Thrive Beyond Pornography (Formerly The Self Mastery Podcast‪)‬ Zach Spafford

Learning to Thrive Beyond Pornography use was the greatest challenge of our life and marriage. It had rocked my self confidence, tainted all of the most important experiences of my life and become the most impossible challenge I had as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
With this podcast or at https://www.zachspafford.com you'll learn about the struggle, how to overcome pornography use, and where to find additional resources to begin to thrive beyond pornography with your spouse.
At some point I took a step away from all the 12 step meetings and councilors and started to figure out my own brain, to look at my issue as something that I had the answer to and I was going to figure it out. Here I share those lessons and give you the power to start your own journey free. Whether you struggle with unwanted pornography use or are the spouse or partner, whether you feel stuck or just don't know where to start, here I will teach you principles, tools and skills that you can use today to change how you think and, in the end, what you do.
You'll hear interviews with my spouse, with experts on human sexuality and with former and current pornography users on how you can overcome your own struggle with addictive behavior.
The Thrive Beyond Pornography podcast will bring new perspective to your struggle and keep you coming back to improve all aspects of your life. (formerly, The Self Mastery Podcast: Overcome Pornography Forever)

Learning to Thrive Beyond Pornography use was the greatest challenge of our life and marriage. It had rocked my self confidence, tainted all of the most important experiences of my life and become the most impossible challenge I had as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
With this podcast or at https://www.zachspafford.com you'll learn about the struggle, how to overcome pornography use, and where to find additional resources to begin to thrive beyond pornography with your spouse.
At some point I took a step away from all the 12 step meetings and councilors and started to figure out my own brain, to look at my issue as something that I had the answer to and I was going to figure it out. Here I share those lessons and give you the power to start your own journey free. Whether you struggle with unwanted pornography use or are the spouse or partner, whether you feel stuck or just don't know where to start, here I will teach you principles, tools and skills that you can use today to change how you think and, in the end, what you do.
You'll hear interviews with my spouse, with experts on human sexuality and with former and current pornography users on how you can overcome your own struggle with addictive behavior.
The Thrive Beyond Pornography podcast will bring new perspective to your struggle and keep you coming back to improve all aspects of your life. (formerly, The Self Mastery Podcast: Overcome Pornography Forever)

Learning to Thrive Beyond Pornography use was the greatest challenge of our life and marriage. It had rocked my self confidence, tainted all of the most important experiences of my life and become the most impossible challenge I had as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
With this podcast or at https://www.zachspafford.com you'll learn about the struggle, how to overcome pornography use, and where to find additional resources to begin to thrive beyond pornography with your spouse.
At some point I took a step away from all the 12 step meetings and councilors and started to figure out my own brain, to look at my issue as something that I had the answer to and I was going to figure it out. Here I share those lessons and give you the power to start your own journey free. Whether you struggle with unwanted pornography use or are the spouse or partner, whether you feel stuck or just don't know where to start, here I will teach you principles, tools and skills that you can use today to change how you think and, in the end, what you do.
You'll hear interviews with my spouse, with experts on human sexuality and with former and current pornography users on how you can overcome your own struggle with addictive behavior.
The Thrive Beyond Pornography podcast will bring new perspective to your struggle and keep you coming back to improve all aspects of your life. (formerly, The Self Mastery Podcast: Overcome Pornography Forever)

