4-steps to win over your Addiction in 2025

Many have high plans for their new year, but fail just after a few weeks or days. Here is how to transform your goals to reality!

Wow, what a year. You may progressed, may achieved every goal you set yourself concerning quitting porn or masturbation. Maybe you did neither of those but relapsed over and over; maybe you are just starting out. No matter what it is, what happened so far is not important anymore. Free yourself of it. It is not just a new year, it is your year!

However, with implementing the techniques and strategies you tried before, you are doomed to fail again. This is not just bad relapse-wise, but leads to a complete loss of momentum. Yet, if you follow the upcoming steps precisely, all of this won’t happen.

Here are 4 steps, building the foundation for a PMO-free 2025. Take a piece of paper, sit down in a room without music, your phone or any other disturbances. This is what quitting takes.

0. Lower your bar.

This is the mostly forgotten basis of the basics. I see so many people starting out with goals of 90+ days, yet they can not manage to stay abstinent for a week. Your problems are not going to disappear by setting astronomically large goals, but by setting small, achievable ones. Your goal should be staying free for one week. That is it. One week. If you can do that, another week. Then aim for two weeks. This bite-sizes the abstract goal of quitting, and you are more likely to actually change your life in the longer term.

Now after you have done this, we can start with the real process.

1. Define your why?

Why are you here? Is there a certain person you neglected or even let down? Do you think it is a bad influence and do not want to continue destroying your brain? Whatever it is, find it. Take your time thinking about this question

2. Identify your triggers

Is there a certain place you always watch porn or jerk off? Or do you fall into addiction at a certain time (e.g. in the evening before bed)? Does social media lead you to relapse? Analyze why you fail like you are another person observing yourself. As always, being brutally honest is the first step into recovery.

Now eliminate exactly these triggers one by one. In short, this means that if you get triggered by your bed, you use it only when you are tired and short of falling asleep, not for laying there on your phone getting tempted. But I wrote a more detailed article on how to do it here.

3. Install multiple blockers

Reading this, you are probably motivated and determined to quit. Nonetheless, as a matter of biological and neurochemical facts, you will get the urge to relapse. The only way to avoid this is, robbing yourself of any opportunity to watch porn when you get tempted. This means installing and setting up multiple porn blockers. They saved me from relapsing multiple times and truly are worth gold.

4. Hold yourself accountable

Now, this hurdle can be taken in a number of ways. Some like to make agreements with themselves, which they sign and place visibly in their room. This can also involve rewarding one for achieving a defined goal, for example a moth free of masturbation. Others like spending their time in online communities designed to stay accountable, for example ManDon’tFap or Subreddits. There are various other options, and I will write another episode solely on this topic, but the key takeaway is to stay accountable, no matter how.

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Congratulations! You already laid the basics for a successful new year! Your primary task now is implementing all of these steps best as you can. Then you should set yourself a 7-day goal. This is your task. Make it one more week into 2025, and you already can celebrate your first mayor success.

For sure, these steps were only the tip of the iceberg. Next steps would involve biological changes like your neural pathways rehabilitating and further hurdles, but this is not important so far. Also, after a week, I expect you to see some first, small benefits, which will hopefully motivate you to continue down this path. Anyway, I wish you and your family a happy and healthy new year. Peace!