Learning to Thrive Beyond Pornography use was the greatest challenge of our life and marriage. It had rocked my self confidence, tainted all of the most important experiences of my life and become the most impossible challenge I had as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

With this podcast or at https://www.zachspafford.com you'll learn about the struggle, how to overcome pornography use, and where to find additional resources to begin to thrive beyond pornography with your spouse.

At some point I took a step away from all the 12 step meetings and councilors and started to figure out my own brain, to look at my issue as something that I had the answer to and I was going to figure it out. Here I share those lessons and give you the power to start your own journey free. Whether you struggle with unwanted pornography use or are the spouse or partner, whether you feel stuck or just don't know where to start, here I will teach you principles, tools and skills that you can use today to change how you think and, in the end, what you do.

You'll hear interviews with my spouse, with experts on human sexuality and with former and current pornography users on how you can overcome your own struggle with addictive behavior.

The Thrive Beyond Pornography podcast will bring new perspective to your struggle and keep you coming back to improve all aspects of your life. (formerly, The Self Mastery Podcast: Overcome Pornography Forever)

Episode 28

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Hey everybody. Welcome to a Beautiful Mastery Monday, except for it's not Monday. Today is Wednesday, and I am really feeling cooped up. . I don't know about you guys, but here's the thing, right? So I think all of us have spent the last almost two weeks. Reading the news, going through Facebook, staying home, not going out, doing all of the things that we've been asked to do by medical professionals, by the governor.

In fact, yesterday, here in the state of Wisconsin, the governor basically put the entire state on lockdown. So a lot of you are out there going, what am I gonna do? There's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of emotion going on. There's also a lot of fear out there that is keeping people hunkered down, and a lot of that's really quite warranted.

And some of you out there might think this is not the worst thing in the world. And some of your, you're hearing various opinions in various directions that say, we should open up the government and the economy. And others are saying, stay home and stay out of trouble.

All of this is something that you are gonna have to deal with, right? It's in that circumstance line. It is the current situation of our lives. So what I want to talk to you about is your thoughts about all of that. Your thoughts about what you're hearing from the government, what you're hearing from the state governments, what you're hearing from your friends, and what you're seeing on social media.

All of that those circumstances. Are creating thoughts within your life that may be holding you back, or they may also be giving you a catalyst to build something. In fact, this is a great time, in my opinion, to sit down and create something of value, create value in this world, and that will be able to return to you tenfold, a hundred fold.

When all of this goes away. Here's what's going on, and especially for those of us who have been buffering with addictive behaviors for all our lives, this is one of those moments where our brain is like, Hey, hunker down. You need to get some dopamine. You need to do something that's gonna save your life.

So I want to talk to that specifically. I want to talk to the thought that now is the time to go and save your, quote unquote, save your life with some buffering behavior, whether that's excessive TV watching excessive news, watching excessive pornography use, excessive overeating. All of that is.

Coming up for a lot of my clients right now, this is a huge deal because in this moment when they are in their worst place in terms of fear and the, there's a lot of negative emotion running around, they're turning back to the old things that they used to do. To keep them feeling safe to buffer through those negative emotions.

So let's start by just reviewing why that is, right. People use buffers to feel good in moments when they're trying to avoid the negative emotions that they're feeling. So why do we do this? It goes back to the motivational triad. Your brain does three things. It does it them extremely well. Your lower brain does these three things extremely well.

It avoids pain, it seeks pleasure, and. It. It conserves energy. And right now in this moment, your brain is saying, Hey, I gotta conserve as much energy as possible, so I'm gonna use the old patterns. I'm gonna use the old habits that I've built to make myself feel comfortable at this moment. Avoiding pain.

There's a lot of pain going on in the world. A lot of people are scared that. That they're gonna die. Frankly, a lot of people are worried that they're not gonna have a job. A lot of people are worried that they are, not gonna be able to provide for their family or that they're gonna fail in their business because the economy has shut down.

There's a lot of negative feelings out there, which means that avoiding pain is. High on the list of things that your brain wants to do and seeking pleasure is high on the list. Pornography, overeating, video games. I can tell you that I have watched more tv, more movies in the last week and a half than I probably watched in the previous two years.

There's a lot of just avoiding the feelings and avoiding, and I'm not saying, oh, you're, you're bored and so you shouldn't watch tv or you shouldn't do things that. Engage your mind because there's a lot less to do outside than there is inside. Right now what I'm saying is going back to habits that you used that are negatively impacting you, like overeating, like using pornography, like excessive video gaming, or maybe even overspending.

Those of you who are, on Amazon Prime mad that you're not gonna get your spoons for an extra, two weeks because Amazon's not shipping anything. . That's the moment when you need to take a step back and look and say, is this serving me? Is this behavior and are the thoughts that are creating this behavior, the ones that are serving me?

Or do I want to create something different in my life? And that's really what I want to talk about, is going from a place of scarcity and fear and worry to a place where you are not simply. Avoiding your pain and avoiding your feelings, but you're embracing them and then you're saying, I'm gonna do something positive out of this.

So today is a good day to build something, to create something, to design something, to be a bringer of value, rather than a person who is sitting on the couch going, when is something going to happen? That's good. So that I can feel good again. And what I'm saying here is that you don't need to wait. For the world to provide you with good news so you can feel good.

You can take proactive steps and you can say, this is something that I'm going to create so that you feel good because you're creating something, because the value that you're bringing into the world. Is greater than the value you're taking from the world right now. So that's what your brain is doing.

Your brain's saying, okay, let's hunker down. Let's go into scarcity mode. Let's use the things that we've used in the past to feel good and let's just. , wait this out. Let's write it out, is what your brain is saying. What I wanna offer you is that this might be exactly the right time to go out and create something spectacular.

If you have been thinking about becoming an entrepreneur or you've been thinking about building something, whether that's . A course or a canoe in your backyard, this is the moment when your brain might be able to say, yeah, I feel terrible, but I am going to use this time to do something great.

And so to that end, I want to talk about what I call getting things done. I have a program. I have a plan that I, offer to my clients. It's something that I help them put into place so that when they have a goal, when they have something that they're trying to accomplish, I can help them not only go through the process of setting the goal, but creating a path to make that goal happen.

And that includes, looking at the obstacles, creating strategies to overcome those obstacles, figuring out everything that needs to be done within that goal to make it happen in a certain timeframe, and then also laying out where that goes on the calendar and making that happen so that you can actually achieve the thing that you want to achieve.

So to that end, I have a workbook. It's called Getting Things Done, and I'm going to put that up on my website. For you to go and download. It's gonna be free. It's gonna be something that you are gonna be able to just access. It's a great resource. It's a great place to start. And if you want to actually achieve something in this next month, when you feel like, you have no idea what's going to be going on, I'm gonna give this to you for free so that you can take it, you can put it into action, and you can hopefully make something amazing over this next month.

I'm looking forward to something that you can do. , I would love to hear what you have created. I would love to hear what your goals are. Please reach out to me, but if you want to get this free download, go to zachspafford.com/workwiththrive, and you're gonna have access to that immediately. All right, guys. I love you all.

Thank you so much for listening. This has been an Extraordinary Mastery Wednesday. Keep it up. We'll talk to you next week.

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