Why Motivation Isn't Enough: Building the Skills and Identity to Truly Quit Pornography
Thrive Beyond Pornography is about real change. Overcoming pornography was the hardest challenge of my life and marriage. It shattered my confidence, tainted my most important experiences, and felt impossible to escape.
But I did.
This podcast—and the resources at GetToThrive.com—will help you understand the struggle, break free from pornography, and build a thriving life with your spouse.
At some point, I stepped away from 12-step meetings and counselors. I stopped looking for outside solutions and started figuring out my own mind. That shift changed everything. Here, I share those lessons with you. You’ll get the tools, principles, and mindset shifts you need to reclaim control—starting today.
Whether you're struggling with unwanted pornography use, supporting a spouse, or just feeling stuck, this podcast will help you move forward. You’ll hear real conversations with my spouse, experts in human sexuality, and former users who have broken free.
Thrive Beyond Pornography brings a fresh perspective to your journey, helping you change the way you think—and, ultimately, the way you live.
Transcript
Episode 118
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: [:There's some really exciting stuff probably going on in your life. If, uh, if you haven't taken advantage of getting into the Self-Mastery membership, this would be a good time to do it. If you think there's somebody that you would like to give that to. This is a great time to do that. You know, feel free to reach out to me or to Darcy and we will, we'll help you make that happen.
Um, this week I wanna talk about motivation versus why and habits and who, right. Uh, this week, you know, the reason that this came up is this week I was, uh, coaching and one of my clients said to me. How do I keep my motivation so that I don't keep going back to pornography, and how do I choose an important enough why?
wanted to take some time and [:I. Ultimately in, in the process of being successful at leaving behind this habit. So I'm gonna touch on four different concepts and how they might help and how they might be keeping you from succeeding if you use, utilize them too heavily without the other key elements, or if you're use, utilizing them in a way that isn't, isn't, uh, isn't as effective, right?
So let's start with motivation. Um. Motivation is I think one of the most interesting ideas that we have. Motivation, and I like to make, uh, you know, I think of motivation and willpower as basically synonymous. Uh, and, and I think this is a pretty common way. You know, mo, we, we seek motivation and I think that's a pretty common way of thinking about most problems in our lives.
ly gone. And that's not, uh, [:So when it comes to short term and long term external problems, motivation is often a really good course of action, right? Take, uh, school or work, for example, right? External problems can be broken down into a variety of short term solvable puzzles that once they're overcome, they, they kind of fade into the distance.
They have basically like a, what I would call just like an end point, right? And once we reach that end point, that can go. Go behind you, right? So like if you have a, a project at work or an assignment at school that you have to complete, once it's completed, it goes, goes into the background and we don't ever have to think about it again.
get to the exit, and then we [:When, when that goal is accomplished, we no longer focus on the goal. Uh, I once did a weight loss challenge at work with my coworkers, and I kept telling myself that these were permanent changes. I would say this to people. Um, people were like, what are you doing? And I said, you know, I think I've really changed my lifestyle.
Um, really, I was just competing for money, right? I, I was like, I'm gonna win. I didn't lose a lot of weight. I, I'm never been very. Large per really, I think I ended up losing maybe like 15 pounds, but as a, you know, as a percentage, I, I was the highest, so that's why I won. But this, this motivation was the money and immediately after winning that challenge.
I'm not gonna eat like this [:I. I am, I'm more interested in short-term happiness, short-term, um, flavors, right? So it, it is much easier to have motivation on a short-term project or an external project, even if that's a long-term project, uh, or some sort of issue or goal. We can use these tools, these finite tools of willpower and motivation to see it through to an end point.
Right. Uh, when pornography doesn't, you know, a pornography struggle doesn't really have an end point per se, and that's not to say that you'll always struggle with it, but it is to say that you're always gonna be a human and you're always gonna be interested in sex and. The, you know, the joy and good feelings that come from sexual feelings, right?
isn't a very successful. Um, [:It's an internally motivated feedback loop, uh, in their book. Change anything. The authors describe willpower as a trap in, in the studies that they did of children who were offered tempting items to purchase after they'd just been given cash for going through a series of steps. Um, they kind of presented that, those series of steps as the experiment, and then they gave them the cash.
strategies in terms of like, [:So where the kids who succeeded in keeping their earnings really shined was when they had been. Given some skills, some skills that they could draw on when the temptations actually arose. And skill, not willpower or motivation determined whether they bought the overpriced trinkets for the thrill of the purchase, or they simply said, I'll save my money for later.