Episode 193I'm Zach. And I'm Darcy. We're an LDS couple who struggled with unwanted pornography in our marriage for many years. What was once our greatest struggle and something we thought would destroy us, has become our greatest blessing in trying. Our hope is that as you listen to our podcast each week, you'll be filled with hope and healing and realize that you too can thrive beyond pornography and create the marriage you have always desired.
Welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. We're so glad you're here and we believe in you.
Hello, my friends. Welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford. I used to believe that I was an addict. Happy Mother's Day, by the way. I think I think, I hope you had a great mother's day, or your wife had a great Mother's Day, or your girlfriend or whoever. I hope that your Mother's Day was amazing.
I used to believe that I was an addict. Whether or not that idea was true or not really isn't the point. What that belief did for me and to me is what I'd like to actually discuss today. So beliefs are a pretty strange thing. They are ideas, understandings, and concepts that help us navigate the world and tell us who we are and they can hold us back or they can drive us forward.
What we believe is really important to the life that we create, what we believe can also really be difficult to change because most of us believe what we think. When thoughts come into our mind, we often believe that they are true, and often we follow the path that they offer us In terms of our actions.
I've talked about this on the podcasts before. I've talked about it in other podcasts that I've done and on other podcasts shows that I've done. But the fastest way to change our beliefs is to change our actions. And I believe that this is true because we can take action in a different direction from our beliefs.
When I feel. Frustrated. I can take an action towards taking care of something instead of staying and being frustrated. I have kids, the example I've often given is I don't want to clean up vomit ever, but I have kids and they have vomited. And there's no amount of, belief work that's gonna help me stop believing that I don't want to clean up vomit.
But if I take action in the direction of what I value, I'm gonna clean that vomit up. But I wanna set aside for a few minutes that idea and just focus on our thoughts and how we can address them in a meaningful way, especially in the face of what seems like a desire to not act. You know when it comes to porn, That's what we're choosing.
That's what we're working on. We're working on not choosing something. We're not doing something which is slightly different than moving towards our values by doing something. When thinking about a problem that seems unfixable or too difficult to resolve new perspectives and unconventional ideas can often be the key to overcoming the obstacles that are holding you back.
So today, To help you with your beliefs, I want to give you three examples of ways you can approach your thoughts and beliefs in a different way. In these examples, I'm gonna share with you some questions that you can ask yourself as you work through overcoming pornography and start creating the life that you want.
So the first thought or the first idea that I want to address is porn is bad and addictive. Starting with this one, which if you are listening to this podcast right now is probably something that you have believed or that you might believe, or that you believe just a little bit, and I think it's a very important thought to address.
Now, you might believe only part of this thought, but it doesn't matter how much of it you do believe. What matters is that at some level, in some way, you believe this thought and is holding you back. Now you might be asking yourself, how can this idea that porn is bad and addictive behold me back? I do believe it, and I know it must...

Episode 192Zach Spafford: I'm Zach. And I'm Darcy. We're an LDS couple who struggled with unwanted pornography in our marriage for many years. What was once our greatest struggle and something we thought would destroy us, has become our greatest blessing in trying. Our hope is that as you listen to our podcast each week, you'll be filled with hope and healing and realize that you too can thrive beyond pornography and create the marriage you have always desired.
Welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. We're so glad you're here and we believe in you.
Hey everybody and welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. This week I wanna talk about control. You know, I used to think that I just needed to control my thoughts and that my wife, Darcy w just needed to help me control my urges by having sex with me and then, you know, and making sure she was checking my web browser and holding me accountable and punishing me when I fail in that process.
I was letting go of control of some things that I needed to take responsibility for, and then I was also working to control some things that aren't controllable. Today we're gonna talk about controlling the right things to create a life beyond pornography so you can thrive and overcome pornography for good.
But before we do that, I want to invite you to come and see a free class on how you can quit born in just 12 weeks. I'd love to be, love to have you there. I'd love for you to watch and in and ask all the questions you want. I will answer every question that you have. I will help you start solving this problem today.
Go to z spafford.com/. Free call and you can join for free. It's a great opportunity to just figure out, okay, what do I need to do next? Okay, so let's break this down into two aspects. What are the things that we can't control and we need to let go of, and what are the things that we can control and need to take responsibility for?
So starting with the things that we cannot control, one of the very first things that we need to understand is that there are two types of control strategies, external strategies and internal strategies. External control strategies are really good for external problems, things that are outside of you that you can physically see, touch or feel, and that if you move halfway around the world, would gen generally stop being a problem.
External problems are things like the story of pot's wife. Joseph serving in the household of an influential Egyptian leader caught the eye of his boss's wife, and now through willpower and motivation, he could physically distance himself from POT'S advances physically.
Once removed from her physically, not succumbing to her advances becomes somewhat easy, becomes not really a problem because from a, from a living, my moral standpoint, I don't see this person and therefore I don't have to worry about whether or not she's gonna seduce me. It's pretty simple. The problem with these kinds of strategies is that willpower and motivation are really short-acting solutions.
That only work on what are called finite problems, and I've talked about finite problems on the podcast before, but your brain. Is not a finite problem, and it's not a short-term problem. It's not a finite or short-term part of your life. It's the only thing that you get to take with you everywhere and all the time.
External strategies are things like distracting yourself, leaving the situation. And not going into the situation in the first place to name a few. So you can see how what you're doing right now with pornography might be a little bit like that. You know, you might be leaving situations early, you might be distracting yourself from things that your brain might not think is good for you in the long term, but might feel good right now.
And you might just be avoiding going to certain things like the beach or whatever. Let me give you an example from one of my

Join us at zachspafford.com for help to overcome pornography forever.