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Episode 252

Episode 252
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Zach Spafford: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford. Today, we're going to dive into habit transformation and we're going to take just a slight detour from what I would normally talk about because I want to clarify something that's an important component of how we replace one habit with another.

This is, a lot of times people are like, Oh, I'll just, you know, to change a habit, I just need to replace one habit with another. And almost, that's not necessarily wrong. We're going to talk about that and make sure that we replace one habit. When it comes to dealing with your pornography struggle, replacing the habit of viewing porn with the right habit is essential to success in this process.

So research shows that replacing an old habit with a new one is more effective than simply stopping an old behavior. By introducing a new response, we can interrupt the brain's autopilot mode and create lasting change.

Now, when you replace a habit, like watching pornography with a new, different, positive, more values based habit, you provide your brain with a similar benefit, making it easier to eliminate the old habit.

For example, if you turn to pornography when you're feeling stressed, finding a different way to deal with that stress is going to be more effective than just trying to stop watching porn. Just, you know, hey, just stop it. Right? How many times have you heard that one?

Here's where how you do this is essential.

And what you replace that old pornography viewing habit with is the key to how you make this long lasting.

Why is this approach beneficial? First, when you create a new habit, something new to focus on, it reduces the chances of reverting to an old habit.

Second, a new habit can meet those same needs that you have been trying to deal with. And really, that's what's, what's happening here is when your brain is offering you porn, it's trying to escape from how you feel, what's going on for you internally, and the thought processes that are creating these negative feelings.

When you replace that old habit of choosing porn with a new habit we're going to meet the needs of dealing with that discomfort and that disquieting thought and make that transition smoother. But replacing a habit isn't a quick fix and replacing a habit with a new habit has to be done right.

So. What's the habit that you have to replace this old habit with? You're looking at porn when you feel bad. What's the habit that you have to put in there? And a lot of times people are like, "well, I just, I just try to keep myself busy. I try to make myself busy. I try to run from my habit. I try to avoid choosing porn, that is all trying to suppress the problem."

That's all trying to run away from the problem instead of deal with the problem. This is where the right habit, the right switch comes in essential. Now, if you've listened to the podcast, you've listened to the episode on the detour cycle, you can go back and listen to that again.

I highly recommend it. That is where we start to look at what's the new habit that I want to replace my old pornography viewing habit with. It's not going for a run, it's not lifting weights, it's not doing push ups. The new habit that you want to replace your old habit with is going through the feelings. So being present with and moving through the feelings, so not suppressing them, not avoiding them, and then asking yourself and understanding what's the story that created those feelings. That's the new habit we're looking for.

And replacing a habit is not a quick fix. This can take months with significant changes, especially something like this that you might have been using for years and years and years. Your successes around this typically occur in your second and third months of consistent daily repetition.

Persistence is key. Don't give up after a few days. Habits can sometimes regress. You can make mistakes. Use those as data points and keep reinforcing the new habit of feeling through your uncomfortable feelings and Feeling through your uncomfortable feelings, and Figuring out what your brain is telling you that is creating those uncomfortable feelings.

A lot of people like to ask, "well, how long is this going to take?" And the data is pretty widely varied. And I think this has a lot to do with the difficulty of the habit change. So if the habit change that you're looking for is to tie your shoes differently, there's no real emotional charge there it might take like 18 days.

If the habit that you're looking to change is something fundamental to the way that you deal with your emotional state, it might take 254 days. The average time that it takes to change a habit or to form a new behavior and make that behavior automatic, that is roughly 66 days.

That's, that's an average. Some people suggest that it takes 21 days of consistent action to form that new habit and then another 90 days of reinforcement to make that a permanent part of your routine.

So here are some practical tips that you can use to help replace an old habit with a new one.

Number one, identify the cue. If you think about the habit process, If you've read books like The Power of Habit, they talk about a three step cycle. It's cue, response, reward. That's [00:05:00] every single habit, cue, response, reward. That's essentially what you're looking for. And what we're doing is we're determining what are the cues?