And many of you have have said, you know, maybe after a particularly difficult patch in your pornography struggle that you know, this is the last time, I'll never go back to that. And then you found yourself motivated and full of willpower and maybe a year or. Less later without having really changed your skill level, your willpower runs out and the brightness of your motivation has faded until you give in again.
for a minute. I'm gonna look [:So Simon Sinek, if you don't know who he is, great order. He has a lot of great research into, uh, into the habits of businesses, right? And he talks about. Why a lot when it comes to corporations, and I do think that there are lots of applications about this in your personal life as well. But in his probably most famous example, he in a TED Talk, Simon talks about the reasons that we all buy Apple products.
I. When there are actually more affordable and often more functional products out there, I can't tell you for like my first smartphone ever was. Um, I think it was a Motorola of some sort. It was, it was a non-Apple product and it had this thing where you could like swipe to text, so you just drag your finger along the Krty keyboard and it would come up with the word.
that until years later. And [:It's that they focus on their why. That why tells them how to make things that are amazing, which, which helps us all buy into why we want those things. So let's talk about how. Um, the why is often used and how we can actually use it more effectively to succeed. So usually when I hear my clients talk about the reasons that they want to eliminate pornography, I hear them tell me that there is some sort of external why I don't wanna upset my wife.
putting the locus of our why [:So I often talk about this as an abdication of agency. When I, when, when the reason why I am not supposed to do something has to do with someone else. Then we're abdicating our agency, and we are also in a lot of ways living a nice guy approach, which almost invariably ends in resentment. Failure and frustration, right?
I do this because it makes me a nice guy in the eyes of other people. I do this because I'm supposed to. I do this because my wife tells me to, or my church tells me to, or that sort of thing. That's where we live in frustration because we're not doing it for us. One of the things that Simon talks about in his famous TEDx talk that that you really only see if you're paying attention is that all of the why's of the great and famous entrepreneurs are focused in on themselves.
focus on who we want to be. [:So, lemme say that again. Our why has to lead to who we want to be, not to who we want to please. Okay. So we have to drop that external. I want to please my wife, I wanna please these other people. And we have to make it about, okay, who do I actually want to be? What is my why when it comes to who do I want to be?
ecuting behavior. We have to [:When I, when I left a fairly lucrative job working for a large company. My in-laws thought I was insane. You know, the work I was doing wasn't gonna end anytime soon. There's always, you know, there's always work. In the work that I was doing. I had a six figure salary and a five figure bonus and a company car and, but I also had a tight schedule.
I had bosses that I was beholden to and I had very little freedom in my day to day. I had to basically do what it was. That they told me to do. Right? And in the beginning of that job, I saw myself as a lifer. I thought, you know, I'll be, I'll be at this company forever. Then one day a switch flipped for me, and I no longer saw myself as a corporate man.
to be my own boss and I was [:In the long run, my who had changed. As a result, I found a way to buy business and become my own boss. So who I saw myself as, was my own boss. I didn't see myself as an employee anymore, and my behavior reflected my sense of who I was, not the other way around. Like I didn't go out and buy a business and then see myself as my own boss.
I switched to seeing myself as my own boss, and then I went out and bought a business. When it came to pornography, who I was became just as important. Uh, when I stopped seeing myself as an addict, I. I started to figure out that I don't have to act like someone who can't control my own behavior. As I left that space, I had to find a new version and belief of who I was, right?
s greatly reflected in these [:Like, hi, my name is Zach and I'm an addict, which you, you know, if you've been to a 12 step meeting, that's exactly what you say every time you walk in there, which is a terrible thing to think, not because it may not be true or it may be true, but because it's not helpful in terms of creating the person that you want to be.
So, you know, for a time after I, you know, left that idea. Of who I was as an addict. I was someone who occasionally looks at porn, right? That was my next phase of who I was and eventually who I was, entered a phase where I am someone who doesn't look at pornography. That's not who I am. That's not how I wanna live my life.
ace, I can say this anytime, [:I had to believe it. And, you know, after that moment, yeah, there, there were moments where I viewed pornography after that, but eventually my, my who aligned with my behavior in, in the long run sense. Right. And from my belief in who I am, my behavior followed as if I were, you know, as if I were to act in a way that was contrary to my understanding of who I am.
That would be very disorganizing to my sense of self. So when we become, who acting contrary to that, who becomes disorganizing, and it doesn't allow us to stay in that place for very long. So we have to, you know, we, we recorrect into the direction of like, no, this is actually who I am. Uh, this is the same principle.
ause who we are dictates our [:Forward, who also dictates our habits, and it can help us create worthy, valuable habits where unhelpful and damaging ones have previously existed. So when we talk about HA habits, I, you know, I start with a simple equation. Cue response, reward every habit that you have in your life. Basically follows this pattern.
