’t know why you are going. Which lead him to feel overwhelmed and then led to various types of buffering and avoiding. What I’m not saying is, just go because you should or because someone else says you should or because you think you are supposed to or some other external reason.  As I was talking with this young man the question I asked him was, why are you choosing to stay home?  That took him back a pace, because it wasn’t that he was actively choosing it, it was that he was not choosing anything.  Now, this wasn’t about him serving a mission but in a way it is the same conversation.  Inaction is a choice, but often we don’t think of it that way. we think of it in terms of not yet choosing.  But in reality we are choosing, we are choosing the status quo.  What is happening with this young man is that he feels stuck, overwhelmed and generally unhappy.  Some of you are thinking, yeah, because he isn’t choosing the right thing. He isn’t doing what is right and so he is not happy. But think about what you are saying there. You are essentially saying that we don’t choose the thing that we are told we should do, go on a mission, go to college, then our happiness will be in jeopardy. By that logic most of the world is simply unhappy and can’t have joy.  The real reason for this sense of overwhelm is his thoughts, what he is making his choice of inaction mean and his lack of ownership. We already talked about his thought and his feeling. In the conversation he also told me that if he doesn’t go to school that will mean that he can’t get a good job and provide for his future family.   That was what he was making it mean that he doesn’t have motivation. But the flex point, the place where the rubber meets the road is the lack of ownership.  The truth is, regardless of whether he goes on a mission or goes to college or whatever, unless he decides the path he wants to take, he will stay unsatisfied and continue to choose thoughts that overwhelm and hold him stuck.  He didn’t go on a mission, not because he chose to do something else or chose to stay home, he didn’t go because he outlasted everyone else in the game of ‘when are you going to put your papers in’. he didn’t declare his choice, he simply chose inaction and the world passed him by. Now he is in the same place with his schooling.  Somewhere in him he...

I was having a conversation with a fellow coach friend of mine She had walked in on her 16-year-old son using pornography We got to talking about how she reacted and how finally she said to him ”I can’t keep you safe” The truth is that we can’t keep our loved ones from doing any of the buffering that they choose to engage in. In fact, I had a dear friend who for the last decade and a half have a weekly habit of Viewing pornography. He is an extraordinarily smart person who has all of the filters that you can imagine set up to keep him safe. And for a period of time his wife was the only one with access to the passwords required to get past those safeguards I have never seen so much security or safeguards set up to keep someone from viewing pornography. It was elaborate, comprehensive and cumbersome.  Except my friend was, as he would say, “constantly checking to see if I was safe by testing the limits of all the blockers on all the devices in the house.” As someone who is somewhat technically savvy I felt blocked at every turn just to use certain websites that would normally be allowed, like google.  This master planned internet access security would likely keep almost anyone safe.  Not my friend. And for that matter, not anyone who really wanted to choose pornography. The reality is that, regardless of what buffer we choose, food, porn, drugs, alcohol, social media, no one can keep us safe is we choose to seek it out. This was true for me as well.  My wife was the gate keeper of my phone’s access to pornography for a long time.  I asked her to block the internet on my phone so I couldn’t get on at all. She was the only one with the password.  It wasn’t able to keep pornography out of my life. It was only a temporary barrier to immediate access. Until I found a way. Until my friend found a way. Until my friend’s son found a way.  Each of the stories has the same thread of reality running through it.  In each version there are ample blocks to immediate access.  There are hurdles to be overcome and access is monitored by a central figure, a trusted wife or mother. In each version, there are individuals who, morally, believe that looking at pornography is contrary to their overall happiness. In each version, the pornography users are trying to lead a life as clean as possible. And in each version, they are able to surpass the barriers to entry in an effort to satisfy their urge to view pornography. Why is that? Before we get into the why, I want to say something about these roadblocks that we construct to keep our families safe. They are good, they are necessary and they need to be built and maintained. But, as you will understand as we discuss the rest of the podcast, they will never be enough to keep your family 100% free of pornography. So why? Why is it that we will go to such great lengths to access our drug of choice? Whether it is pornography or food or social media or video games? Lower brain = eons of evolution = survival So that is the challenge. That is what you are up against.  So what can you do? As a wife, husband, father, mother, individual, child, grandparent faced with a world where you can no longer just shut out the influences of the outside world and there are an ever increasing number of ways to bring them in and have them at the dinner table. First, you need to define what it means to be safe. Ask yourself what you are shooting to achieve . Create a plan and execute on it. Involve experts  Be flexible and prepared to adjust Decide that any failures of the system are opportunities to learn Learn from those opportunities Second, understand what the people you want to help want Ask your kids what they are aiming for in their world.  Be willing to lose a battle. Be capable of responding rather than reacting Keep consequences natural and...

