Six Steps To Deal With Unwanted Urges To View Porn

o deal with unwanted urges. -: 10:31:21

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Zach Spafford: [: 00:00:00

But Whitney Lou 95, this is what her review said. Thank you both for being willing to be so open and vulnerable. Your story has really inspired me and having listened to your podcast has and still does give me new insights and understanding about this struggle of pornography, especially in the context of a loving marriage.

I really appreciate how real you both are about it. Thank you both. Well, you're welcome, and thanks for leaving that review, I really appreciate it. I love hearing what you guys have to say, and if you have, you know, any suggestions of, um, you know, topics that we might cover, I would love to cover those topics.

Um, and, so just email it. Send whatever suggestions you have to zac. spafford at, or info at zacspafford. com. That's what it is. I, I, uh, I was going to give you my Gmail account. I guess you can send it to my Gmail account. Um, I just got back from Alaska. I went up to Alaska for, um, you know, some, for some family time.

It was a, it was, it was, we went up for a funeral, but. Um, it was great to be around my family and be able to, to spend some time with so many of my awesome cousins who I love, um, and I'm, I'm grateful for that time. And now coming back, I wanted to share with you something that, um, that I've been. Teaching within my membership and teaching to my individual coaching clients so that they can get better at processing and going through each and every individual thought and emotion that comes across their mind in a way that's effective, useful, and ultimately helps you design them.

How you want to, you know, interact with any given thought. So, uh, the, the tool that I want to teach you is called NAB. N A B as in boy. So, Nancy, Erin, Bravo. If you're, um, you know, looking for the phonetic alphabet, I don't, that's not really it. What, Nancy, Alpha, Bravo, right? Um, And, and this tool, NAB, is something that I love to use myself.

And it was one of the tools that I used this week while I was up in, in Alaska, because, you know, as we're mourning, um, the loss of a family member, we, uh, you know, I, you, I still get temptations. Like, hey, you should just go zone out and look at porn. And that's not, that's nothing compared to what it was, but, uh, I find that even in the deepest darkest times of, um, of my life.

That is when the thoughts come along. And here's the thing, right? I don't think that there's a situation where you're never gonna be tempted again to seek comfort in something that's not helpful. And by the way, some of the temptations were eat lots of food. Right? So, a lot of you listening to this, you're like, Oh yeah, porn.

Porn wasn't the problem for me. It was, it was probably more food than anything. Uh, and I'm doing my best to eat healthy and be good, good to my body. Cause as I, you know, reach into my 40th, into my 5th decade, I am, I'm learning that my body doesn't bounce back. I don't have all the, all the, um, metabolism that I used to, right?

So, this tool, I use it, um, for, Food for me personally most of the time every once in a while and and on this trip while I was gone Um, I did I got a moment where my brain was like, hey, you could probably look at some porn while I was scrolling through It wasn't Instagram. It was it was like I think it was uh Maybe Facebook, I don't remember, but this is the tool that I use to solve for that problem.

And I used it to solve for that problem when my brain was like, Hey, you should eat all of that food that's over there, all the sweet treats and all the, you know, cause it's Halloween. And then we have people bringing lots of food for the funeral and all of that stuff. So this is a great tool for all of those.

And if you have, uh, if you travel often, you can use this tool all the time. And. Uh, for me, I, you know, I kind of went back and I listened to my travel episode, uh, episode number 73 and that one's called three tips for business trips. That, we did that in January, uh, this year, so if you want to go back and listen to that, it's probably a good listen.

might be just lonely as, as [: 00:05:00

And this tool will help you go and really step back from that. The, the momentary rush that your brain is trying to offer you and give you a, uh, a key, um, observable tool to objectively make a new decision, the decision that you want to make, right? Uh, the first step is to notice. Notice what your brain is offering you.

Just be aware, um, again, be the observer of your brain. Be clear that your brain is going to offer you all kinds of things. Some of those things are going to be helpful, some of them are not going to be helpful, but your brain is going to offer you lots and lots of stuff. Now, The next part of this, so NAB is two N's, two A's, and two B's.

So, NAB is, uh, the N's are Notice and Name. Oftentimes, the first thing that we do after we notice that our brain is offering something to us is we fight with it. We try to put up a wall, we try to put up space between us and that belief, we try to We try to discount that belief, we try to fight with that belief, we try to tell that belief it's not okay, or we try to tell ourself that believing that is not okay, or even that having had that thought occur to us is not okay.

