How Nofap Ablaze Your Dying Passion | Focused Life
You have lost the joy of working for your goals.
That was a long time back when you were passionate about your dreams and goals in life.
Now, it all seems like a dream.
There is no intrinsic happiness in your work.
Yes, you still have goals, but it seems unachievable now.
As if the light inside you is dying day by day.
But why did this happen?
And, how can you rekindle that fire within you?
This article will talk about how nofap ablaze your dying passion and creates a focused life.
Let’s begin.
Habit Loop
Watching pornography is just a bad habit, and for some, it is an addiction.
Whether we believe watching porn reduces our internal motivation, we have to agree that pornography is a huge source of pleasure.
We all run after pleasure.
We don’t like discomfort or sadness.
We all run away from it.
So, if you are bored, angry, sad, or feeling hopeless, your mind searches for something that makes us feel better.
The mind reminds us that there is pornography that can make us feel better again.
Though the effects will be temporary, it is a quick way to forget our troubles.
Once we do it, we create a cycle to deal with our negative emotions.
The next time we feel bad, we again turn to pornography for temporary pleasure.
The more we repeat this cycle, it becomes a habit and soon becomes an addiction where you want to stop watching pornography for life, but you cannot do so.
In other words, you become dependent on it.
No one can be happy once they are caged, and now you are caged in your own trap.
Intrinsic motivation
Have you ever felt the joy of doing certain things in your life that you could do for an extended period of time?
This happened in our childhood.
We used to love certain activities, like drawing, singing, dancing, studying or playing sports with all our hearts.
That joy is intrinsic happiness.
This is not the happiness of waiting for something to start; this joy is based on the process of action.
Intrinsic motivation can only be felt when performing an action.
The thrill we experience in anticipation of something, or the rush we feel because of a certain future event, is not intrinsic motivation.
But our intrinsic motivation started to die as time passed by.
We start losing interest in activities that give us joy, and most of the time, we have to force ourselves to complete tasks that we hate.
How did we lose that intrinsic motivation?
Let’s understand this with an example.
A child is a free spirit.
He does what he feels right.
His light and energy are vast compared to ours.
But, once that child is confined and does not let them do according to their wishes, the bright light slowly dies.
As discussed earlier, we are all confined within our bad habits.
We don’t want to watch pornography, we don’t want to waste our time, we want to progress in our life, but we plan something and do something else.
Every day is the same.
Once you keep repeating this behavior, you keep losing self-respect.
A person without self-respect can never have discipline in his life.
A person without discipline can never live according to his wishes.
You can notice that all the dots are connected to our free will.
Once we start living according to our free will, our self-respect returns, our intrinsic motivation returns, we quit our pornography addiction, and life starts turning upwards.
Now, let’s understand the scientific reason for our dying intrinsic motivation.
Dopamine Imbalance.
The rush you feel before ordering your favorite pizza, or the excitement you feel thinking about your future self or completing the dream project is because of dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that our body makes.
The nervous system uses it to send messages between nerve cells.
Dopamine is responsible for thinking, planning, and finding things interesting.
It is also known as the pleasure hormone or the motivation hormone.
In simple words, dopamine is released when our brain expects a reward.
When the reward is big, the brain releases a high amount of dopamine, and because of that, we feel excitement and thrill.
But, what kind of rewards are big?
The rewards that are close to our survival are always big.
Sex is a reward that is close to our survival.
It is responsible for keeping our genes alive, and because of this, the excitement and thrill are very high with this reward.
But, pornography hijack this natural reward.
Pornography adds fantasy, novelty, and other factors in these rewards that multiply dopamine release in our brain.
You can get anything with a click of a button.
Your wild fantasies come true in this world. Therefore, according to your unconscious mind, this world of pornography is a thousand times better than the real world.
But, one of dopamine’s qualities is that it doesn’t release the same amount of dopamine with the same kind of information.
When the information is new and unknown, it releases a high amount of dopamine because of uncertainties.
In other words, novelty is a significant factor in releasing dopamine.
You cannot get the same amount of pleasure with the same pornography video.
You need something new, and because of the high-speed internet, there is always new in this world.
Also, because of this, you go into more hardcore stuff in pornography because old concepts or fantasies are not as satisfying as before.
These high spikes of dopamine imbalance your regular dopamine release, and because of this, you don’t find things interesting anymore.
This is called dopamine imbalance.
Testing your dopamine imbalance
If something goes up, it will definitely go down sooner or later.
In the case of dopamine spike, there is no exception.
Once you experience that dopamine hit, there will come a time when you will experience low and unmotivated for no reason.
This is when the dopamine level goes down.
Your brain doesn’t release any happy hormones through regular work.
But, you can test yourself if your dopamine is imbalanced or not.
Of course, your motivation for your life is low now, that’s why you are reading this article, but that’s not enough.
Perhaps, your motivation is low for other factors in your life like shame and guilt.
But, if it is really because of pornography addiction, you can test it for yourself.
Try to quit viewing pornography for 21 days and see your motivation level.
If you feel lower or more depressed than before, you are already dependent on pornography for pleasure.
