Recently, I’ve been reading The
Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle. The book offers fascinating insights from
high performers in business, sport, music and academic disciplines. It’s not a
book about porn or about addiction, but I found some awesome advice that
complements beautifully what I wrote in Porn Escape. Over the next two weeks, I’ll share some
of the best bits.
In Porn Escape, I recommend preparing
a detailed plan of what you will do when you are tempted to view porn. It’s fine
to say: “I won’t view porn.” But what are you going to do instead? Coyle
explains:
“DON’T WASTE TIME TRYING TO BREAK BAD HABITS
– INSTEAD, BUILD NEW ONES: Habits are tough to break. The blame lies
with our brains. While they are really good at building circuits, they are
awful at unbuilding them. Try as you might to break it, the bad habit is still
up there, wired into your brain, waiting patiently for a chance to be used.
“The solution is to ignore the bad habit and
put your energy toward building a new habit that will override the old one.”
That’s why I recommend having a number of Tempting
Alternatives to Porn (TAPs). They have to be tempting, something you enjoy
doing enough to do it instead of porn. Let your brain build a new circuit.
Build a new habit that will override the old one.
I also strongly encourage visualizing
yourself carrying out your ‘escape plan’ and actually carrying out the plan as
a type of ‘fire drill,’ even when you are not triggered. Look at what Dan
Coyle has found:
“What’s the best way to begin to learn a new
skill? Is it just listening to a teacher’s explanation? Reading an
instructional book? Just leaping in and trying it out? Many hotbeds [centers
of excellence] use an approach I call the engraving method. Basically, they
watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and
over, until they build a high-definition mental blueprint.”
How and when should you visualize? Coyle
explains:
“This is a useful habit I’ve heard about
from dozens of top performers, ranging from surgeons to athletes to comedians.
Just before falling asleep, they play a movie of their idealized performance
in their heads. A wide body of research supports this idea, linking
visualization to improved performance, motivation, mental toughness and
confidence.”
Conclusion: Every night, when you are in bed,
before you go to sleep, take a few minutes to visualize, as vividly as
possible, a scene where you are tempted to view porn. See yourself recognizing
the trigger. Feel yourself getting confident. See yourself carrying out your
escape plan. Let that be the last thing you visualize every day.
Building a “high-definition mental blueprint”
of how to deal with porn impulses is your highway out of the desert of porn
into the paradise of inner peace. But you need to work on this over and over
again. You’ve practiced viewing porn hundreds, maybe thousands of time. Is it
realistic to expect to learn new behaviors without a similar amount of practice?
Coyle continues:
“Each fundamental, no matter how
humble-seeming, is introduced as a precise skill of huge importance (which, of
course, it really is), taught via a series of vivid images and worked on over
and over until it is mastered. The vital pieces are built, rep by careful rep.
...
“Precision especially matters early on,
because the first reps establish the pathways for the future. Neurologists
call this the ‘sled on a snowy hill’ phenomenon. The first repetitions are
like the first sled tracks on fresh snow: On subsequent tries, your sled will
tend to follow those grooves. ‘Our brains are good at building connections,’
says Dr. George Bartzokis, a neurologist at UCLA. ‘They’re not so good at
unbuilding them.’”
There is a set of skills you need to know if
you’re to become porn free. You need to know them really well, so much so that
they are second nature to you. You need to develop a sublime confidence that
you know what to do and that you can do it. How do you do that? Mastery. Repeat
the skills over and over again. Practice taking deep breaths until you have a
fair idea of how many breaths per minute you’re doing without measuring.
Practice thinking about your deepest values. Practice writing in your
journal. Practice your Tempting Alternatives to Porn. In short, practice your
whole escape plan. Treat it like piano practice. Or basketball practice. You’ve
got to get really good at this! Make those new tracks in your brain.
We’ll end with a quote from Bruce Lee that
shows the value of mastering fundamentals:
“I fear not the man who has practiced ten
thousand kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand
times.”
So, learn the fundamentals of porn escape.
Practice them daily. Become a master of them. Watch yourself becoming more
confident at rejecting porn. Watch porn quietly recede from your life.
More from The Little Book of Talent
next week.
You don't have to be
hooked on porn! Millions of people live happily without porn. You
can be one of them.
Get the book
