Lower your bar. Reach your Goals.

Set achievable goals and actually reach them instead of aiming for the stars and failing while take-off.

There is one thing nearly all beginners do wrong, trying to quit masturbation or porn. It is like with a new year's resolution; you know that change is inevitable in case you want to regain a grip on your life, your body weight or your relationship. You have been there before. But this time, you keep saying to yourself, You will make it.

This is the scenario most people making any resolution will begin with. Highly motivated, they convince themselves that they are going to lose 25 kilograms by summer or quit their porn habit forever. Now, you can choose where they probably are by mid-January (the time you are reading this). Are they either:

A: In complete despair, questioning themselves and ending up endorsing their habit they wanted to abandon forever just days ago.

Scientifically speaking, the latter is called cascading effect.

Or - is this scenario more likely?

B: Happy and proud, they celebrate themselves not relapsing until now! This was easy due to their super attainable goal.

Right, you know what is more likely. And maybe description B seems eerily accurate to you.

Quitting any habit is hard. Yet, quitting an addiction is astronomically harder, even though both go together. Looking back, there were many factors leading to me ultimately defeating my compulsive PMO disorder, so I do not want to simplify anything. However, there was one thing I did, many people trying and ultimately failing to quit do not do. It’s setting realistic, achievable goals.

…how not to do it

Your promise (to whom?), made in a state of no urges yet high motivation, will not help you when indefinitely struggling some day. Some people suggest not counting days at all, and I have stopped counting myself. Nonetheless, counting offers easy trackable progress in a short time span. This did push me through my first month. Yet, there is something in between setting high goals and counting every single day compared to not counting anything. The easy solution is: lower your goals.

On the brink of relapse on day five, a 10-day goal is going to seem more attainable and realistic, therefore worth trying. You are half way there. However, a 100-day goal will feel impossible to achieve in that same situation. Also, relapsing does not weigh that heavily as you are still 95% away from your destination. Winning over this urge feels virtually meaningless, as the next one is going to come for sure.

Another point are the milestones you reach or not reach, depending on the achievability of your goals. Various studies have shown that reaching a goal one needed to work for releases dopamine, making one feel good while simultaneously enforcing the rewarded behavior. This rather means setting a 7-day goal, or a 12-day goal if this was the longest you went, rather than setting 3-day goals. Your brain knows when it is tricked. Design it to be realistic and achievable, but challenging enough to potentially fail. Still, set yourself a distant goal, which can lead your direction indirectly. It will serve as an anchor when you need it.

Implementing this easy strategy can help you make it through months, instead of failing over and over again due to hurdles you put in your own way. If you are just starting out, try to make it a week without porn. If this is too hard, try 5 days. If reaching 10 days was no match for you, level up your bar to twenty days. Play with your goal. Push through your barriers. All of this while keeping the bigger goal in the back of your head.