Facebook Live with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife: https://www.facebook.com/events/1421984418653221

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.

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 209

===

Zach Spafford: Hey everybody and welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host. Zach Spafford. So this week on Tuesday, September 5th at 5:00 PM Dr. Jennifer Finlays and Fife has invited Darcy and I to talk about the challenge of pornography in marriage on her Facebook Live. I'll put a link to that in the show notes for you to follow.

But I'm, I'm be honest with you, I'm pretty excited to talk about this with Dr. Jennifer Finlays and 'cause she's awesome and I love having these conversations with her because I think that she brings a really great perspective and I, I think if you come and watch this, Facebook Live, you're gonna get a lot of great information.

You're gonna get my perspective. You're gonna get Darcy's perspective. You're gonna get the perspective of a very amazing therapist who is of a very amazing coach. You're gonna get the perspective of a very amazing coach who I think has put probably more effort into helping marriages than any other single coach out there.

Feel free to put that on your calendar. Tuesday, September 5th at 7:00 PM Dr. Jennifer Finlays and Fife. Darcy and I we're gonna talk about porn on the internet. I know. You guys are all excited about that. You're like, yeah, okay, well that sounds like a good idea. Let's go. Let's go listen to that.

'cause I think I think everybody likes to talk about porn on the internet. All right? Uh, maybe not you, but I know that Darcy and I do partly because we love to help people. We love to do this work. So today I wanna talk about the five keys to really committing to quitting porn. And this particular episode is kind of borne out of the idea that you can do some things well, you can do some things occasionally, but when it comes to putting porn, for most people who are struggling with it, Commitment is the key.

And so these are the five key things that you need to really commit to quitting porn. I'm just gonna lay 'em all out there at first and then we'll go through each of them one by one. So the first thing is don't mistake involvement for commitment. The second one is learn how to commit for yourself.

The third is never give up. The fourth is free your mind. And the fifth is commit openly and honestly. So the first one, let's go back to that one. Don't mistake involvement for commitment. You've probably heard the saying, doing things halfway is the mother of everything that can go wrong. This rings especially true when it comes to quitting porn.

Involvement is just the initial step. It's just not enough to do. I. Only involvement. It means that you're showing interest and you're taking some action. But where it falls short at is at the level of commitment that's required for success. Think about going to maybe the meetings that you've gone to, but not doing the work.

Think about learning the concepts but not practicing. And outside of game time situations. I talk about game time situations a lot here in the podcast. This is really about the. Practice that comes before game time situations. That's what it means to be commitment. Committed commitment is about going all in, giving your absolute best effort and making quitting porn a top priority in your life.

It's about understanding that you can afford to just be involved if you want real change. So how do you give your best effort and go all in? You do that by creating a doable, practical schedule to do the work. This isn't about being a fanatic. A lot of people might think, well, I gotta go to six meetings, every week, and I gotta make sure that I'm constantly involved in something going on with pornography.

That is not it. It what it is about is being actively engaged in creating new habitual ways of exercising the skills necessary to solve the problem. Just like you're not gonna be a full blown muscle mass by going to the gym hard for a month. Solving porn is not about just going. Doing the work hard for a month, either.

If you wanna build muscle, you have to build a schedule of training that you can adhere to and do as regularly as possible. You know those guys who are like, oh yeah, I'm gonna commit to making this happen every single day for four hours a day. Most people aren't there when it comes to going to the gym.

And when you think about your pornography struggle, you probably don't have four hours a day to put into dealing with pornography. But what you do have is you could be flexible. You can do the work more often than not. Meaning even if you work on the problem for only a short amount of time each day for six straight months, you're better off than if you work hard for four hours every day for a solid month.

This is really about understanding the difference between being involved and being committed. Involvement is, oh, I did that for a while and I'll get back to it. Committed is I take at least five minutes a day to do the work and practice a skill even when I don't want to. Successful people around the world share three major components, curiosity, creativity, and commitment.