The first thing you’re going to do to reduce buffering is to allow urges. -      Allow vs eliminate -      Allow vs indulge -      Urges come no matter what  The second thing you’re going to do to reduce buffering is to make all of your decisions involving your usual buffer with your higher brain. -      Plan it -      Schedule it -      Discuss it #theselfmasterypodcast

My wife was out of town, it had been a hard day at work, my business wasn't doing well, we were on the verge of financial ruin, I was lying awake in bed and I was going down that familiar path to pornography use. Before I talk about how it all ended, let's talk about what pornography use is for most people. There are addicts, those people who, without regard for the consequences and unable to function without it, use substances, including pornography to get through the day. This is probably not you. This is probably not your husband. This is probably not your wife. The usage of pornography in your household is probably what I call "Buffering". A buffer is something that reduces friction between two items. It lessens the impact. It cushions the blow. A buffer is something that helps us transition from one thing to another with as little discomfort as possible. Most people don't know they are doing it, buffering. A lot of us do it when we move from one normal situation to another. We pick up our phone to see what is on social media rather than standing quietly on the subway. You probably have an uncle who does it while standing in the grocery line by talking to absolutely anyone about anything, regardless of whether he knows the person or not. When you grab a quick snack as you come home from work, rather than waiting for meal time. Buffering is a normal part of everyday life for most people. Why do we buffer? We buffer because it seemingly makes things easier For one reason or another, we are using the buffer to provide us with a quick chemical hit in our brains. Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine all things that make your brain "feel good", at least in the short term. Looking at your phone gives you a "hit" that makes your brain feel a little better. The problem with seeking short term hits is that you sometimes end up postponing discomfort now for discomfort later. When you grab a quick snack every time you go from a meeting to your desk and then again when you go from your desk to a meeting will add up over time and probably make you obese. When you buffer with pornography, in the short term, there are not a lot of overwhelmingly negative effects. But over a long period of time, those effects are well https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/internet-pornography-by-the-numbers (documented). In your thoughts about pornography, none of that really matters. What matters is whether you decide that pornography use is ok for you and your family. I suspect that you are reading this because, although you have a moral objection to pornography and your stated values say that pornography use is not ok within your household, there is still someone using it. Buffering with pornography, like buffering with food, shopping, video games or any other form of self comfort is something that you can stop doing. You just need the right set of tools. One of those tools is understanding what buffering is, how it is changing your brain, and how you can see it coming before you start down the path of using. Looking at pornography is one of the most popular buffers in the world. It is readily available by the light of an ever present army of personal electronic devices. When people buffer, they are using the buffer as a way to lessen the impact of discomfort. Unfortunately, what often occurs is that the buffer becomes the default go to in order to temporarily avoid what is happening in the moment. A moment of discomfort becomes a binge on something else. About half of our lives are uncomfortable. Sometimes we feel discomfort because we are simply moving from one part of life to the next.... #theselfmasterypodcast

The 12 steps are probably not working for you.I started attending 12 step meetings in 2007. I also went to meetings sanctioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which I am a member. Those Church sanctioned meetings were full of guys that were pretty similar to me. No one had committed a crime (I don't think) in pursuit of their sexual desires, but none of them seemed able to overcome their pornography use either. So every week for a number of years I would sit in the meetings, I would say, “My name is Zach, I’m a porn addict, it has been x number of days since my last relapse.” If you have ever been to these meetings, the people are earnest, the topic is serious, and the goal is the same for everyone. 12 step programs are the most recognized and ubiquitous type of sobriety focused recovery systems in the country. Judges assign people to attend them. Families swear by them. I found a list https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/treatment-program/aftercare/related/types-12-step-programs/#gref (here) of 32 programs in addition to Alcohol Anonymous. Five of these had the word sex in them. So why, according to Lance Dodes, MD and the Sober Truth, do these meetings only have a 5% success rate? Now, granted, the Sober Truth is targeted specifically to Alcoholics Anonymous, but the “12 Step Program” has been taken and morphed to work with narcotics, pornography and food addictions. I don’t have data for those programs, but I think it is safe to say that the data is likely to be similar for similarly structured programs. For me, I worked the 12 steps as best I could, in concert with my bishop and stake president, and had regular meetings with a counselor. All of the world was pulling for me and I was pulling in the direction I was told I should go. Once I had been going to meetings for a few years, I thought, I should be able to go longer than I am. I should have more sobriety. I shouldn’t be relapsing like this. I felt completely alone. The truth was, that even though I, like hundreds of thousands, even millions of people before me, had gone through the steps, worked each of them to the best of my ability, apologized, asked for forgiveness, shared the program, done it all, I was still doing what addicts call white knuckling it. I was still living in a place where I was not succeeding to my definition of success. Maybe I wasn’t using as much as I once had, but each time the urge came, I was still bearing through it with all the pain that comes from having a kidney stone. I was always just on the verge of going back. Back to pornography, back to lying to my wife, back to hiding from my church leaders, back to buffering my life away with my drug of choice so I didn’t have to deal with my feelings. Some of you might be saying in your minds, “oh, then you did it wrong” or “then you really weren’t sober” or some other version of blaming me for not getting it right because I wasn’t doing it right so I have no right to complain. That’s not an atypical response from those dealing with addiction and advocates of the 12 step program. In fact, Dr Dodes talks about this in the Sober Truth. He quotes AA’s Big Book saying, “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program…” Dr. Dodes concluded, as anyone might, that “the program doesn’t fail; you fail.” Emphasis his. So how could anyone who has gone through a 12 step program ever step forward and say, “um, sorry guys, this just isn’t helping me”? The...

