Conquer the 30 Day No Fap Challenge
Five Tips to Breeze Through it
Are you interested in tackling the 30 Day No Fap Challenge? Are you a porn addict? Are porn and masturbation taking over your time and energy?
This was a struggle for me.
My earliest memory of jacking off was ten years old. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it felt good.
I remember watching porn with my older cousins when I was young. We would be laughing while watching cause we didn’t understand what it was. Or maybe it was only me who can’t comprehend.
I would share it with my classmates in second grade, but they didn’t understand it. I’d get this confused look on their faces.
But then in third grade, I transferred to an all-boys school. Mind you. It was a Catholic school. That’s when it became normal to talk about jacking off and watching porn. It became worse as we reached high school. My classmates would talk about watching porn together and compete on who gets to finish first. I didn’t take part in such activity cause I had to keep my good-boy image intact.
I would sneak into our family computer and connect to dial-up internet. I would scour the internet for hentai pictures. Hentai is anime porn. I’m a massive anime nerd when I was young. It was rare back then.
It was Mission Impossible. Any minute, someone can walk into the room and see what I was browsing. It didn’t help that I was printing them in a clunky printer. It would take minutes before it finishes, a ticking time bomb that can blow up in seconds. Luckily, I was never caught. Or my parents knew but they didn’t say anything. I’m sure I didn’t know how to delete browsing history.
I’d use those photos to jack off in private. It’s hard to finish using my imagination. I didn’t have access to magazines or porn videos.
Fast forward to today, I see fapping as a distraction in my life. Back then I didn’t have much going on so I’d spend my days playing video games, watching TV and jacking off. Hormones during puberty were also quite active. Once it kicks off, it’s hard to resist.
Now it’s different. I’m not a teenager anymore. I have work to do.
I tried the 30 Day No Fap Challenge a couple of years ago, and boy was it hard for me to finish. How can you remove something you’ve been doing ever since you were a kid? It’s like telling me not to eat for three days. (Fasting is something I have to try. That’s another story.)
I didn’t last long. The farthest I’ve gone was fifteen days. That’s a lot for me. Since then, I’ve been tracking whenever I’m masturbating. It’s not that much these days, but I still slip from time to time.
Are you interested in tackling this challenge, read on? Here are lessons I’ve learned along the way.
1. Block all porn sites through Focus App
Parental control for a grown-up who can’t control his urges.
Choose any app of your choice. There are tons of chrome extensions and Mac Applications that let you do this. Me, being a smart kid, I can work around all the applications. But having to do five steps before I can access a porn site, helps me get deterred from the impulse.
2. No gadgets in the morning and at night
I have noticed that my willpower is at it’s lowest in the extremities of the day. This is why I need to get rid of my gadgets before I sleep and when I wake up. It’s rare that I get stimulated on my own. It’s always when I watch something on YouTube or while browsing Instagram. Included in removing gadgets, I also remove social media apps.
3. Solidify your morning and evening rituals
The first and last hour of a day should be automatic. Upon waking up, it should be like brushing your teeth — you don’t have to think about it. They say that habits stick after sixty days of doing them. I am not yet there, but I’m working on it. Slowly but surely I’m moving towards that direction.
Part of my morning routine is meditation and morning pages. Those things help me watch my thoughts. I get to observe myself as a third person. They help me discern my urges.
Do they make sense? Is it the monkey mind jumping off places?
It’s rare that I find myself jacking off in the middle of the day. If you’re doing it while on lunch break, you have a bigger problem. See a therapist if you can.
4. Unplug internet connection at home
This is a recent addition to my ritual. I unplug the WiFi router at home before I go to bed. I had gadgets in bed last night, but they were useless. I can’t do anything with them. I wanted to watch YouTube, but I don’t have cellular data.
If you have data, then this doesn’t apply.
It’s surprising how happy I was before sleeping and upon waking up. I wasn’t bothered by notifications. I was not craving to connect. Most importantly, I didn’t have to exert willpower when the urges came up — I didn’t have a choice. There’s no internet for me to use.
5. Get Married
The amount of masturbation decreased when I got married. For obvious reasons. But my wife recently went back home, and I was living alone for a few days. It’s not surprising that I went downhill soon as she left. I got back into square one, and it’s sad to see myself go. The pattern disruption was massive. I slept super late that evening — from the usual 9 PM bedtime to 12 AM.
It’s been a week since she left and I’m slowly getting back into my routine. I ’ve been bugging her to come home, and she’s arriving in a few days. I can’t wait to get back into our usual rituals.
The biggest excuse that I give myself for fapping is that it helps me sleep. Yes, climaxing helps but watching porn and subjecting my eyes to a computer screen wakes me up. This is why having sex is ten times more effective than masturbating.
A good habit that helps me fall asleep at night is reading a physical fiction book. This turns off my monkey brain. My mind cools down and relaxes. It’s easier to put down a fiction book rather than turn off my computer.
We become our habits. It’s sad to see that we spend countless hours watching porn. It doesn’t make our lives any better, and it gives us a false sense of sexuality. That’s not how sex works. It’s not uncommon to watch countless hours of porn before getting off. In retrospect, it’s sad to see ourselves waste time like that.
You can do it. Don’t rely on willpower and put systems in place. This will be more efficient than having to control yourself every time an impulse comes up.
These practices are transferable to other areas of our life.
Goodluck on your No Fap Challenge! May the Force be with you.
