How do I know I'm ready to change?

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How can I tell that I’m ready to change?

Costs outweigh the benefits. 

-       Buffering provides something

-       Acknowledge those benefits.

-       How do you want to feel when you think about pornography

-       “Client said, I want to feel disgusted.”

-       That doesn’t acknowledge what pornography has done for you

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-       That also doesn’t acknowledge what it is costing you

-       It is just a judgement that makes you feel disgusted because you like pornography

-       So, honestly acknowledging the costs and the benefits of use will allow you to make the cost benefit analysis 

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Wanting vs commitment

-       For the better part of 25 years I wanted pornography out of my life.  

-       I pleaded with Heavenly Father to take this problem away from me

-       For lots of years it was just a want, the way a little girl wants a pony.  

-       I would ask and think that I just deserved it because I asked for it. 

-       .  

-       It wasn’t until after we got married and Darcy found out about my pornography use that I really got committed. 

-       It wasn’t until it was costing me my self confidence and I was desperate to stop feeling like a terrible person who was never going to get rid of this problem that I started to take action. 

-       I started with bishops, who were great and loved me. 

-       They didn’t have the answers, they were there for me to confess but not to give me tools. 

-       They sent me to counselors who were there to hear where I was and witness my struggle and validate my feelings, but didn’t have any answers, didn’t have any real world idea of how I was doing and why I was where I was.  

-       They just told me I was an addict.  

-       So that lead me to the twelve steps… which was full of earnest men, trying to move forward with their lives. 

-       but  that time only served to reinforce that I was “powerless against my addiction”

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-       Then when we had the twins, I took a step back. I saw that none of this had gotten me where I wanted to go.

-       So I committed to figure it out by looking into my own mind, true principles that I could see from a gospel perspective and all the things I learned that made sense from what I had done before. 

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-       This is what being committed looks like.  

-       Trying.

-       Trying again, 

-       Trying something new

-       Trying something different

-       Trying anything I hadn’t tried before  

-       Trying things that were harder than anything I had done before

-       I spent $40,000 and learned enough to become an expert in a field that I had begged heavenly Father to take out of my life. 

-       And I kept trying until I succeeded beyond anything I could have imagined.