How one bad habit can ruin us

One bad habit can ruin you.

I've experienced it myself, and seen it over and over.

Yet the reality can be hard to see, because the negative consequences of bad habits compound over time, so just like compound interest, they aren't very visible at first. On top of that, the brain learns to defend and justify its favorite vices at every turn, because it wants to keep that dopamine-faucet turned on.

For example:

V is one of my clients.

Successful guy in the tech space, has a family, is relatively healthy, highly intelligent.

But he's suffered for years with anxiety, depression, and this feeling that he wasn't measuring up to his potential especially within his relationship... although he has bigger goals with his work too, that he just hasn't been honoring. And he'd been wondering why. Why did he have these desires, these intentions to live and be better, yet consistently fall short on it all?

Well, truth is...

Each of us relies on our neurochemistry every moment of every day. Dopamine, serotonin, and all these other little chemicals flying around in our brain are directly connected to our mental and physical functioning and wellbeing. Meaning that if you're regularly doing something that harms your neurochemistry... and neurochemistry takes days, weeks, and months to recover, not just hours... then that bad, overstimulating habit ends up negatively affecting every single "bucket" in your life by inducing neurochemical chaos. Destabilized emotions, reduced mental clarity and motivation, worse decision making, fatigue and apathy just being a few examples.

Which is what V was struggling with.

Over time, the consequences of his porn use and excessive screentime had compounded and were really getting in the way of his marriage and career.

The good news?

The human brain is incredibly resilient.

So when he quit the porn, which was the most important place to begin because it's the *most overstimulating vice a man can have *unless he's into hard drugs...

(which most aren't... but most do watch porn at times...)

... and the easiest, most effective place to start is by removing the worst offender first, and then everything else is much easier from there...

Anyways, when he quit, his brain naturally started to re-regulate itself thanks to neuroplasticity. His neurochemical baseline started slowly but surely returning to normal. And with it, he felt a remarkable shift over the next couple months. His anxiety started melting away. He was feeling more centered and grounded. That translated over into better conversations with his wife, talking about things they'd been avoiding. Which brought them closer. Their intimacy improved. They started feeling happier than they'd been in years. This all happened while we worked together.

Fastforward a bit and we caught up recently.

We worked together for just 3 months, but he's been clean from porn for 317 days as of this writing. His marriage continues on a super healthy trajectory. He's even more emotionally stable. And he's started working on building the e-commerce business he was dreaming of to break out of his 9-5...

Bringing it full circle, it's incredible what happens when you remove poisonous habits from your lifestyle.

Achieving what you want isn't just about what you do.

It's about what you don't do too.

And if you see some element of yourself in V's experience, then let's explore how I can help you quit porn for good over the next couple months, and simply move on, just like he did.