1. Porn encourages self-gratification.
Delayed gratification is an essential skill to learn if one is to maintain control and direction in their life. Repeatedly giving in to the urge to watch pornography leads to a lack of ability to delay gratification. Your brain becomes more and more focused on the things you find pleasurable and the discipline of delayed gratification falls to the wayside.
It is no coincidence that men who are hooked on porn are usually underachieving in other areas of their lives.
Solution: Developing delayed gratification is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. There is a certain sense of superiority and confidence that comes with the realization that you have more control over your primal desires than the average man. Mastery of any worthwhile skill or habit leads to increased confidence. The ability to delay gratification is no different.
2. Porn destroys your values.
Video is powerful. We live in a world where we need to see something to believe it, and in our fast-paced, information-driven world, video is the preferred means of communication and information dissemination.
The thing is, video has the power to influence and even replace behaviors in your mind without you being consciously aware of what you are seeing.
As you watch video, your subconscious mind is rapidly dissecting, translating and making sense of what it is being fed. I have found that the subconscious mind translates and subsequently changes your behavior in one disturbing way:
Pornography programs you to lower your standards sexually. It encourages your to seek sex and in some cases, build intimate and unhealthy relationships with women who are willing to have sex without ANY boundaries. As exciting as that sounds, having sex with any woman who is available is a sign of man without without much discipline.
A man at some point in his life, must have control over his sexuality. You should not be a slave to your sexual desire—instead you should master and control it. In addition to that, hundreds of hours of porn creates certain expectations of what sex looks like.
I’ll keep it simple: putting your penis in a woman’s mouth right after it has exited her anus is not healthy in the real world. The average 16-year-old watching pornography is literally getting his sex education from the videos he watches.
3. Porn can cause a rise in erectile dysfunction.
Virility is important for almost every man I know. The rise in porn-induced erectile dysfunction is something to be alarmed about. Frequent porn use leads to frequent masturbation and erections, which can increasingly only be induced by hardcore pornography. Porn-viewing then becomes a sort of psychological conditioning which creates performance anxiety.
Solution: Need I say more? No man wants to kill their boner. If you love your penis and your erections, avoid frequent masturbation and watching porn. One of the simplest and most effective exercises for your penile strength and health are Kegels.
4. Pornography and masturbation demand isolation.
Anything which you do in secrecy usually leads to shame. One of the first effects of frequent porn use on men, especially young men, is social awkwardness in public, which ironically leads to more shame. Isolation and shame make it very difficult for you as a man to share true intimacy with others, whether it’s with other men as your brothers and friends, or women as partners.
Solution: Many men are already afflicted by shame, which is induced mainly by our society and religion. If you find that your pornography use has dulled your desire to be social, I know how difficult it can be to jump start your social life.
5. Porn destroys your ability to set, achieve, and enjoy your goals.
In my practice, I have never met a man who was hooked on porn that was good at goal-setting. As I stated earlier, most men who abuse pornography usually struggle in their finances, relationships and careers. It’s no coincidence.
The aforementioned “self gratification” is a habit which cannot coexist with achieving worthy goals. Men don’t “schedule” pornography viewing the way they schedule time to work on their business or complete projects. It usually “I’m going to watch porn from now until my body shuts down sexually.” Part of this is biological.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (a chemical released by nerve cells to transmit signals to other nerve cells). It’s a key player in the part of our brain responsible for reward motivated behavior. Sex, eating tasty food, getting approval all trigger the release of dopamine.
The more often you watch porn and masturbate, the more often your brain is flooded with dopamine. You slowly become desensitized to its effects and need more stimulation to “feel the rush” or “get a fix.”
This means that your reward circuitry is broken. This reward circuitry is crucial in achievements that are truly worthy in a mans life such as contributing in a meaningful way to society, developing a highly sought after or marketable skill, building a family, building a business, competing in sports or in your career.
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