How to create new Habits! - My Experience + Research

To everyone reading this, I want tostart off by thanking you for your time. I hope the following research someone out, even if it is just one person!

Upon extensively reading upon habit change, via online articles, doctoral papers as well as a novel by Charles Duhigg called "The Power of a Habit" I have learnt some valuable lessons regarding Habit change and why many Porn/Sex addicts fail to stop watching Porn or stop masturbating.

The first thing to understand before emabarking on this journey to change one's bad habit is to understand what are your cues, what is the routine, and honestly what is the reward you receive. For instance, I used to believe that I would use Porn to "escape" whenever I would get stressed. But after tracking my cues for a week I saw how my cue wasn't being stressed, but feeling this sense of hopelessness in the face of my adversities. That would result in me isolating myself to watch porn, masturbate, etc. As a result of my these activities I would feel a sense of empowerment, as I chose to go on Porn, and I managed to do it without getting caught. This was an eyeopener and it allowed me to move on to the next step of habit change.

After knowing my cues, I did what most do, and try to avoid my cues. However, for some of us suffering from this addiction, our cues aren't thing we can avoid, or atleast not everyday for the rest of our lives. As a result, I needed to find some new way of changing my habit. As Charles Duhigg illustrates, the golden rule of Habit change isn't to change the cues, or the reward, but to simply change the routine. Now some of us have been told to read as a replacement, or listen to music, or medidate, but if these activities dont provide the same reward as pornography then it can be EXTREMELY hard to remember these alternatives in the midst of our urges. As a result, we need to find alternatives that provde the same reward.

In doing so, some of us manage to last weeks or months or years without pornagraphy. However, for those of us who have relapsed countless times, even after years of sobriety, we need to understand that we fall to pornagraphy usually when we are in super high stress situations. Many smokers for instance, will be smoke free for years, however a tragic event may occur, such as a family member's death and well they resort to smoking. Essentially they loose belief in they new routine to cope with whatever they end up going through.

Leading me to the third key factor/step in habit change, belief. In order to stick to our new routines even super high stress situations we need to have belief in our new routines. How do people accomplsih this step? Well, as Charles Duhigg explains, in many cases where addicts who end up going through super high stress situations emain free of their addiction, these addicts usually attribute to their refrainment/self control as believing in a power greater than themselves. Simply, what I am trying to say is that individuals need to believe in something so that when such times come where their belief is illustrated they can say, "everything happens for a reaosn, and you can cope with everything you're going through."

After that, individuals can then work on creating keystone habits, which are habits such as going to the gym daily, which provide individuals with small wins. According to research keystone habits help supress these negative habits and have a ripple effect in other aspects of yoru life.

Being a recovering porn addict, I can say for certain, that thus far in my journey the aforementioned steps have EXTREMELY helped me out and I feel like it woud be wrong of me not to share. Feel free to share, and comment down below with either questions or your thoughts.