4.3 Willpower & Urge Surfing
Planted: September 1, 2022
Last tended: February 25, 2023
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willpower. And again, this is mainly aimed at those who are struggling to give up porn. But also, we did speak about the control and release. And if you want to, I mean willpower is just a great thing to help you in all areas of life. So this section is really for that I’ve got five key points that I want to make. And then one technique, we’re going to try and get through this as quick as possible, it can be quite a big area, I’m just going to teach you the main points you need to know I can give you further reading. But if I teach you the main points, there’s not a lot of point doing that. So willpower, is perhaps the most obvious challenge that we face, there will come a time when you need to use a lot of willpower to achieve what you want. Understanding science of willpower is definitely going to help you in getting what you want in life. Firstly, willpower is finite, you can run out of willpower, it doesn’t last forever, and you’ll eventually use it all up. It’s like a muscle, it gets tired when you use it. And you will run out it is finite. Secondly, it is depleted at the end of the day. Why? Well, because of the first one, because it runs out. If you’ve been using it up throughout the day, it is going to run out. So the end of the day is a very vulnerable time, really, you do have less willpower at the end of the day. Because it gets tired, it runs out and you don’t have any left. Thirdly, willpower is recharged by sleep. That’s why it’s the end of the day when it runs out. In the morning, you have loads of willpower, you also really want to make sure that you’re getting a good night’s sleep, because that’s going to help with your willpower, it’s going to help recharge as much willpower as you can. Next, well we’ve got to consider I mean, we’ve talked about it getting tired and running out and then recharging it. But what we really one is basically a bigger muscle. Instead of using it and getting tired and us running out of energy, we want to train the capacity to have more willpower. And you can do that you can strengthen your willpower instead of just depleting and recharging, you can actually strengthen it in three ways. Those are meditation, exercise, and just using willpower, using willpower itself does strength and willpower. And the more willpower you use, basically, the more you try, the better you get out to trying. So always try your best. Exercise has been shown as long as not too much exercise if you exercise three times a week, that’s great for willpower. And meditation I think I spoke about that in the porn section increases impulse control. And it’s great thing to do for willpower. Last point here is willpower is affected by blood glucose levels. When your blood sugar is low, you have less willpower. What does this mean? Well, you can basically have more willpower by eating regular small meals. Because that’s going to keep a more stable blood sugar level, it’s going to be less likely that you’re going to have low blood sugar. Choosing slower digesting carbohydrates, it’s also going to keep those levels stable and avoiding sugar. Of course, sugar gives you a lot of blood glucose, which is actually pretty good for willpower when it’s there. But after you’ve eaten the sugar, then it comes the crash. And when you have low blood glucose levels, like I just said, you have less willpower. So again, if you want to learn more, the book is The Willpower Instinct, by Kelly McGonigal these are the main points. There’s two more actually, if you’re tempted by something, wait 10 minutes. She explains this quite a lot in her book. But yeah, all you need to know is if you’re tempted by something, wait 10 minutes, the urge sometimes just passes in 10 minutes, you can decide again, if you can just wait 10 minutes, you might actually not end up doing that thing. And lastly, when faced with temptation, this is quite an interesting one. Slow your breaths down to very long breaths. A few minutes of slow breathing actually helps shift the body from a state of stress to a state of kind of self control. So there you go. There are some tips on willpower and now we’re going to get to a technique called surfing the urge. Oh urges are going to happen. And you have to accept that our brains will crave the good feelings. And at times when those cravings are the highest, we can use various methods to deal with that. The most popular method people use to deal with feelings that they don’t want to have is avoidance. They try to occupy their mind with something else, they avoid it. They just brush it away and watch TV or something. And it’s a really, really bad method of dealing with your feelings. Because it doesn’t deal with them. Distraction, denial, it doesn’t work. When these urges happen, all that all that does is it just shifts it until you do deal with it, or until it just builds up so high that you have to act on them. So in the Willpower Instinct, she teaches a method called urge