No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, there is one skill that can help you level up more than any other: Mindfulness.
Imagine you started backseat driving, which always makes your partner angry. You’re both impulsively resorting to automatic defensive and offensive habits. This only gets you the same results you’ve always gotten—probably a few hours or a day of being miffed at each other before you make up.
But let’s rewind to the moment just after you said they should increase their following distance and they replied sharply, “I know how to drive! Just relax.” You’re about to lecture them on how they wouldn’t have enough time to avoid rear-ending that car if it was to brake suddenly.
But instead of following that impulse, you press your internal pause button. You’ve been meditating recently and studying mindfulness, so you use those skills to focus on your breath for a few moments, calm yourself, and examine your own mind. After a couple of minutes, you speak.
“Hey,” you say, “I’m sorry for always backseat driving. It probably makes you feel like I don’t trust you, and that sucks. It’s hard for me to not be in control, because if I’m not in control then I don’t feel safe. That’s not because of you. You know that when I was younger I couldn’t always trust my parents to take care of things and I had to take some responsibilities over. That’s not your fault, and I’m trying not to project that on you. But it would help me relax if you keep more following distance. I would really appreciate it.”
Imagine the different sort of response and outcome you might get if you said this instead of going with your first instinct. This is a pattern breaker. It’s much more likely to not only get you what you want but also deepen your relationships. When you pause and examine your own mind and feelings, you can then mindfully make your best choice for the circumstance. This is the power of Mindfulness.
Or maybe you’re triggered and thinking about finding some porn or porn substitutes. But you realize that you’re in a danger zone and tap into your new mindfulness skill. You observe the way this urge is making you feel. One breath at a time you find your way back to equilibrium and calm. And then you put down your phone and enjoy a sandwich instead.
1. Detach from emotion so you can act rationally.
Mindfulness isn’t about stuffing your emotions down or ignoring them. But there’s a middle ground between ignoring your emotions and letting them sweep you away. Mindfulness teaches you to find that middle ground by recognizing your emotions and observing them like a scientist. Watch what’s happening to your breath, your muscles, your thoughts. Allow yourself to return to calm and think for a moment. Only then can you act instead of react.
This return to calm can take 5 minutes or more when you first start. But when you get good at this, you’ll only need a few seconds to make a dramatic difference in how you handle life. The ability to feel one way, pause, and act rationally is what separates humans from most other animals. Mindfulness trains this ability.
2. Urge surfing: observe temptation until it’s gone—poof.
When you feel an urge to do something you’ve promised yourself not to (like jerking it to your phone) there are a few things you could do:
Urges rarely last longer than 30 minutes if you don’t feed them. We feed urges through visualizing acting on them, planning to fulfill them, rationalizing and justifying with ourselves, self-isolating, etc.
Trying to suppress a thought, feeling or sensation can actually increase it. If I told you, whatever you do, DON’T think about pink bananas...well, that’s about the one thing I can be sure you’ll think about in the next few minutes. Fighting your own thoughts is more likely to be frustrating than successful.
With Mindfulness, we understand that we can’t banish thoughts or urges. but when the choppy waves of an urge start to disrupt our balance, we can ride them out without getting sucked under.
In the REMOJO app’s Urge Manager, we guide our users through exactly how to surf an urge (as well as other effective techniques to vanquish urges).
3. Be calm and confident under pressure.
Performing on stage. Giving a speech. Asking your crush out. Playing the big game. Interviewing for your dream job.
If your nerves have ever gotten in the way of doing your best in important moments like these, then you’re in good company with 99% of the rest of humanity. Most people have a greater fear of public speaking than they do of death.
Mindfulness techniques allow you to find your center in any situation. From your center, you can act with courage and confidence, rather than giving into nerves and panic.
4. Release regret and worry. Finally able to relax and enjoy the present moment (and sex).
We live in the age of distraction. There are endless options for entertainment, and most of us take advantage of it. Our eyes and ears are plugged into devices for most of the day.
When not distracting ourselves from the present moment with tech, we often get caught in memories of the past or hopes and fears about the future. Mindfulness empowers us to live squarely in the present. You can savor your meals. Enjoy meaningful conversations. Stop to smell the flowers.
A lot of chronic porn users develop porn-induced sexual dysfunctions like ED (impotence). Fail to perform enough times and you’ll start to dread sex–the embarassment, the shame, the awkwardness, the fear that she’ll tell her friends…
The best thing you can do is be honest with your partners about what you’re going through. (Check out our Insight, Porn-induced Erectile Dysfunction: How to tell your girlfriend.)
The second best thing you can do is learn how to relax and enjoy the pleasure of getting up close and personal with your partner again. With Mindfulness, you can notice when your fears and anxieties are surfacing. You can breathe, ground yourself in the present, talk about what you’re feeling if you want to, and remind yourself to have fun.
5. Maximize your focus, productivity, and excellence.
One of the most common complaints of chronic porn users is brain fog—the inability to focus, be productive, or think clearly. For many this naturally starts to improve as they leave porn in their past. But Mindfulness training takes this to the next level, allowing you to put yourself in “the zone” at will.
If you’ve been convinced that this Mindfulness stuff is worth a shot, you can get started with the REMOJO course Mindfulness and Meditation. Give yourself the chance to access a level of brainpower you didn’t know was possible. Get into the free app today to liberate your mind and get your vitality back!
Live better without porn.
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