Notice that I called them attitudes. These aren’t tips. They aren’t facts or anecdotes. They are useless unless you truly believe them. If you disagree with any of these attitudes, they will not help you stop the fap. I came to /r/nofap because of my social anxiety. I thought that abstaining from PMO would solve my problems. I did not reach 90 days, and I still fap. But I did acquire discipline over myself, and I did end up solving my social anxiety issues completely. I only hope that I will be able to help at least one of you as much as all of you have helped me. Here are some things that I’ve truly come to believe:

—–

1. Fapping isn’t a bad thing.

—–

Excessive fapping is. We all know all the downsides to excessive fapping, but we must remember that fapping itself is far from being the devil. Just keep in mind that once in a while is completely healthy! Really!

—–

2. Nobody else feels bad when you fail. You shouldn’t either.

—–

The more something matters to you, the more you think about it. In this case, it’s fapping, and the more you think about fapping. The worse the urge is to fap. In order to stop thinking about not fapping so much, it just has to matter less to you. Conveniently enough, it doesn’t matter at all.

Every day there is a whole new batch of posts where people confess they’ve relapsed. If we can take anything from this, it’s that not only are we human, but everyone else is too. Don’t pressure yourself, don’t beat yourself up. So what, you fapped. Don’t even forgive yourself. You only need to forgive yourself if you did something wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong.

—–

3. Do not attempt to reason with your body.

—–

If you take a wild hyena and plop it into a room with a bowl of fried chicken, it is going to eat the fried chicken. It doesn’t care one bit that its health may be in danger. It just wants those delicious fats. If someone told the hyena not to eat the chicken, would that stop it? NO! If someone walked in and tried to casually take the chicken away, would the hyena be okay with it? NO! The only way to save this hyena’s life is by forcefully removing the chicken for a long time. The same goes for your body. You must never trust your body to stay disciplined. If you truly want to quit, you must remove the source forcefully.

In a relatively famous scientific study, a monkey was stuck in a room with a light and a lever. whenever the light lit up, and the monkey pulled the lever, blackberry juice would dispense into it’s mouth from a tube. After learning how the system works, the monkey would stare at the light intently, never moving. Even if the door was opened, it wouldn’t even join other monkeys when they went out to play, even when there was fruit outside the room. If the juice that was dispensed was watered down, or even not dispensed when the lever was pulled, the monkey would react furiously! If the machine was to stop working for an extended period of time, the monkey would somewhat regain his senses, but if the machine were to start again, the monkey would immediately restart his lever pulling behaviour, even if the behaviour was seemingly “unlearned” before.

—–

4. Fapping isn’t necessarily relapsing. Be fair to yourself.

—–

The “”Pomodoro Technique” is a productivity hack in which a worker gives himself 5 minute breaks every 25 minutes in order to make himself think “Oh, I’ll do that during my break, which is in 8 minutes!” every time he gets distracted. It’s much easier than thinking “I’ll do that when I’m done.” Because who knows when he’ll be done? Time and time again, he would tell himself that he would quickly check something for a minute and work afterwards. Then the minute turns into hours. In essence, he is forcing himself not to work in order to be more productive.

“Cheat Days” are scheduled days in diet programs where the dieter can indulge in whatever junk food they want, in order to keep them from giving up. If they have a craving, they can tell themselves to wait til the cheat day. Basically, you lose weight by planning to eat junk food.

Time and time again it is proven that people will be more inclined to suffer if a reward is just around the corner. 90 days is a long time to abstain from PMO. Scheduling days to do whatever you want will make it easier to control yourself compared to resisting for an entire 3 months. As long as you’re not fapping too frequently, you’ll be okay.

—–

5. Quitting fapping isn’t going to change your life for the better. You are.

—–

Let’s be honest here. You’re here not because you want to stop fapping. You love to fap. You’re here because fapping is ruining something else in your life. There are things you can do to help your situation even without changing your habits. Just look for them.

TL;DR Get real.