Again, if you feel highly motivated, it is also a sign of dopamine imbalance.
There will be a mix of emotions and motivation levels in these three weeks.
Note down every day how you feel and how much you crave to view pornography again.
I know it’s hard to do it, but you will not lose anything in 21 days by not watching it.
The truth is, to completely balance your dopamine level, it takes almost 15-18 months if you are a long-term pornography viewer.
That doesn’t mean you will not feel any motivation during these months.
On the contrary, you will experience a mix and wide range of emotions.
Some days it will be good and some it will be worse.
I have talked about nofap and its timeline in other articles.
You can visit the archive section if you want to know more.
Finding joy in little things
There is always this rush in our head that we have to go somewhere as soon as possible.
We keep running our whole life but find ourselves standing where we started years earlier.
Does it make sense?
We hate boredom as if it is our number one enemy on earth.
We don’t even go to the toilet without our cellphone.
We keep searching for stimulation to make us feel better.
In truth, the more you run after stimulation in life, the harder it becomes to find true happiness.
You will always feel empty by the end of the day or the end of your life.
Why?
Because the ‘happiness’ you are searching for is always in this moment, in the present, and stimulation is in the future.
It’s okay to feel bored, anxious, sad, have negative thoughts, etc.
You don’t need to avoid them or replace them with pleasure or stimulation.
You don’t need to play video games, drink alcohol, or watch pornography because you feel sad or depressed.
You can experience that sadness and embrace that anxiety you are having because you cannot always run after good feelings in your life.
You have to experience all ranges of emotions if you want a good life.
Avoiding or distracting yourself from negative emotions doesn’t solve the problem; it only increases it.
But, sometimes, it is okay to distract or avoid those emotions.
The problem arises when you make a habit out of it.
You find yourself stronger and happier once you don’t run away from these emotions and start facing them.
When you feel boredom, close your eyes and experience that boredom.
When you feel sad, close your eyes and experience that sadness.
Because true happiness is hidden in negative emotions as well.
Happiness and joy are always attached to your values and goals in life.
But, we forget our goals or objectives when our brain is bombarded with stimulation or happy hormones spike.
We go for short-term gratification because we are doing it every day.
Once you stop that rush and remain still in the moment, you will realize how beautiful the little things are.
You will appreciate the air you are breathing; you will love the sunset, smile at your current self, and find your focus in life.
Avoiding pain and Seeking pleasure
If you pay attention to your brain, you will notice that it always tries to avoid pain and seek pleasure.
Once you are unaware of your decisions, which we mostly are, you form habits without conscious thoughts.
Later these habits take you further from a good life because these habits always seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Why do you watch pornography?
Because it gives you pleasure, it helps you to avoid real-life pain or allows you to escape from reality.
But we all know this is a trap.
The more we seek pleasure, the more we repeat a specific behavior, and thus it becomes an automatic process in our lives.
Again, nobody wants to experience pain without any reason.
We avoid pain as much as possible because it is uncomfortable and doesn’t make us happy.
So, if you are feeling bad, worried about your future, or just lost a lot of money on stocks, you always know where you can find pleasure.
You turn yourself to alcohol, video games, smokes, or pornography.
Though these activities do provide short-term gratification, you have to face real-life issues sooner or later in the long run.
Of course, depending on short-term gratification is good sometimes, and it is healthy for your emotional balance.
Things start to get ugly when you don’t want to repeat a process, but you still do it.
Boredom and firing up your passion once more.
This is not an article on how to quit bad habits.
I have written it in earlier articles.
However, if you decide to quit or change the pattern of your brains, I have to inform you that this will not be as easy as you think.
But, nothing is greater than your willpower.
It has vast strength beyond your imagination.
All it wants is a little bit of faith in yourself.
Certain things will happen when you try to quit pornography or other habits for good.
You will feel bored, have negative thoughts as if something is wrong, and your stress and worry will increase for some time.
Most days, you will not feel very good about yourself and think that nofap is a mistake.
You will not see any progress despite the progress you have already made.
In these situations, don’t avoid what you feel; embrace them.
If you are feeling extreme boredom, close your eyes and feel the boredom.
If you are worried or stressed, close your eyes and feel the worry and stress.
You need to remember that these are the tricks of your subconscious mind to bring you back to your old habits.
Once your brain fails to find the pleasure it wants, it will search for alternatives.
This is where your passion for your work will return.
This is where you start to feel alive again.
But, to reach this stage, you need to go through all ranges of human emotions.
You cannot live only with happy emotions because pain is also a part of our lives.
Don’t run away from it; accept it.
Conclusion
Nofap fired up my passion for writing and many others.
You can read their stories in the nofap forms.
Nofap.com is a great website where you can join and read all other people’s success and failure stories.
You need to know that you are not alone in this journey.
Many others are struggling everyday to quit these unhealthy habits to have a better tomorrow.
If you failed many times, that’s okay.
Keep searching for new resources new materials until you are entirely free from your pornography addiction.
Nothing good comes free in your life; you have to pay for it.
The question is, how much are you willing to pay for the good life you want?
Best
Ahbab
