Practical Tips
Practice with Visualization
Visualization is a powerful technique that is used by elite athletes and other performers. When you visualize an experience, areas of our brain actually go through some of the motions used when actually acting out that behavior.
To use the power of visualization simply imagine yourself encountering a nisyanon, and then successfully resisting the temptation. This can help increase the chances that you’ll be successful with real nisyonos.
You can also use the power of visualization to increase your motivation. Each night before going to sleep, visualize yourself having successfully broken your habit. See yourself no longer controlled by those old thoughts and feelings. See yourself as empowered and freed from the control of old patterns. Imagine how good that would feel!
- See Battle of the Generation p. 230
Get Ready for Turbulence
The first few weeks after giving destructive habits can be tough. Brain chemicals like the neurotransmitter dopamine can decrease when addictive behaviors are let go, and this sometimes brings physical withdrawal symptoms, like anxiety, depression, irritability or insomnia. You might also get extremely strong urges to go back. Don’t panic. Like air turbulence, it feels worse that it really is -- and before you know it will be gone.
Seemingly Irrelevant Decisions
If you’re been clean for a while, don’t let your guard down! Sometimes without realizing it, we may do things that lead us in the direction of a slip. For example, we might convince ourselves that we are already strong enough to look at borderline material. The next day we went a little bit further and then before we knew it, we had a slip.
Experts call this AIDs (Apparently Irrelevant Decisions). In Chazal (Shabbos 105b) it’s considered one of the skills of the Yetzer Harah, “Today it tells him ‘do this’, and tomorrow it tells him ‘do that’, until it tells him ‘worship idols’ and he goes and worships idols.”
The point is that since you’re clean for so long, slips won’t happen out of the blue. If you watch out for it, you can see them coming way in advance.
Track your progress
The act of monitoring alone can help you make a lot of progress. It’s easy, you can use any paper calendar for it. Each night, make a check mark if you had a clean day, and minus sign if you had a fall. You can also use a password protected Word file to keep a daily journal. If you want to go digital you can use GYE’s 90 day chart, or one the many apps that are geared for tracking habits.
Make a written plan
Like any big project, working on breaking free deserves a good plan. By investing in a good plan, you’ll be much better prepared when you get hit by an urge. A good plan should have a very specific goal, the reasons you’ve set that goal, and the steps you need to take to successfully deal with tempting situations
Explore your values
Make a list of your top 5 values, (What do you feel are the most significant things needed for you to have a successful life? e.g. Peace, Family, Financial security, Purpose in life, Harmony, Responsibility, Love, Yiddishkeit, Wisdom, Humility, Honesty, Serenity, Spirituality, Integrity, Trust, Health, Independence) then think how your problematic behavior interferes with it.
Make this your top priority
If you feel that you’re not making enough progress with breaking free, try making this your very top priority for the next month. If you’re focusing on too many areas of life at once, it’s much harder to give any of them proper attention.
Increase enjoyable activities
If you’re busy all day with things you need to do, but don’t spend any time on things you like to do, it’s easier to get caught up in addictive behaviors. Try to find something enjoyable that you can add to your weekly schedule to add more balance to your life. It can be a learning, a hobby or creative project, time with friends or anything else that gives you real satisfaction.
See here a list of Enjoyable Activities
Have a supportive environment
Try to think how you can make your environment more supportive for staying clean. Having a good filter is not a fool proof solution, you still need to work on yourself internally, but it definitely makes life much easier. It’s just like a smoker who is trying to quit smoking would avoid keeping a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Yes, he can still buy a pack in the grocery, but at least he is not tempted all day.
The problem of instant gratification
One of the ways to gradually strengthen ourselves is by limiting instant gratification. Each time we give in to a desire instantly we feed the Problem of Instant Gratification (PIG) and the PIG becomes bigger. When we resist that impulse, the PIG will become smaller. This means that over time the urges will become weaker and less frequent. As chazal say, מרעיבו שבע.
Urges don’t last very long
Urges are like an itch, it passes on it’s own after a few minutes unless you keep thinking about it. How can you make the time pass faster? One popular option is to distract yourself by doing something like calling a friend or family member, leaving your device at home and taking a walk outside, or doing something that captivates your mind so that there is no space left for thinking about the urge. To make this strategy work, prepare ideas in advance and write them on an “emergency card” so that you can spring into action when you see an urge coming.
Dealing with urges
A huge factor in breaking free is learning how to deal with urges. Getting practice with urge management strategies is something that we do internally, and could help us remain protected even when we find a loophole in a filter, or have access to an unfiltered device. For tips write to help@guardyoureyes.org.
Don’t do it alone.
Whenever we work on improving ourselves we naturally speak about it to others, get ideas from them and update them on our progress. Hardly anyone would be successful with a diet if they had to keep it a secret from everyone. Since shmiras einayim and related issues is something private, we often lack much needed support to stay on target. If you think getting support from someone can help, try GYE’s partner program.
“If you let go one day, I'll let go for two”
-- Rashi (Eikev 11:13) quoting Megilas Starim
One setback often leads to more. Some people feel so disillusioned after they have a temporary setback, that they get unnecessarily stuck. It can take them days, weeks or even months until they try again...They start thinking, “Oh well, I guess I messed up today anway, so I may as well continue for another few minutes”. “I’ll start fresh tomorrow.” “This week is messed up already, I’ll start again on Sunday…” This is also known as the Abstinence Violation Effect (AVE) a phrase coined by addiction researchers Alan Marlatt and Judy Gordon back in the 1980s.
To counter this, remind yourself that setbacks aren’t evidence that you won’t be able to change. You’ll have some ups and downs but if you keep on going and learn from your mistakes, then you’ll end up being successful.