Tiny Habits, Big Changes: How Small Choices Build a Porn-Free Future

Episode 274

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Zach Spafford: Hey everybody, welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography, I'm your host, Zach Spafford. Happy Thanksgiving, I hope it was a great Thanksgiving for you and your family. I hope that, everything was just the way you like it. All the good, delicious things that you eat, all the amazing friends and family over that you'd love to have over.

As Thanksgiving wraps up and we start getting into this holiday season, Christmas and everything going, I want to talk about tiny habits. I think this is a topic that resonates with so many of us. It's how tiny intentional changes can lead to transformative outcomes. And if you're new here, welcome.

And if you've been listening for a long time, you know, that we focus on strategies to overcome pornography habits and reclaim your agency. This episode builds on some of the lessons that I've shared before, but with a fresh perspective on how small, sustainable habits can be the key to unlocking real lasting change.

When I was 14 years old, I, I remember this pretty distinctly. I was like, "Hey, I'm not going to, I'm not going to keep engaging with porn. I'm not going to keep doing this thing that I wasn't proud of. It was porn and masturbation. These were the behaviors in my life that left me feeling disconnected from my best self.

I, I had a lot of shame around these. I was, I really struggled to feel like I was being the right kind of person.

And so I had this moment where I said, Hey, I'm going to, stop engaging with this stuff. And I thought all I needed was a surge of motivation and willpower to get free from this.

Anybody find that familiar in their own lives?

Now, here's the reality that I now understand.

Motivation and willpower are fleeting. They're a lot like a firework. They're bright and they're inspiring for a moment, but they're also gone in a flash. And when they burn out, we're left relying on the same old habits that we tried to move past.

This is how I felt. I was like, man, I put in all that effort. There was this big, you know, Show in the sky and all of a sudden i'm back to the same place doing the same things that I was doing Because I didn't have different ways of dealing with what was going on internally

Fast forward to today, and I've learned that real change doesn't come from a burst of motivation. It comes from designing small, intentional changes that we can turn into habits that help us show up as the person that we want to be.

In BJ Fog's _Tiny Habits,_ he talks about how new behavior is a design issue. Not a character flaw.

That insight was transformative for me. For years, I thought I was broken because I couldn't just will myself to change, but what I needed wasn't more willpower. It was better systems, small, simple rituals that fit easily into my day and helped me take one tiny step toward the person I wanted to be.

So let's talk about two specific tiny habits that you can use to transform your life. Number one, pause and permission.

For me, this habit started with a simple phrase. "I can totally look at pornography if that's what I really want." Now I know that, Some of you might be thinking, "well, Zach, we don't give ourselves permission to view pornography. That's not aligned with my values. It's not in line with my morals."

Here's the truth, you actually already have permission. The choice has always been yours and this isn't about morality or discipline, it's about agency. The moment that I took back my agency, that I felt empowered to engage with my agency and understand my agency from an honest, connected place, was the moment that I started to become more capable of choosing what did align with my values.

And when I felt the urge to view pornography or to masturbate or engage with anything that wasn't inside my Value structure, I'd stop and take a deep breath, and I would calmly address the problem like this. I would say, " Zach, you've got permission to watch all the porn you want to watch. You can, I can look at porn. If I really want to, that's what I can do."

Then I would wait, and I would sit there, and I would be uncomfortable, and often that particular urge would pass. And I'd walk away feeling empowered, and I wouldn't feel like I was fighting with the urge. And this is, I think, a really important component of this pause and permission habit.

A lot of times what a lot of us end up doing is we fight with the urge. We're like, "Oh no, I can't. No, this isn't good. No, I'm not supposed to." And we push it down, we fight it back, we push it away. That language of battle is not simply An idea, it's the way that we feel. We start to create anxiety and we start to create a battle within ourselves.

The magic of this habit is that it removes that tension, that fight from the conversation. It shifts the focus from resisting to choosing, from reacting to responding. And in those moments, I realized that I wasn't just avoiding a behavior, I was actively stepping into my higher self, into the person that I wanted to be.

I was creating [: 00:05:00

And I think that's a different ballgame altogether.

So this pause and permission is not simply saying, Hey, you can look at porn and that's okay. It's saying I can look at porn. What do I want?

How do I want to show up? What is it that I'm trying to design into my life? And then getting calm and centered and making that choice from an owned, honest, empowered position.

The second thing, and this is really in line with the first, is stepping into the future you. That second habit that I added to this was really simple but it was very profound.

Scarlett 2i2 USB: When I felt tempted to give in, I'd take a mental step into my future, specifically one hour ahead. I'd imagine myself an hour from now, looking back at the choice I was about to make. I'd ask myself questions like, what will I believe about this decision in an hour?

Zach Spafford: Will this action bring me closer to the person that I want to be hour from now.

And finally, how will I feel about myself if I make this decision the way that my brain is telling me to do it right now?

It wasn't about perfection or shame. It's about clarity.

My future self often reminds me that the short term satisfaction just wasn't worth the long term trade off. This particular habit, this stepping into the future self, created space for me to make decisions rooted in my values rather than impulses.

And this is important. Both of these habits are incredibly simple. That's the point. Real change doesn't require grand gestures or complicated strategies. It requires small, repeatable actions that align with your values and build momentum over time. And just like B. J. Fogg says in his book, these tiny habits are building blocks of transformation.

They crowd out the behaviors you no longer need and create space for the habits that reflect your best self.

If you're working to overcome pornography use or any unwanted habit, try these two. They're small, they're simple, and they don't require you to rely on motivation or willpower.

Scarlett 2i2 USB-1: And this is really important. Practice them when it's not about porn. So when you think about the things that you need to do on a daily basis, you need to practice acknowledging what your brain is offering you. Give yourself permission to be whoever you want to be, and give yourself permission to choose what you want to choose.

Zach Spafford: Stepping into your future, whenever you are faced with an important decision, you should be doing this. You should be stepping into your future and thinking about how will this affect me? How will this impact me? Practicing these in non game time situations. Situations where it's going to create the habit.

Scarlett 2i2 USB-2: Not only in those moments when your brain is offering you porn, you have to do this on a regular everyday basis to create a habit. So your brain automatically turns.

So your brain automatically turns to motivation or willpower. What you're doing is creating a habit where in those moments that you would normally try and choose that. Or use motivation and willpower to not,

not only when you have those moments, when your brain is trying to offer you porn every day on a regular basis, you need to look at, okay, what is it that my brain is offering me? Can I step back? Can I choose this? Am I allowed to, do I have permission? Am I, am I, you know, capable of, let's see, am I, Am I empowered to make a decision one way or the other?

And then also looking at my future self. Is this what I want? Is this how I want to live my life? Is this how I want to show up in the world?

Not simply trying to dredge up motivation and willpower in the moment, but actually starting to create habitual responses to these moments that our brain can then automatically turn to that is in alignment with who we want to be.

Scarlett 2i2 USB-3: And if you're ready to take this work even deeper, head over to GetToThrive.com/workwithme to set up a free consult. Together you and I will create a tailored plan to help you move beyond pornography and into the life you're meant to live.

I love you guys. Thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this work and for striving to thrive beyond pornography. Let's make this week amazing. And we'll talk to you soon.