Hello fapstronauts, today I noticed I finally got my first blue star, so I decided to write my first post here. Let me tell you something about my NoFap journey and maybe give you some advices. Before starting, I’d like to apologize for my imperfect English, I’m not a native speaker (Slovak here), if you feel like doing so feel free to correct my mistakes. I like to learn English 🙂
I’ve decided to never ever fap again on 9th August this year. I just finished masturbating and realized that this is not the life I want to live. Yeah, I thought that after every fap session, but this time the feel was very strong. I suddenly felt ready to face any strong urge to fap.
First I made a strategy to avoid urges. I asked myself “In which situation do I fap?” and realized it’s usually when I take my phone to toilet with wifi router turned on. There were 3 solutions for that: 1. Don’t take phone to the toilet, do what I’m supposed to and then leave, 2. Take phone to the toilet, with wifi router turned off, but leave as soon as possible, 3. Take phone to the toilet with wifi router turned on and face the urge. In like the first two weeks I used the first solution. At the time I was fapping once a day (sometimes twice) and I don’t think I could face any urge, so I avoided it completely. Later I switched to solution two, and for about half of the streak I’m using solution 3, I got more used to facing the urges.
The next thing I’ve done was that I made a Reddit account and got myself a NoFap badge. We all know how great it feels to see the number growing. Also, getting the first week done, later first month, getting your first star. It doesn’t look like a big thing but it’s very motivating.
Then I started looking for some motivation. This subreddit is filled with it, I decided I want a girlfriend, I want to be more manly, I want to live a more social life, I want to have more interests than just sitting on toilet fapping to pixel ladies. Also, my father passed away about a year ago and now I’m the only male in the house (16 years old), living with my mother and older sister. I wanted to become more useful, do more stuff around the house, help the family more.
Next step I’ve done gradually when doing the streak: finding new hobbies.
The first one I found was bicycling. I actually used to do bicycling before starting NoFap, but I made it more intensive, going bicycling at least 3 times a week. I live in a village, so there’s plenty paths around to ride on.
I also made my evening 5 minute workouts more intensive. Before I used to just do as many push ups as I can (usually somewhere around 20), but since about a month into NoFap I decided to add squats (then 20, now 30), then later 30 seconds of plank (now increased to 1 minute 30 seconds), and stretching legs by bending over (I’m actually don’t know the real name, if you know it please let me know), starting at just touching the ground 10 times with tips of fingers and now doing 30 seconds whole palms on ground, without any trouble.
I later decided to learn how to play a musical instrument. As a kid I loved the way my father plays the accordion. So I decided to go with that. I’m learning by myself, without using sheet music, just playing what I hear. The progress is slow but it’s fun 🙂
When browsing Reddit once I found lockpicking. It looked like an interesting skill to know, also it could be useful sometimes, so I thought to myself, why not. The same day I made my first tension wrench and a pick out of two paper clips and successfully unlocked my drawers. It felt really great so I ordered a lockpicking set and started learning soon.
My most recent hobby is floorball, which I started about a week ago. It’s awesome, I highly recommend it. If you feel like you don’t know what to do, find a group of people and start playing right away 😉
Yeah, that’s plenty of hobbies. And it came out of nowhere, not even forcing myself to do it all. I just saw something interesting and thought “Why not try it myself?”, and while before NoFap the answer would be no, now it’s always YES!
Another thing I think we can call a hobby is that I’m doing lots of work helping people every Saturday, like last week I was sawing and cutting wood, before that I sawed down some trees. I finally don’t feel useless.
Now time for some of the benefits I noticed.
1. I can look people into eyes! Before when I made eye contact with people, I just had to look away in like half a second. Now maintaining an eye contact is absolutely easy. I realized that when people look in your eyes when talking to you, they give you their full attention and when you look away it looks like you don’t care about them.
2. Much more social! Anytime there’s anything social going on, JOIN the people. If you’re like “Nah, my social skills suck, it will be awkward”, then you should know that no matter how awkward it’s going to be, it’s still less awkward and better than staying at home, sitting at computer. If you want to be social, get out of your comfortable zone. Don’t worry, the “uncomfortable” zone will soon become very enjoyable for you.
3. Less shy. Before I was afraid of even entering the bus when traveling to and from school, because here you have to tell the driver where you travel so he can give you a ticket. Now I’m comfortable communicating with strangers when I know what I want to know from them, or even doing a presentation – I’m comfortable with many people looking at me. Talking to strangers with no point, just getting to know them or something is still kind of hard, but I’m breaking through this barrier too. I never felt more comfortable talking.
4. This benefit is closely related to the one above – I can lead a conversation with a friend, quite easily find a topic and talk about it. This applies to talking with girls too, I am also able to make people laugh sometimes. It’s great.
5. This one is probably caused by the amount of new hobbies. I feel much more fit. Since I started doing NoFap I lost 5 kilograms of fat (currently 85 kg, height 196 cm), without even trying. I also noticed I no longer feel the urge of eating sweets and stuff like that, I instead drink several liters of tap water a day and prefer healthy food, vegetables, fruits, whole grains. I sometimes have something unhealthy but in much smaller amount than before and I don’t feel like I miss it. I’m just as happy eating food as before, it’s just different food.
I think there are lots of other benefits, I just either got used to them or can’t remember them right now. By the way, so far I don’t have a girlfriend, but I’ve noticed that girls are more comfortable with my presence, want to talk to me more. Also, on the street, random girls checking me out and me managing to win the “eye contact” duel feels amazing. Before NoFap I don’t remember winning a single eye of those duels.
It’s almost 23:30 here (writing this post for like the past 1.5 hours) and I ran out of ideas about what to write. Thank your attention if you got this far, I hope my imperfect English didn’t break your reading experience, if it did I’m sorry :(. I’d also like to apologize for the post being messy, I am simply not a good writer. Please ask me any questions you have, I would love to answer all your questions. I’m going to sleep soon, so I’ll probably answer them tomorrow.
Fapstronauts, I wish you good luck from eastern Europe, keep on NoFapping 😉
;