While the first two are really crucial, commitment is the glue that holds 'em together and it drives them towards success. So you embarked on the journey to quit porn, knowing that it wouldn't be easy. You're here because you know, Hey, this isn't easy. I need some help. Somebody can gimme some direction here.

Challenges and temptations are going to rise out of your day to day, but it's your commitment that's gonna carry you through it's commitment to creating a habit that you can do outside of those temptations. When it's time to practice, you practice when it's time to take five minutes and go, okay, how do I address what's going on in my brain in a habitual way and practicing that habit?

That's what commitment looks like. Remind yourself why did you start this journey in the first place? What are your goals? What are your motivations? Keeping those in mind gonna help you maintain this commitment when the co going gets tough. But being willing to do it every day for even a short period of time is a huge component here.

Next is learn how to commit for yourself. Commitment begins with self-awareness. Take the time to understand your motivations, desires, and the reasons you actually wanna quit. Reflect on the impact of pornography in your life, the relationships that are in your life that are being impacted by pornography, your own personal wellbeing.

Why is it that you want to quit porn? Identifying the pain points that can fuel this commitment. Commitment becomes more tangible when you set clear personal goals. Do who? Who do you want to be by? Who do you want to be by quitting porn? Define your objective values so that you can start moving toward them.

For example, you might have a value of not wanting to rely on external validation from people you don't really know to manage your discomfort. That's really what it is that you're doing. When you choose porn, you're going externally to someone who doesn't know you and you don't know them, and they're giving you this unfettered validation of how awesome you are so you can feel aroused.

And you may not want that in your life anymore. That might be the reason that you sat down as, okay, this is a value I wanna move towards. Or you might have a value of addressing your discomfort directly. You might have a value of self validation rather than external validation. Whatever your values are, to find them, say them out loud, write them down, and really create an understanding of what these are.

Ensure your values are specific. Make sure they're attainable, make sure they're relevant. This kind of clarity is gonna help you stay focused. Commitment isn't about perfection. It's not you. You are not gonna be perfect. Understanding that is gonna help you understand that when setbacks happen, they don't derail you.

They don't define your commitment, they don't push you off the platform. They help you see yourself. Practice self-compassion in this process. By forgiving yourself for slipups, focusing on progress rather than perfection. So often I talk about what's your batting average? If you're viewing pornography 30 minutes a week and you drop that down to 20 minutes a week, your batting average has gone up and you've reduced your porn viewing by a third.

That's great. That's amazing. Celebrate that. Don't be somebody who's beating yourself up for not being perfect. This is about you doing something for yourself. And when you beat yourself up because you're not achieving some measure that you think other people want you to have, then you're gonna have a hard time succeeding.

This has to be about you, about what you want and who you wanna be. This cannot be about someone else. If the reason you're quitting porn is that someone else says you need to, or for the comfort of someone else, meaning your spouse, it's really unlikely to be sufficient for you to actually make the real commitments you need to in order to succeed.

The next is, Never give up. I know that you're probably in this path and you're like, man, this is oh, so hard. I get it. The path to overcoming pornography is rarely linear. You're likely to encounter lapses or moments of weakness along the way. Remember that setbacks are a natural part of the process.

Instead of seeing a setback as a failure, view it as an opportunity to learn and grow. Every step, even one that is backwards, can contribute to your overall progress. In fact, when you take a step backwards, that's a learning moment. That's an opportunity for you to analyze and address rather than run and hide.

This is about learning and growing, not immediate or irreversible change. I think too many of us think, Hey, all of a sudden I'm gonna commit and all of a sudden everything's gonna be perfect and I'm gonna move forward and never move backwards. It's not how it usually works. That's not most people's journey.

There may be times when the weight of the journey feels overwhelming during these moments. Don't hesitate to seek out support from your trusted friends. Maybe a family member who's gone through this process, maybe a coach who actually knows what it's like to solve this problem. You can even join the Thrive Beyond Pornography membership at any time, and it's a lifetime membership so you can get the help that you need whenever you need it.