And this is one of those things that is really important to understand. Your brain's gonna offer you all kinds of stuff, because what it's trying to do is it's trying to solve a problem, which is your happiness. It's trying to create happiness for you. And your brain equates dopamine with happiness. So just be aware of that, and just recognize that when your brain offers you stuff that's maybe off the wall and weird, you're going to want to not judge that, and we're going to get to that in another step, right?

We're going to get to how to deal with that in another step, but just be aware that the first thing your brain often wants to do after it notices a thought that's kind of errant is it wants to fight with it, but we're not going to fight with it. What we're going to do is we're going to name it. So if I said to you the word Pinocchio, you would know probably the broad strokes of that story.

Right? You would be able to tell me, okay, the story of Pinocchio is about a little wooden puppet who eventually becomes, um, a little boy after he lies and learns to not lie and all kinds of stuff, right? And you might be able to fill in even more details there, but that's like the broad strokes of the story.

So you know the story of Pinocchio. So, the example that I'm going to use Uh, from this trip is that my brain was as I was, cause this is most pertinent to pornography, but you can use this with food. So I'll actually probably do both, right? So my brain was like, Hey, you know, you could click on, um, uh, a link, right?

So the algorithm in whatever I was watching all the, all the social media sites do this, right? It wants you to stay as long as possible. So if it offers you something that has a hook on it. Something that your brain would be interested in. So for men, right, like the demographics in this system are going to know that I'm a man and they're going to say, Oh, let's every once in a while offer something that is, that's going to attract him from the female side.

Right? And so my brain offers me that. And as I noticed that I start to think about, okay, what's the story that my brain is trying to tell me here? And the story my brain was trying to tell me there was. It's okay if you look at a little bit of pictures because you're really sad about, you know, this funeral that you're at, right?

Great! This is the story of how my brain wants to help me feel good. Even though that's not who I want to be. Even though that's against my moral compass. So now I know the name of the story. So, the story is simple and easy, and it's totally a, um, a clear cut, like, oh, here's the story, here's the one that's gonna take you down a path of happiness.

So you can get that dopamine hit. And the next thing you want to do there is, so we're, again, we're not fighting with this. We're going to allow that to be there. We're going to allow that story to be there and we're going to ask it some questions. I think the most useful question that, that we can ever ask any of the stories that our brain offers us is, is believing this going to help me be the person that I want to be.

10 minutes from now, an hour from now, right? And I like to put those two times in there because when I do, it pushes me to think about a longer term picture. So oftentimes, our brain will offer us a belief structure that in the moment totally feels true. And it could be true for a moment, right? This will make you happy, or this will make you feel good.

es from now, an hour now is. [: 00:10:00

Now you remember how I said you don't want to judge yourself, you don't want to fight with your, your walls, um, or fight with your thoughts and put up walls, right? You want to be kind to yourself. Be aware that your brain is going to offer you all kinds of stuff that it used to offer you, that it's offered you in the past, that it might offer you in the future, and you don't have to make that mean anything about you.

You can just be kind to you. And the way that I like to analogize this is, your brain is learning a skill, much the way that a, like a baby is learning how to walk. And sometimes when, you know, we, we encounter these moments in our brain, and our brain is like, Hey, let's do this thing. We oftentimes want to, like, yell at ourselves.

And be mean to us and, and kind of be like, you know, you should be able to do this better. You, you have to, you are 30, you know, I'm 41 years old, right? So if my brain, if I was on this particular instance, if I was like, you are 41 years old, I can't believe you're still having these thoughts cross your mind.

Yeah, of course they're going to cross my mind. I'm, I'm a human. I have a sexual capacity. And by the way, my brain knows that if I go down this rabbit hole, it's going to feel amazing. Right? So your brain's going to offer you all kinds of things to try and help you feel good when you're, you know, in my case, I was in the process of grieving, right?

And the answer is, yeah, okay, this is here. I didn't I didn't bring this here, it's just here, and it doesn't mean anything about me that it's here. So beating myself up about it is not gonna help, right? So just like the way that you wouldn't yell at a toddler who, like, falls down when they're walking, trying to learn to walk, you wouldn't be like, You're a terrible baby, you suck at walking, right?