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So many addicts are hindered by their view of failure that it actually creates greater difficulty in overcoming their pornography use. As a coach I teach my clients that thoughts are one of the biggest factors in how we feel and act, leading to the results we create. When they view pornography, fall off plan, eat more than they thought they should, they view that as a failure and can often fall into a self-defeating spiral of feeling bad and buffering. What people often miss is that if we can take a step back and observe our behavior without judgement and without shame, we find an opportunity to learn. Mistakes are our greatest learning opportunities. Becoming a scientist of your behavior makes you an expert that can see patterns, pathways, and potential that you don’t see when you just feel bad. I often ask, What does victory look like? Having a winning record in sports means that you lose just under half of the time. The greatest sluggers in baseball only hit the ball in a third of their at bats. If you took into account the number of actual swings during each at bat that percentage would go down. Yet, when I hear that someone feels like a complete failure for looking at pornography for 15 minutes over the course of an entire week, I wonder, is that a losing record? There are just over ten thousand minutes in a week. That means that 99.85% of the time the person who feels like they failed was not looking at pornography. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to justify a little sin by saying, “be good 99% of the time and that’s ok”. What I am saying is, taking stock of where you actually are gives you a better chance of moving the dial to where you want it to be. In this instance, as in so many that I see, a small, though measurable improvement, would make a huge difference in bringing a person out of their despair and into a place of confidence in their own capacity to choose what they want. That 0.15% failure rate far outstrips the acceptable failure rate of electronics, which is between ten and fifteen percent. But, what can be learned from it is invaluable. You see, what you think makes a big difference. If you think, “I am a failure” then you very likely will be right. If you think, “I can improve myself 0.15% and be 100% clear of pornography” then you are just as likely to be right. Look at your failures with the right perspective and you will have a wealth of understanding to improve your record. If you would like help, or know someone who does, have them sign up for a free mini session at zachspafford.com/workwithme. It will go a long way to changing the way they look at their struggle in overcoming pornography use.

Agency is a really important part of everyday life. Many of us think of it as our freedom of choice and in a lot of ways that’s right. For individuals who believe they are addicted to some behavior or another the phrase, “I can’t stop” is a typical refrain. I find it interesting and powerful that the phrase “I can’t stop” is the one we use. True addiction seems to include some compulsion, but we don’t say, “my body makes me do x” or some other phrase that indicates the external forces driving us to the end result. In terms of the Gospel we often discuss how agency is an important part of our time here on Earth. To have agency we must have three key items: 1 – Knowledge of what is right and what is wrong 2 – Consequences for our actions 3 – The ability to choose our actions The knowledge of what is right and wrong is something that most of us have a grasp on. We usually know that certain behaviors are not good and that others are. Consequences for our actions can come in many forms. They may be natural consequences that come without any intervention, like our conscience holding us accountable to ourselves. They may also come from external sources, such as the anger a spouse may show because we have violated their trust. Both of these first two items usually occur without much difficulty. The third item on the list, the ability to choose, is the place where all the friction happens. Yes, obviously, making good decisions and making bad decisions is built into our freedom of choice. But where we are going wrong, especially when it comes to addictive behavior, is when we say, “I can’t”. I have a lot of kids and my least favorite phrase out of their mouths is “I can’t”. They say it when it comes to cleaning, they say it when it comes to calling people on the phone, they even say it when it comes to interacting with other people outside of their comfort zone. At that moment, they are abdicating their agency by abdicating their ability to choose. They are creating, within their minds a mental block over which they believe they have no power. They are creating a mental construct where they are not granted the capacity to choose to do or not do something but that they are at the mercy of external forces. Think about it, when your kid says “I can’t clean my room” and you threaten them with not being able to go out and play until it is done, even if they then clean the room they have not “chosen” it. It has been forced on them, in their mind at least. The same thing is happening with pornography use and other addictive behaviors. We say, “I can’t” because our lower brain is running a script that our higher brain, seems unable to interrupt without a great deal of will power. That is partly because what we have done is set a habit that our lower brain controls, by giving into urges that feed one of our primal brain’s three main goals. Those goals are to conserve energy, seek pleasure and avoid pain. Then, in a type of automatic assembly line, our lower brain gets set on a path that is well worn, starting with an urge. When we say, “I can’t stop”, our brain wants to be right. When we keep on the path of our addictive behavior, we begin to prove how right we are to our own brain. There is a lot of complicated science that bears this out in the field of epigenetics, but for the purpose of this article none of that really matters. What matters is taking back our agency. Agency is a tricky thing. When we choose habits and behaviors that have negative consequences there comes a whittling away of our agency. Like the kid who cannot choose to play because he chose to not clean his room. But when we choose habits and behaviors that have positive impact our consequences are just as direct but leave us with more choices. None of this is probably new to you. set up a free mini-session at zachspafford.com/workwithme