Sharing your struggles with others and seeking guidance can provide valuable insight and encouragement to help you stay on course, cultivate and maintain a growth mindset in this process that's gonna see your challenges as opportunities for growth rather than insurmountable obstacles. That's a way to never give up, and that's a way to stay committed. And if you embrace the belief that with effort and persistence and the right strategies that you can change and improve your life, then you're gonna start to succeed. Next one is to free your mind. This means that you have to be flexible enough to see what you're doing, may not be working, and be willing to try something else.

How many times have you said, no, I just gotta keep doing this thing. There's gotta just gotta keep going to the meetings. I know when I was struggling to quit porn, I would tell my wife, yeah, I just gotta keep going to the meetings. I gotta go keep meeting with the my church leaders. I gotta go do all these things that I had been doing, but that hadn't been working.

Nothing had been changing. And when that's going on, when you've seen that, okay, this really isn't changing anything, becoming and being flexible allows you to seek out more and. More valuable strategies. The more flexible you can be, the more likely you'll be to find strategies that work and skills that work.

In order to never give up, you'll probably have to see the problem differently and be prepared to approach it in new and sometimes difficult ways in order to learn what you need to achieve your end result. To do that, you've gotta free your mind.

Freeing your mind allows you the flexibility to set aside preconceived ideas of what is supposed to happen and start dealing with the problems that are indirectly in front of you that are di to do.

That. Freeing your mind allows you to do that. Freeing your mind allows you the flexibility to set aside preconceived ideas of what is supposed to happen and start dealing with the problems that are. Right directly in front of you, the actual issues instead of the ones that you think you're supposed to be dealing with, or instead of trying to please other people, or instead of all the other things that you've been told should work but aren't working.

By being committed, knowing that you're never gonna give up and doing it for yourself, you'll start to free your mind of all that chatter that your brain's gonna offer you that keeps you from getting you where you want to go. How many times has your brain said, oh, it's gonna be too hard, stuff like that.

Think of all the things your brain says when to you, when it think of all the things your brain says to you when it wants to take the easy path rather than the hard one. Those can fall by the wayside when you maintain flexibility, commitment, and you keep going. Okay. Lastly, and I think this is a really important one, this is actually probably one of my favorites because it's a really important point, a really important conversation to be having with people, and that is, Commit openly and honestly, committing openly means sharing your goals and challenges with someone you trust, whether that's a friend, a family member, a coach, whoever it is.

And again, I wouldn't say everybody is worthy of this trust. Sometimes the people that are closest to us can't handle this conversation. So just be careful, be clear, be willing to not tell the people that. Or having a trouble handling it, maybe just being as light as possible with them, but going to somebody who can handle it, who's willing to work with you, who's willing to encourage you in the process.

I like to call these people vulnerability partners. They can provide encouragement, they can help you hold yourself responsible, and they can also offer valuable insights that you might not see on your own. Pornography struggles often thrive in secrecy and shame.

Committing to openly and honestly have these conversations breaks down be barriers that keep you from being the person that you wanna be. And by sharing your struggle with others, you begin to dismantle that isolation that you probably feel, and that often helps perpetuate the struggle. All right, my friends, I hope this has been helpful.

To be honest, this is probably one of the things that every single person should review on a regular basis, just to get an idea of, okay, what am I doing? What else could I be doing to help myself get past pornography? And if you really can start to implement these five keys to really committing to quitting porn, right?

Like don't make the mistake of just being involved. Be really committed. Learn how to commit for yourself. Don't give up, free your mind and openly and honestly communicate your commitment. You're going to actually succeed in this process.

Don't forget on Tuesday, September 5th at 7:00 PM Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Darcy and I are gonna be chatting on a Facebook Live called The Challenge of Pornography and Marriage. I hope you come. I'm gonna put a, again, a link for you in the show notes.

Have a great week and I'll talk to you guys next week.