surfing. And this is how you deal with these urges. The premise is simple, basically, all urges, all feelings. And to an extent all thoughts are like waves on an ocean, they rise up, they peak, and then they fall and pass. Any urge or feeling you have will pass if we try to block this wave will get knocked over, will get consumed by it, and it will control us. So instead, we serve it. And this gives us control. We do that by simply acknowledging what we’re feeling or craving. And really becoming fully consciously and presently aware of the urge, we actually go into it instead of going away from it. Feeling how it’s affecting us maybe affects our body in some way, maybe our heart rate speeds up, maybe it leads to certain thoughts. So we become mindful of that we fully experience whatever it is, and however it feels, we attend to the experience rather than trying to escape it. And we almost almost take a little mental step back to say, Okay, I’m experiencing this feeling right now. And of course, we should try to be well aware of the inner sense of inadequacy that fuels the fetish, even though it’s subconscious. And well, by definition, impossible to be aware of, maybe there is something that has triggered that we should try to become aware of that too. Either way, we should simply fully experience the craving, then we turn our attention to our breath, we feel the sensation of the breath, wherever we can feel it the most might be the tips of the nostrils, it might be the rising and falling of the chest or the abdomen, we focus on that might help to spend a minute on that feeling just fully focusing on the breath. At some at this point, some people find it helpful to imagine themselves breathing out the urge, letting it go with every exhale. Either way, we then turn our attention back to where we felt the original urge. And we notice it and we attend to the experience and within a few minutes, we will notice that just like a wave, the urge eventually falls away. And by attending to it in this way, we kind of let go without giving in. And in fact, it becomes very, very easy to deal with urges using this method. I have a quote here, I think this is from Kelly McGonigal or someone that studied urge surfing, they say so you have to learn acceptance, or recognition of what’s going on, and a more mindful perspective. Then you can write them out, you can let go without giving in. So when you’re tempted, just accept it, attend to it, experience it, instead of avoiding it and distracting it. That just means you’ve got to deal with it later. Deal with it. As soon as you as soon as you feel it, experience it and question it. And again, think of the trigger. Is it because of your sex drive? Is it because of unmet needs? Is it an urge to release toxic shame and don’t avoid it. Having said that, you do want to avoid getting the urge in the first place. It’s only when you already have the urge that you want to go into it. Don’t don’t set your desktop background to be porn, because that’s not going to help anything. Keep horn and everything related to porn completely out of sight, so as not to trigger any urges. But once the urge has been triggered, that’s when avoidance is bad. And that’s when we need to just become aware of the urge. Take some time to experience it. Then focus on our breath for a minute. Breathe out, and then take our attention back to where we felt the urge. And notice it just falling away. And that’s search surfingThe science of willpower will help you massively in this area (and in life). I tell you to take control of so many things but letβs be honest, it can be harder than it sounds. We can struggle to do that. So, understanding willpower will help you.
Willpower is limited.
Willpower becomes depleted by the end of the day (therefore, itβs a vulnerable time for cravings).
Willpower is recharged by sleep.
Willpower is strengthened by meditation, exercise, and using it up.
Willpower is affected by blood glucose levels (so avoid sugar).
When you feel an urge that you donβt want, surf the urge.
We do that by simply acknowledging what weβre feeling or craving, really becoming fully consciously and presently aware of the urge, feeling how itβs affecting us, maybe it affects our body, maybe it leads to certain thoughts, we become mindful of that, we fully experience whatever it is and however it feels. We attend to the experience, rather than trying to escape it. And we almost take a little step back to say βHmm, ok, Iβm experiencingβ¦ thisβ¦ feeling right now.β And with cuckolding, we should try to be aware of the inner sense of inadequacy that fuels the fetish. Even though itβs subconscious and by definition impossible to be aware of, maybe there is something that has triggered it. We should try to become aware of that too. Either way, we should simply fully experience the craving. It will pass.
Source
Author(s) || Connor McGonigal
Website || howtostopbeingacuckold.com
Article || 4.3 Willpower & Urge Surfing
Date || Between January 27th and November 14th, 2018
tags: [“evergreen”]
contributors: ["Connor McGonigal"]