wilnevergiveup wrote on 12 Oct 2020 07:29:

Whew! Ur bein tough on me buddy...

I don’t know what I’m doing about it, I gotta make a game plan.
I need a mehalach

I’ll admit.
I haven’t been so careful with Shmiras eynayim tonight- seeein pics of girls but still holding back from touching etc.
But that’s is clearly not a mehalach for many reasons.

You got me man, you are right.
Oy it’s so late- 4:19, we’ll talk more tomorrow

Fine I’ll delete the app.
Yetzer Tov, tonight You win.

Gn

YeshivaGuy wrote on 12 Oct 2020 08:22:

Yetzer Tov doesn't win, I @YeshivaGuy (or whatever your name is) wins.

It's funny, the ba'alei mussar point out, imagine a conversation in your brain between the Y"H and Y"T. one of them is always talking as you and the other talking as an outsider. Can you guess who is who?
It's always "I" need to do x, y, or z and the Y"T nebach has to stand on the outside telling you, "you know, really "you" shouldn't etc. ain't that backwards? 

This is how the Y"H tricks us, he makes us think that he is us (this is what it means when Adam Harishon sinned the Y"H went inside of us. He is not just in our subconscious minds, he actually has us defining ourselves by his terms). 

We can't forget that the truth is the opposite, we are our neshama, our intellect. It's not a battle between the Y"H and Y"T, the Y"T doesn't win, You do.

wilnevergiveup wrote on 12 Oct 2020 08:35:

I totally agree with this. The Gra on Mishlei writes that one of the yetzers biggest tricks is he makes us believe that he is part of us, that he is us. He's not the little red devil with a pitchfork whispering seductive things in our ear, rather he makes us believe what we truly want is what he wants. It takes those flashes of clarity and special moments, such as Yom Kippur and other times, to see through his lies, and realize this just isn't the real me.

Anyway @yeshivaguy, good to hear your keeping strong. Looking forward to hearing those plans you have.

p.s. Do you try going to sleep early and just lie awake, or do you go to sleep late? Cos' often night time itself can be a trigger for people, so early bedtime may help.

Good point, ya, I’ve been goin to sleep late.
When not in Yeshiva it’s harder to go to bed earlier.
But ur totally right, 1-4am is quite a trigger 

I hope you slept in, or have a really nice rest this afternoon...

Pretty stressed.
Felt empty today. I feel like I just wasted time.
So hard to not be in a Makom Aliya.
The Yetzer wants to build off this and make me masterbate, go online etc, after all, I had such an empty and pointless day with barely any learning, and everyone around me is just so stressed out- driving me nuts.
I’m not giving in, but it still feels superhuman,
feels like I’m fighting absolutely everything-defying nature.
Which is so difficult.
Feels like I’m restraining a lion on a leash.

Anyway folks, thnx for hearing me out.

Hatzlocha!

wilnevergiveup wrote on 12 Oct 2020 05:27:

This is the question.
Im gonna make Esrog vodka, but that doesn’t take so long.
Thinkin of other stuff.
The thing is that I need something meaningful.
I can’t be סובל pointless distractions. It just gets me depressed.
Thats my struggle with the concept of “keeping myself busy”
I need a meaningful outlet.
All suggestions are welcome and appreciated

YeshivaGuy wrote on 12 Oct 2020 07:06:

Yup it’s rough. 
Youre doing great. 
What’s the plan for tonight.
You have any friends around?

Markz wrote on 13 Oct 2020 03:10:

Friends, not so many where I live.
Plans for tonight: blending frozen bananas which makes ligit banana ice cream

edit: banana zach didn’t work out, but I’ll daven then head to bed

Do you enjoy exercise? When I first got sober, exercise was critical. The Biale rebbe actually recommended it to me when I confided in him what I was going through. You feel great afterwards and relieves a lot of stress. Made the struggle much much easier. 

YeshivaGuy wrote on 13 Oct 2020 01:28:

I have an idea for you , now that you have shown that it’s possible to succeed in very difficult circumstances, reach out to some of the guys here who are in a similar situation,you have no idea what a boost it could be for someone, and you may even make some friends .

i-man wrote on 13 Oct 2020 04:59:

Now this is some great advice!

YeshivaGuy wrote on 13 Oct 2020 01:16:

I want to address this point as it is something that I struggle with as well.

I want you to really ask yourself "did I really have a bad day?" 

If you answer yes then ask yourself why, give yourself the whole shebang and then write it down (I write it on a google docs sheet) and FORGET ABOUT IT. You don't have to worry, if you ever want to remember, that's why you wrote it down, so just forget about it.

Now ask yourself, amid your awful day was there anything that you did do well? There is always something, did you wake up on time, did you daven, if you woke up late and still davened that an accomplishment too. were you kind, did you help someone out, did you make someone feel good. I can go on and on I am sure the list is quite long. 
Focus on all the good that you do and try to build on them.

Aaaah, so why do we feel like losers?

This is the million dollar question and the answer is, well I don't really know the answer for every situation but I will suggest an answer that you may relate to.

When we make goals for ourselves, we tend to set goals based on what we feel the most guilty about, instead of what we will actually grow from.
This creates expectations for yourself and when these expectations are not met we feel like a failure.

We have to learn what to expect from ourselves and what not to but especially we need to learn to set the correct goals.

For example, two days before Succos I spent most of the day working on the succah and helping my wife in the kitchen with little time to learn or do some of the other things that I had planned.

I felt awful, I had planned on having a four hour first seder, learn my mussar, do my workout and finish a project that I was working on and I didn't get to any of those.
My whole day was a mess, I was stressed that I didn't get to all those things and I was stressed about having to take care of the things that I had to take care of because they were preventing me from reaching my goals. 

After the day was over I sat down and said to myself wow what a bad day, if the rest of bein hazemanim goes like this, I'm done for.

Then I realized that I can still change my goals retroactively. I said, listen here, today your goals are to daven before the zman, learn twenty minutes, finish building the succah, help my wife when she needs me and read Dr. Seuss books to my 2 year old so that my wife can work. 

Wow! What an accomplishing day, and I even accomplished my goals!

I had Covid19 over Yom Kippur (and I am not the only one) and was stuck at home. My Rav told me, "you know Hashem doesn't want you to serve him on your terms, he want's you to serve him on his terms. Hashem want's you to show him that you can have a great Yom Kippur at home too."

Life is like a ladder, one rung at a time. If you stay on the same rung the entire time, you will fail to understand the point of the ladder and eventually just climb down, but if you try to take a giant leap and hopefully you will catch on somewhere on top you will end up in the same place and with far more pain too.
Reaching too high isn't growth, it's suicide. Of course you want to climb the tallest ladder, but you still got to climb it one ring at a time.

I decided that I was going to daven at a certain minyan during the last week of bein hazemanim that I thought was reasonable for me but in the end I never made it there. Today I thought, I have two options, either I could continue to push and maybe I will feel like a loser or maybe I will win, or I could daven in a different minyan that there is nothing wrong with other than the fact that it wasn't in the plan. 
Today I davened with a minyan and yesterday I davened at home, which one was better?

People spend all their lives feeling unaccomplished, not because they don't accomplish, rather because they don't live up to their own expectations.