Really quickly, before we get started, I am going to be part of a Courageous Discipleship summit put on by the LDS life coach directory.  You can have access to it for free if you sign up in the next week.  Check the show notes for the link. https://summits.ldslifecoaches.com/?ref=6e42d0

It is going to have some amazing speakers, many of whom I know personally and can highly recommend, including my friend Joey Mascio over at firmlyfounded.com

You might be familiar with the famous marshmallow experiments of the 1960s conducted at Stanford University.  If you’re not familiar with it, it is an experiment that gives a marshmallow to a child and then promises them a second one if they wait to eat the marshmallow until the experiment facilitator comes back.  The experimenter walks out and hilarity ensues.   Kids do all kinds of funny things when they are trying not to eat a marshmallow.  They lick it, they play with it, they roll it around, they sing, and they close their eyes.  One even took small bites over and over until the marshmallow was finally gone. The look of disappointment on that kid's face was priceless.  It was the look of surprise that the marshmallow was gone and that they weren’t getting a second one. 

There have been a number of conclusions drawn about this study, including the long-term success of those who ate the marshmallow vs those who didn’t and how successful that single act would make that child in the future.  

I want to talk about why it is so difficult for those kids to keep from eating that marshmallow.  You could call it willpower or a lack of willpower.  But what is willpower really in this context?

Well, willpower may be nothing more than the capacity of the child to accurately recognize and account for the value of waiting in order to receive the promised reward. 

This concept is called, among other things, future discounting. 

Future discounting is an entire discipline in economics that, if I took the time to explain it to you in-depth, you’d be bored out of your mind.  It involves a set of mathematical equations, properly inserted into other math equations, that allow an economist to value an outcome over time based on real human behavior. 

But understanding this concept will open up a whole new awareness of your pornography struggle that may help you finally take hold and overcome porn now and create the thriving life you want. 

So, rather than give you math, I’m going to explain with food.  You can insert porn in place of food in any place you like in this conversation.  But dieting is almost universal and it parallels pornography nearly perfectly. Please be aware, I’m not making a moral equivalency between porn and food.  But the brain chemistry is pretty close. 

In our decision to eat healthily and lose weight, we begin to do the math of now vs later vs never. 

Essentially, the thought process might look like this: if I eat healthily now, that will cost me.  But if I start on Monday, or the first of the month, or the first of the year (whatever timeline you usually use), for me, it’s always Monday, then it will be a clean start and it will actually be easier.   If I never start, that would be bad, so I will start for sure.  

Demonstrated numerically, the equation might turn out that starting now is worth -2, starting later is +1 and starting never is 0.

First, let’s start with starting never.  We are going to start.  We have to.  It’s essential, so we discount the idea that we will never start and feel like we are left with just 2 choices.  To start today, right now, or start tomorrow.  

Next, let’s take a look at starting tomorrow.  You might recall a cartoon character named Popeye.  It’s an old-school cartoon that I used to love as a kid.  The character that stands out in that cartoon for the purpose of this example is Popeye's friend and sidekick of sorts, the ever  hungry for hamburgers, Wimpy. 

Why was Wimpy, well, a wimp?  It’s because he was always trading his tomorrows for what he wanted today. 

His catchphrase was, "I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." 

I don’t know about you, but the restaurants that served Wimpy just once, usually put up a sign shortly afterward that said, “"Positively NO CREDIT. This means YOU, Wimpy."

So, when you think that starting tomorrow is actually worth a positive “1” rather than the cost of starting today, which we talked about being a negative two, ask yourself, am I pretending that I will pay Tuesday for a hamburger today?

In other words, when it comes to how I am dealing with my pornography struggle, am I putting off addressing it through meaningful action, measured and consistent practice, and commitment to getting coached, believing that it will be easier in the future if I can just get there?

Last, let’s look at the starting now, which is worth -2 in our example.  When we look at starting today, taking action, building an eating plan, actually following it, and feeling uncomfortable, we are actually rightly valuing the cost of getting started.  It does cost us.  We have to feel the feelings of hunger and discomfort that come from not just shoving all that Superbowl food in our mouths.  

Why is this equation something that we are probably calculating correctly?  Because doing the work of learning the skills to eat healthily and then actually practicing that process is time-consuming, sometimes frustrating, and nearly always uncomfortable. 

This is why we don’t start.  This is why we do the easy thing in the moment.  We are looking at the cost of being the person we want to be and seeing that we must sacrifice the person that we are to make the person we want to come alive in our actions. 

You’ve probably had this very same thought process in the moment around pornography.  “I’ll start tomorrow.”  I know that I told myself a thousand times, “this is the last time.” all the way back to when I was a 12-year-old kid living in Alaska exploring masturbation and thinking that I was a terrible person and sinning. 

If we make this same calculation every time, we actually end up never starting.  We never put in the work and the third component of the equation actually becomes our reality.  If today, you make the evaluation that the cost of negative two is too much, then tomorrow you are likely to make the same valuation into eternity.  Starting today is too costly, starting tomorrow never comes, and starting never becomes our default choice.  

This is because if we always evaluate the equation today, because we can’t evaluate in any other place than right now, using the same calculations that make today worth -2, tomorrow worth +1, and never as 0, our default position in life is to not make a change.  Zero is the default position because change today costs too much and change tomorrow is just supposed to be easier in our minds.   

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