When i started recovery several months ago i did it the other way around. I focused on shmirat eynayim and not on Mz'l.
My personal opinion (for myself - about myself) is that had i not laid that groundwork and used it as a way to finally break free from uncontrollable porn abuse that i was unable to stop for many years, then i would be having a much harder time now with both porn or lusting at real life glimpses of what my brain wants to lust about and mz'l.
As has become abundantly clear as a theme here in the past few days, whatever works for you is what you should work.

So... The past few weeks I was very conscious about how I'm not keeping to GYE's rules & only worrying about mzl as opposed to watching my eyes/hands. Not sure, but that may have led to me giving myself a heter to look at p*. Or, it could be not, rather that it's just the natural progression of things, being that I haven't allowed myself to be mzl. In either case I noticed myself starting to slip into that place of needing a nightly fix of whatever I can get without mzl. Last night was pretty bad, because I discovered a loophole in the whitelist on my phone. So I'm now adding  שמירת עניים וידיים into my current goals. BH I feel that these past 45 days I've made significant progress on my ladder towards purity and I'm ready to take on the new challenge. That said, as of now, I'm still going to continue to consider it a fall only if I'm mzl. This would never have happened without GYE, (shout out to my 90 day group buddies who may have contributed more than all else), and everybody with the helpful pointers, so thank you guys for all of your support!

Well done! Hatzlocha!

A step to sanity is always good.

Singularity wrote on 16 Mar 2017 07:30:

Amen. Do we really wanna be sane?



Yay, had a great day today in the שמירת עניים game. While I did "fall" once (NOT mzl) the rest of the day I passed the tests. Very happy about that. In other news, I had something unrelated kinda terrifying come up later in the day, hopefully it's nothing, I should know by tomorrow I think. Nothing medical. It really pissed me off though, just felt emotionally & unfairly violated. Can't say any more bout that more and hopefully there's nothing more to say. It sort of zapped any sexual desire I had, but in the past, I'd m* even without the desire, if I was that angry. Just as a release. Bh it ain't the only answer no more.

As I near my 90 days of no mzl, I'm thinking of adding a commitment to no porn or something similar. That's where I am right now. Bh I've gotten to where I am now, with a tremendous part of that being the wonderful 90 day/Areivim group.

I've been thinking of adding something for a while... Here are some things that might be the thing to add as a 90 day commitment:
• Commit to keep the work iPad out of my house 
• no porn
• delete the cache on my computers Google chrome if I'm using that computer when k9 shuts off the internet. (This will ensure that I truly have no internet access)
• no intentional touching for pleasure
• guard my eyes on the street
• guard my thoughts

These are just ideas of what to add at this point. I won't necessarily add all, perhaps I'll add some. Maybe I'll commit to one for 90 days & another for 1 day a week for 90 days.

bb0212 wrote on 26 Apr 2017 13:38:

Bh the first challenge with my 12am commitment has been a success. At 12, the internet shut off, I continued reading whatever I was reading (I think it was fb). At 12:02 I remembered the commitment &  cleared the cache. I went to sleep soon after and woke up this morning before 7! Went to minyan for shachris - the first time weeks? Months?

That's amazing!!

Keep your head up!

KEEP ON TRUCKKING ALL THE WAY!!!!

If you're interested, please join me in the "device daily shutdown calendar" at your leisure
I can do with chizuk on that front too, a little

 Bravo  what an achievement, wishing you another 90 "TODAYS" but easy one, 
have a sober good shabbes

Markz wrote on 28 Apr 2017 18:20:

Can't do a financial commitment now

bb0212 wrote on 28 Apr 2017 22:06:

I hear 
No Probs
KUTGW

maybe you could do volunteer work instead... ;-)

Haven't posted in my thread for a while. Still going for cleanliness in שמירת עניים, on top of being clean from mz"l & pretty much everything in between. The one time that I've slipped recently, I was watching a  tv show that I saw many years ago. There was a scene (no nudity) coming up that involved some triggers. Being that I knew it was coming up, I blocked most of the screen. But, since when I saw this for the first time, I wasn't really paying attention when this scene came up, I kinda sneaked a peek for a second this time (just wanted to see what happened). Even though I barely focused on the screen, I consider it a slip since I knew it was coming before hand, yet I didn't block the screen the whole time (I almost did, but last second of the scene I stopped blocking the screen).
 In either case, Bh I'm doing great overall and very much appreciate this forum. It has helped immensely.

Good afternoon!

NYC has been a sweltering heat bath yesterday and today. There were many triggers, I saw a bunch of them, but with the help of Hashem I didn't look at any (afaik). At a certain point that I remember thinking  "omg they're all over the place", followed by a slight smile as I looked away thinking something like "God must have a lot of faith in me, it feels great to succeed!". 
So I'd like to publicly (& anonymously) give thanks to our Awesome Father. Thank you Abba for holding my hand during this battle!

bb0212 wrote on 13 Jun 2017 20:27:

Hay BB! we are brothers, we have one great father!! he is the best, and only with his help we can survive on those streets, and we will survive... just remember, you are walking on the top of the cliff, watch out, you shouldn't fall.
Keep it up BB! lets be strong and be clean! Together!

Shivisi_Hashem wrote on 13 Jun 2017 21:47:


Thank you Shivisi! God holds my hand the same whether I'm walking on top of a cliff, on the bottom of a cliff, up a cliff or down a cliff. As long as I realize that this isn't my own doing and it's not my own work, I think I'll be ok. If not for Hashem's endless guidance and help, I'd never succeed at this game.

Bh things have been going good, "looking" less at things that I "saw", really watching what I think about and where I look. Doing better than I have in years, with God's help. Not sure why this took so long, I finally put restrictions on my work iPad, my friend has the password. I blacklisted a couple of sites, as well as didallowing any app downloads. Besides the iPad, I also changed the internet shutoff time on my computer to 10:00pm.