You wouldn't say that to a toddler. Don't say that to your own self. Don't say that to your own brain. Because your brain is trying to learn a process of handling things so that it can succeed. The next thing that you want to do is breathe. Deep breaths. Just like any time that you've learned, you know, ten deep breaths, ten, whatever.

Any time that you've learned how to breathe deeply, be aware of that. And, do that, do that breathing. So what you're doing here is you're fueling your brain, you're fueling your body, and that's going to help you make better decisions. So in this case, as I was, you know, I asked my questions, I chose to be kind to myself, I chose to say, I mean, I can totally look at porn, I know that.

What if that's not who I want to be? And, if I did look at porn, that's not the end of the world. That's not the worst thing that could happen to me. I would have a conversation with my wife, I would have a conversation with you guys who listen to this, and I would say, I made a mistake, and I'm learning from it.

And I'm growing past it. And this is, you know, and I would analyze that. conversation. And by the way, I've been analyzing conversation that I had in my brain, even though I didn't choose to look at porn. I've been analyzing it because I want to know how can I get better at that process? How can I be a better version of me using these techniques to allow myself to grow and build and become more capable in the future?

So I'm, I'm constantly looking at this as a, as a data point that I can use to become better. And then the last thing that you got to do is. Wait, so I did be kind of brief. So that was it, right? So it's notice Name, allow, so allow it to be there, ask questions, ask the questions that you would ask if you were having this conversation with, you know, your, your 13 year old self, right?

If you were having a conversation with a kid or with, uh, if you were imagining yourself as maybe the bishop and you'd be like, okay, well, you know, how is believing that going to help you, right? Just be kind and ask those questions and then be kind and allow, or sorry, breathe, right? So notice the name, allow and ask, be kind and breathe.

Those six steps, uh, three letters, N A B, right? So let's talk about this with food. Um, this was constant, right? So it's Halloween, there was tons of candy, there was tons of delicious desserts, there was tons of food. And one of the things that people do when they're grieving, or when they're sad, or when they're frustrated, is they eat.

e of the, so it started with [: 00:15:00

I would be like, okay, is my body hungry? Am I hungry? Actually, if I'm not hungry, I'm going to name this story. The story of how my brain just wants me to eat something. So, so that it overcomes, so it can get past this boredom, or loneliness, or sadness, right? This is the story of how my, and, so I'm gonna take one particular incident, um, uh, it was actually today, um, I, I woke up, and there was breakfast available to me, and I wasn't actually hungry.

But I do try to eat a breakfast, and there was all this delicious food, my aunt had made some, like, extraordinary food, and I, I said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna notice that my brain's offering me that I should just eat, and eat, and eat, and this is the story about how this food will make me feel good, okay?

And then, I allow that to be there. I don't fight with it. Yeah, I could totally eat as much food as I want here. There's nothing wrong. No one would fault me. And the question I ask myself is, Is eating this food going to help me be the person that I want to be physically? Is it going to help me be healthy the way that I want to be?

And then I just was trying to be kind to myself. I was trying to be just the person that I would try to be for my own children. And I said to myself, you can eat all of that. There's nothing wrong with eating that if that's what you want to do right now. And there's no shame in doing it. There's nothing wrong with you if you want to eat all that, and that's fine.

Okay, so that's kindness, that's me being kind to myself. And I think oftentimes this is the hardest part, uh, being kind to yourself. Because we think somehow that if we punch ourselves in the face that we'll see better, and it just, that's totally a false promise. And then lastly, I breathed, just took a couple of deep breaths and then I made a decision.

Okay. I'm going to have one piece of French toast. I'm going to put peanut butter on it instead of syrup, which isn't like a major concession by any stretch, right? It's not like I. Totally ran away from the food, but it is this it's it's getting to a place where you your your decisions are not based in Fear they're not based in how much you loathe the outcome They're based in how can I get closer to who I want to be?

So I hope this is helpful for you if it is I'm so glad please use it and if you would like coaching on this. Come be a part of the membership. It's a great opportunity to, you know, bring your data points and we talk about them, talk through them and get you new data so that you can understand, Oh, this is how I'm doing and this is how I could do it better.

Just like if you were, you know, golfing and your golf coach was like, all right, let's adjust your swing. Same thing. All right, my friends have a great day. Have a great week. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.