Hashivalisesonyishecho wrote:


Yes definitely ! Let Hashem run His world as He pleases. The ביטול of the ego. We were supposed to have done that Erev Pesach כל חד בדרגא דיליה. But its never too late . Now during the Omer its a good time to work on our middos. In short it is the אנכי who is עומד בניכם ובין השם.

Just wondering if I can up my own Karma

Today just for sobriety I, yai yai, yai yai, yai yai. I'm not sure what I did. Okay I know, I came here to make this silly post.

No need for you to, I did it for you!!

KOMT!!! KOSP!!!!

Today just for recovery I came home early and made being home with my family a priority.

I have been getting a lot of inspiration from Muhammad Ali and championship boxing. Ali came back three times to regain the heavy weight championship. We can have it a lot easier than Ali. He intentionally got into the ring with his opponents, at times with odds stacked greatly against him. The truth is that in the final analysis, he came out pretty beat up from boxing to the extent it caused or agitated his Parkinson's. At a certain point he would have better off to stop trying to prove himself to others. Still, all and all, the reason he won fights against the odds is because, he completely through himself into training for the fights. He said that the reason he wins fights is because the other guy isn't prepared to die to win. To me this is an example of how I need to throw myself into recovery. I have to train and train and train. I'm not training for the fight with lust though. I'm training to never get into that fight. If I don't throw myself completely into training to avoid that fight, I'll find myself in the ring. I may win at times and show valiant effort, but at the end I will be a cripple.

Many of us are very accomplished people in our own right. Many of us have the strength and ability to accomplish a lot when we want to. When I was in yeshiva, I was told it was a very bad sin to masturbate and I shouldn't do it. That it a major problem in our generation and that I need to do teshuvah if I fall. That is all true and good and well. I was also told that I needed to make my life about being dedicated to yiddishkeit, to be a yirah shmayim and a talmid chochom etc. Part of that of course is don't sin, and if you sin do teshuvah. The message in essence was be a yirah shmayim and you won't masturbate and if you do there's teshuvah. But for me masturbation wasn't just a sin, it was a compulsion and it was chronic and obsessive. So that message wasn't the right one for me. The right message for me would have been, dedicate your entire being into recovery from sex addiction. Don't try to be a yirah shmayim, don't try to be a talmud chochom, forget about being a gadol or a rabbi or anything. Dedicate yourself, so that your only purpose is to get to the bottom of your addiction and get recovery. Once you have that, then everything else follows. You'll be a yirah shmayim, a talmud chochom, a good chaver, a good husband, brother, father, son etc. If I want recovery as bad as Muhammad Ali wanted to beat George Foreman, and if I'm willing to go to any length to get it, as he was with the championship, I will have it.

Good Moshel
notice that in that fight he didn't fight him head on for the most part but rather by rope-a dope was willing to take the punches and then when his adversary was weakened he was able to overcome him.

Yes, very true, thanks. May Hashem give us the strength to take the punches. Lust ain't no dope, so we need Hashem to trick him and tire him out. Ali actually professed that his faith is what gave him the courage for that fight. Foreman was a real dope though in those days. He let Ali get under his skin and throw him off his strategy.

Right on. and don't forget the intense heat where the fight took place.

As for faith, Foreman himself became very religious - both were

heavyweight champs of the world and yet they had the wisdom to seek out G-d

As you already said - May Hashem give us strength, and all participants on the forum to

succeed in our challenges.

Gut Shabbos

Today just for recovery, I made a phone call that I have been avoiding for a few days concerning a stressful matter that has been festering for days. The person didn't even answer me, but I did my part and it feels really good to be free of that.

Hi Serenity
I get so much Chizzuk from your posts. Keep up the great work.

What a great short, real life post!!

I can totally relate!! Being able to humble ourselves and our pride to do what Life has inn plan for us, accepting that we don't run the world!!

I miss those times......I really hope I'm on the right track to going back there.

Today I was driving into an area that I know to be filled with attractive people. My theory is that every time I go there, I do something for recovery. This may help me retrain my mind, so it thinks recovery instead of lust. Anyway I remembered my plan and sent a text out to a chaver. I'm not sure about how if this approach is good fotr me in the long run or not, but so far it's working.

Today for recovery:

1. I didn't do my usual prayer at the end of S"E.
2. I apologized to someone for sayin' somethin' i should not have, but my apology was in order for her (sorry) to notice me.
3. I did share my dream (although it's not my style, and I will get badgered for it); so this was a good thing.


Thanks

I did a small thing today, but the point is that I only did it for recovery. My wife asked me to make a phone call to take care of something and I said yes and made the call. My first instinct was to tell her to make the call. I realized this could cause unnecessary strife and on the other hand if I just agreed it could cause extra harmony. Strife is not good for me in addiction and harmony is, so there you have it.

Is this one little thing going to be the answer for me? I don't know, but I have a lot of little things in the other direction to make up for. Sometimes we hear that we can recover from addiction quickly and sometimes we hear that it can take years to undo the damage as it took years to do it. These are really talking about 2 different things. We can get abstinent and sober right away and stay that way. We don't have to go back out. It doesn't have to take a long time to get lasting abstinence. For some of us, we can also have an immediate improvement in our life. There still is years of damage that we have done, much of which we may not even realize. One example of that for me is the damage that I have done to the trust and confidence that my wife has in me. That doesn't get repaired over night. It gets repaired slowly by me being the husband I should have been all along.

Wow, I'm so impressed by this post and what it represents. I can definitely say that the little things are the hardest to achieve. The big things -- clean days, sobriety, guarding our eyes -- they get all the attention, all the discussion, all the thought here. So it's understandable that we overlook the small stuff. But it's the small stuff that really matters, "the still small voice."

Thank you for sharing!!

I'm going to have to disagree with you. I think that this is the answer. That is, "this" in broader sense.

We aren't really recovering (only) from lust, we are recovering from selfishness, and any act of selflessness, of doing something for someone else just to make it easier for them, that is recovering our selflessness!!

On that note, I think I'm going to go tidy up the kitchen, maybe my wife will be able to go to sleep a few minutes earlier tonight!