What are the things, what's the stimulus outside in the environment that is creating this particular response of choosing porn in order to avoid our feelings and that cue, that actual Issue that we're having the real trigger... a lot of times people talk about triggers.

They're usually Two or three steps beyond the real trigger. The real trigger in most people's lives is the thought that makes them feel bad.

So if my thought is I feel unsuccessful or I'm overwhelmed or I'm not enough, or, I should have all this work done. Those kinds of thoughts.

Those are the thoughts that create the disquieting feelings that you're not dealing with. That is your trigger. That's the cue. So you need to start to identify those earlier and more often.

The next thing that we're going to do is we're going to Interact with the cue. We're going to interact with that cue differently. So you're going to change the routine. So again, when you think about that habit arc cue, response, reward, the only thing we have control over is the response.

So we're going to interact with that cue differently. And the way we change that routine to interact with that cue differently is things like looking at using the detour cycle, using Diffusion techniques and understanding the process that our brain is trying to take us through and getting curious about why it is that our brain believes these things rather than trying to run from or avoid them.

Also think about the feelings that occur when you believe things about yourself that you don't like, when that happens, we kind of take it for granted that we're terrible. And so we feel bad. What we need to get good at is being able to be comfortable in that bad feeling so we can get curious about what our brain is telling us.

Find a way to get curious, find a way to interrupt the previous process and start to dig into why it's happening.

The next thing I want you to do is. Reward yourself. Be nice to yourself.

Tell yourself, "nice work." "You, you stopped it five minutes before you would have last time," or "you were one second quicker at Figuring out the problem than you were the last time." You're there's going to be slip ups. There's going to be mistakes. There's going to be places where you're going to want to give up.

Don't do that. Don't, don't give into that. Reward your progress, celebrate the small victories. Even if the small victory is only, I was more aware this time than I was last time. I have so many clients who are like, "yeah, I'm starting to see the pattern, but I'm not really interjecting myself in an effective way yet."

That is amazing. That's a big change for most people. Keep doing that until you can get to the next step and reward yourself for that success.

Next, break down the big things, right? Don't act as though you have to do it all at once. You don't have to have it perfect. You don't have to be, you know, cold turkey on day one.

Start with small, manageable shifts. Make this a process that's less overwhelming by breaking it down into tiny parts.

Last thing, get support. Consider group support. Consider talking to somebody who you trust. Work with someone who's not there as an accountability partner, but as someone who will support you and love you and be with you in this process, not be there to punish you for not succeeding yet.

Not to shame you.

In the membership, this is a huge component of what we do. This is just about, sometimes it's just about having somebody come and say, "Hey, I succeeded this week, or I didn't succeed this week. And this is what happened." And all we're doing is walking through and going, Oh yeah, I see that.

And you're talking about what's going on for you. you're conveying your desire to change. You're conveying your capacities at this particular moment. And you're trying to shift them as you go along. And anybody who's there to say, "Hey, great job. You're moving in the right direction. Keep going. I'm here for you. Just keep talking about it. I want to hear what's going on for you."

That's the kind of person that you want to have support you at. If you need some help with that, feel free to sign up for a free consult with me at gettothrive. com slash work with Zach. I would love to meet with you, meet with your spouse as well.

That is always a very helpful place to be.

Changing habits is a journey. It requires patience. It requires persistence and you're replacing old habits like pornography use with new positive behaviors, but you're not just trying to find something to shove the old habit out of the way.

You're trying to find something that truly meaningfully addresses what's going on that your brain is trying to tell you as a problem for you. In doing that, you can create lasting change and improve your life. Remember, this is not about perfection. It's. It's just about progress. Keep doing the things that will move you forward.

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with others who might find it helpful. And until next time, keep striving for better habits and a better life. I'll talk to you next week.