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“You don’t always get what you want. You get what you tolerate." – Henry Cloud
In the Renewed Man program, we work with men who want to build better self control into their lives ... especially when it comes to dealing with sexual temptation. The term "addiction"
is controversial and inflammatory when used in conjunction with our sexual habits. (When does a porn user become a porn addict?) I have found it more helpful to tell people to forget about the label: Call it whatever you want; nobody cares. Just
face the fact that for many people -- men and women alike -- overcoming habitual patterns (such as porn use) is not as simple as just making an intention and trying harder. Something deeper is going on, and we've got to deal with that. If we're going to get better at dealing with the flood of sexually
provocative content that fills our media sphere, we've got to come to terms with its incredible power to bypass our willpower to resist. Internet marketers and social media algorithms understand our psychology better than we do -- and exploiting this is worth billions of dollars annually to companies in the attention economy and pornography industry. Sexually provocative content is fire. If we "play around" with it, we will get burned. It is like smoking cigarettes. We can tell ourselves that it's "just a little thing we do once in a while" ... but then the next thing we know, we are hooked, and becoming regular consumers. To stay on track, we will need to establish boundaries and daily routines that keep us away from people, places, and things that trigger addictive sexual craving. We need to get ourselves to a higher level of emotional health ... so we're not continually looking for things to distract or soothe us in our distress. To that end, in the Renewed Man program, we work to do the following things each day -- in order to stay in a healthy place emotionally and spiritually: - start the day with a reading from a recovery meditation as well as daily “quiet time” of prayer and Bible reading
- connect with least one person in recovery —
through talking or texting — whom we respect
- spend time with family members and sober friends
- take time to offer gratitude for today
- end the day with a few minutes of silence to be open to reflection and direction from God
In addition, each day
we guard ourselves from overt sexual materials that feed sexual fantasy and craving. We pay special attention to: - the books, magazines, and newspapers we read
- the television shows and movies we watch
- the web sites we spend time surfing
- the social media connections we
have
Our goal is sexual integrity and health. The routines we create and the boundaries we set help us to that end. They don’t have the power in and of themselves to create sexual health or even protect us from getting in trouble if we really want to. Routines and boundaries can be broken. But the more healthy patterns we establish, the stronger these routines and boundaries become, and the more they free us to experience life as it was meant to be lived. NEXT ACTION:Today’s action step is to think about tweaks to your daily schedule. Take a look at your schedule for the next few weeks. Are there ways you can improve your daily routine in order to stay on track? Describe some habits that you are developing, and/or that you might want to develop.
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