Episode 260

Hey everybody. Welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford. And today I'm going to dive into a crucial distinction that can make all the difference in how we approach habits, goals, and ultimately. Every aspect of our lives, and you've probably heard the terms abdication and delegation before, but have you ever thought about how they apply to your personal growth, especially when it comes to managing unwanted habits like pornography use.

Today, we're going to break down the difference between these two approaches and how they can impact your journey to thriving beyond pornography.

So let's start by defining the terms, and if you are a follower of the royal family, you might think, oh yeah, abdication. That's what happens when the queen says, hey, I don't want to be the queen anymore. I'm going to give the, give everything over to my son, King Charles, who is now the king.

Abdication is when you give up responsibility for decisions. It's like saying, I have no control over this, it's out of my hands, and I'm not in charge. When we abdicate, we're essentially telling ourselves that we are powerless. We're telling ourselves that something external is driving our behavior, and we just have to go along with it.

On the other hand, delegation is all about retaining responsibility. Even when we're assigning tasks or decisions to different parts of our brain or to other people.

Delegation acknowledges that we have the power to choose how we handle our urges, even when the going gets tough, even when things aren't going the way that we wanted them to go.

So just recently, Our fourth child has gotten her permit and I get to teach her how to drive. This is, uh, this is a very fun thing for me. I enjoy teaching my kids how to drive, but I'm paying attention to absolutely everything she does.

I'm responsible for guiding her. I'm responsible for correcting course if needed. I'm responsible for everything that happened in that car. I am not, however, the person driving.

So that's a good way to think about delegation. You are setting in motion the things that you want to have happen, but you are not necessarily making every single decision along the way. On the other hand, if I'm just a passenger in the car and I'm not paying attention, I'm letting somebody else drive however they want and without any input from me, that's abdication.

Some of you listening right now are thinking, Oh, I wish my wife would abdicate driving instead of telling me whenever someone ahead of me is changing lanes or the light turns yellow. The important thing to recognize here is that when we abdicate, we're putting ownership Outside of us. We're letting go of it. And we're maintaining zero power over the thing that we abdicated compared to delegation where we maintain power and ownership over the thing. While we create systems and processes that don't always require us to be directly involved in every part of the decision making process.

Now let's bring this back to managing habits, particularly something like pornography use. Abdication often shows up in the language that we use with ourselves. Phrases like, I can't stop, or I'm powerless against my addiction are clear signs of abdication.

We're placing the responsibility for our actions outside of ourselves, and we are creating a sense that we don't have any say in the matter. But I want to just challenge that for a minute. I want to challenge you on that idea. If your spouse walked into the room while you were walking, while you were, viewing pornography, would you stop it?

Would you stop in that moment? And most people that I talk to they say, yeah, I definitely would stop in that moment. So what's clear there is that it's not that you can't stop. It's that you have abdicated in large measure the way that you respond to pornography, by saying, by believing, I'm not allowed to do this, I can't do this, I I'm powerless in this framework.

And that's a really problematic framing because at the end of the day, it's disempowering, which means we can't make the decisions to save, to solve the problem. We have to rely on something else outside of us to solve the problem for us. And that's never going to happen. Nobody's going to come and always make the right decision for you.

I often talk about how when I was younger, I would pray and I would just say to Heavenly Father, you Please, Heavenly Father, will you just take this problem away from me and make it so that I'm, I'm not tempted by this and, and, and, and I kind of envision maybe just like Heavenly Father up there, like every time I would type something into google that He would just like throw cat videos in there. And that's all I would ever see. That's not how it works. He's not going to do that. Delegation by contrast is about reclaiming your power. It's about recognizing that you do have control and making conscious choices that align with your long term values and goals is what you're responsible for, and you have to do everything to set that up properly.

So instead of saying, I can't look at pornography, you might say, I can look at it, but I choose not to because it doesn't serve my values or my happiness.

This shift in language may seem subtle, but it's really powerful. It's important. And it is. More true that you can look at pornography. And I always say this to people, I know how I know you can look at pornography because you do. And what you want to understand is this places you back [00:05:00] into that position of responsibility. And this places you back in the driver's seat.

You're not a passenger in your life. You can use that perspective to create the habits that you need to use to address your brain. Even if, you know, at some point you're going to delegate. What's going on to your habits, the good habits that you've created. Your delegation means that you are using designed habits that help you move toward your values.

Even if you're making mistakes, even if you see that things are not always going exactly the way you want, and then reworking those habits to correct your path, that's the difference between delegation and abdication. In delegation, I'm responsible for everything. And sometimes I have to get into the driver's seat.

And sometimes I can create a habitual way of responding to things, but the more I'm in that framework, the more likely I am to succeed.

And let's just talk about mistakes for a minute. Many of us think that when we view pornography, we failed. And that's not how delegation works. Number one, anytime you view pornography, that's a data point. There's information there. There's something that if I'm taking responsibility for the decisions that I'm making, I'm looking at those decisions.

I'm looking at the entire decision tree along the way, and I'm Reanalyzing it to put myself back in control so that I can understand the mistake and then work through that decision tree to create new and more meaningful responses along that path so that I don't have to feel like I'm failing. It's, you know, it, it becomes just a bump in the road and a process of getting back on track rather than I'm back at square one.

Mistakes are opportunities for learning, and when we delegate responsibility to well designed habits, we can see these missteps for what they are. Temporary. Correctable. And you don't have to beat yourself up or abandon your goals when this happens. All you have to do is look at the data, adjust, and then move forward.

So what's the big takeaway here? Abdication leaves you feeling powerless. It's as if you're not in control.

But delegation, when you do it right, empowers you to take responsibility, make conscious choices, practice those conscious choices, and navigate your path with intention.

And if you find yourself feeling like you're out of control, just try shifting your mindset. Start by looking at the language you're using. Remind yourself that you have the power to choose and that you're in charge of the decisions that shape your life. And that even those mistakes that you make are not the end of the world. They're data points, they're opportunities to learn.

I hope that's helpful. Thank you so much for joining me today. if this has been helpful to you, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

You can find me on Instagram at Thrive Beyond Pornography, where the N in pornography is an X, or shoot me an email zach at zachspafford. com. You have the power to choose your path, keep thriving, and I'll talk to you guys next week.