The crocodile in the room

Modern man is facing a very modern problem.

One that, left unchecked, can completely derail his best intentions.

To illustrate... let's go back in time.

An ancient human is wandering through the woods. He was with his tribe, but they got scattered after a bear charged them and he lost track of his brethren. So he's walking around cold, lonely, and hungry... trying to find something to eat, trying to find his people, and trying to survive.

Because instinctually, he knows how dangerous being alone is.

And those various forms of discomfort he's experiencing push him towards... safety.

Community.

Shelter.

Food.

Warmth.

There's nowhere for him to escape to except to find his way back to his community somehow.

His primal instinct to move away from his discomfort and towards pleasure can really only lead him in one direction...

Survival.

Thus, we have a watered-down summary of how humanity has managed to thrive for so many years.

Flash forward to 2025...

And that same instinct gets flipped on its head.

Because we live in a world where avoiding discomfort and moving towards pleasure no longer means getting out of the cold, lonely wilderness and into a community of people who are working together for survival.

These days, it means moving away from the stress you feel in the office by spending too much time on your phone.

Or on Netflix.

Or worse, watching porn.

We have so many easy, highly stimulating ways to spike our brains' pleasure systems available to us in 5 seconds flat at any time of day, that instead of our instinct driving us towards things that help our survival, it drives us towards things that numb our discomfort at the expense of the dopamine, energy, focus, and motivation we need to show up as our best selves.

Dulling our edge by spending too much time on high-stimulation, low-value behaviors like that actively works against your ability to thrive and be the man you're meant to be.

It's a weird world we live in.

But it isn't without hope.

It's completely possible to take back control over your mind.

To wrestle back your attention from the Big Tech monster that's draining resources away from the things that matter most to you.

It just requires the intention to do so... and following through.

Best way I've found to start?

Quit porn.

Because that form of stimulation is like a 100-pound dumbbell.

It's the biggest, baddest form of stimulation (unless you're doing hard drugs, but I hope that doesn't apply to you!)

So you should start there if it's still part of your life in any way.

Because when you learn how to lift that weight effectively, then as your brain heals from the damage porn's been doing, lifting the "30-pound dumbbell" of general screen time, social media, Netflix, or literally anything else suddenly becomes much easier, or even trivial.

Order of operations.

A wise man once told me...

"If you're in a boat surrounded by crocodiles that want to eat you, start by killing the crocodile closest to the boat first. Then you can focus on the others."

Porn is that crocodile.