So if you think about brushing your teeth, if you have a habit of brushing your teeth, the cue is either, you know, you get up in the morning and your feet, you know, and that's maybe the first thing you do. Or maybe you just, when your teeth feel grimy, that cue says. Okay, now it's time for a response process.
ve a reward. And that reward [:Cues will always be part of our lives. That, you know, as a result, we have to retrain our response process to give us rewards that align with our long-term sense of who we are. So first, what I mean when I say Q is an external circumstance and internal feelings that occur to everyone. So you might have referred to these in the past as triggers.
I find that to be a pretty loaded word that relinquish too much power over who we are. You know, when I have a cue, I, you know, I choose how to respond. To it. Just like, you know, if you're in a play in theater, right? You get a cue and all of a sudden you, you respond to that, right? Uh, when there's a trigger, I go off like a gun regardless of what I wanna do.
responses to cues that align [:I've lived in a lot of different places and we, you know, we were deeply ingrained with a sense of pride in our armed forces. And if you think about what it means to be a soldier in the US armed forces, uh, a soldier, a sailor, an airman. Uh, or a Marine, you probably think about training. Lots of training, which is just a word for practicing the skills that we need to automatically react to the environment we're in.
So just like in the military, we can practice our overcoming pornography skills in what I call off game scenarios, right? So food is a great place to do this. But there are also other commonly occurring circumstances that we can do this in Food's really great because when you, um, everybody eats, otherwise you're dead, right?
ts in the membership. I. You [:Right. When it comes, uh, when it comes to pornography, we're, we're basically taught, oh, change what's on the stage, which is like. Fighting with what's on the stage. Um, searching for motivation. Oh, think of your wife, right? Think about your wife, and you know, how sad she would be, right? So we're searching for motivation.
uter or motivation enough to [:And I, when I say intimacy, I'm not talking about, um, I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about knowing who each other are. Right. You know, if you. Try that version of life that's not likely to be a very successful recipe for disaster. Instead, what you're gonna wanna do is you're gonna wanna learn your why.
Create your Hu Who and train like your life depends on it. Train like a soldier and you know, learn the habits that you need so that you can. Every time that cue comes up, whether it's loneliness or sadness or frustration, or I'm just alone, uh, in a hotel room, you can train for that moment. In fact, I had a client who I sent him on a training mission.
't, I don't want it. So that [:And so what we did is we set up a training mission and I said, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to pick a hotel, go to that hotel, and, um. Just be alone for 24 hours when you leave that hotel. And we're just practicing being alone with these, uh, the skills that I've taught you and nothing else.
So nobody's there, nobody's gonna rescue you. There's not even a meeting that you have to, you know, leave your hotel room for. It's really just you and your own thoughts and your own reality, right? And so he set this time. Uh, in downstate Illinois. So he lives in downstate Illinois. He went, uh, towards the temple, which is up in, um, up in northern Illinois, just north of Chicago.
gonna go over to the go, um, [:He drives around one time and he's like, okay, what, what am I gonna do with this? He drives around again and in this process he's like going through the scenarios. In his head, he's practicing. 'cause here's the reality of life. You know, you go on a business trip, you don't know what's gonna be next to your hotel.
And he decides, okay, I'm just gonna go in. I'm gonna go in this hotel. And his brain starts offering him these ideas. Oh, well, you can just pay attention to who's coming out of the bar. Um, you can just pay attention to, you know, what's, what's outside your window? You don't have to go in. Right. And he's like, no, that's not who I want to be.
racticing on game. 'cause he [:I didn't say, you know, where to stay. And he goes through that entire, um, practice session and he comes back and he's like, it really showed me how capable I was because not only did I begin to, you know, use the skills that I had, but I, I began to relax and I began to say. I don't have to make any decisions that don't align with who I am and why I want to leave this, this process behind.
I can simply here in this moment, create habits that I will use the next time and practice those habits. And, you know, you've gotta, you've gotta practice 'em more than once, obviously, but practice those habits time and again until you are, they're automatic just like a soldier would. Right. And that is the only imagery I want you to think of when, when it comes to battle imagery.
I [:Fight to the death sort of thing, and we feel ashamed when we are losing the individual battle. So if you don't wanna lose the individual battles and you want a little bit of help with this, uh, do group coaching. We only do group coaching once a year. Uh, it starts in January. If you want to do group coaching, you can email me directly, Zach at Zachspafford.com.
t this. We're gonna get to a [:Feeling ashamed of who we are, but we are the men that we want to be and the women that we want to be. Alright, we'll talk to you guys next week. Bye.
