I am going to post ideas and feelings as I make my way through the journey of 90 days. 

My body is mine but not me



It is no wonder that today people make the mistake of identifying themselves as a body. 



We live in a world where people identify with their phone, their car, their house, their facebook profile, their political party, etc. 



If people mistakenly identify themselves with objects and ideas that are completely external to themselves it is no wonder that they also confuse themselves with something that is a lot closer to themselves (their body). 



But we are not our bodies. Our bodies are like our clothes. They might reveal something about who we are, but they are not who we are. Just like our clothes become worn out and need to be thrown away so to one day it will also be time for us to say goodbye to our bodies. 



I am not 24 but my body is, I am a Neshama I am ageless.<*>I am not hungry, my body is hungry<*>I am not tired, my body is tired<*>I am not angry, my body is angry<*>I am not stressed, my body is stressed



Right now I am treating my body to a cold glass of milk. My body and I are at peace. 

Day 1: My body is my friend
I love my body. 

My body has provided me countless ways of connection

Without my body, I would never be able to fully appreciate the gift of creation. 

My body and I are partners. 

But sometimes my body and I fight.

It is not that my body is ill-intentioned. It is just that my body has strong urges.

• One moment it is hungry.
• Anther moment it is stressed
• Another moment it is tired.

My body takes me around and gives me the ability to make a difference in the world. But sometimes it feels like my body is rebelling against me. Like it wants to self destruct.

Day 2: Focus is my friend
I often found myself falling into a rabbit hole of lust, so deep and dark that very little light could seep in. In other words, my body would focus so intently on what it "wanted" that there was little room for reason to reason. 

And so we often think about how focus is the problem. 

But I want to think to speak about two ways in which I think focus is part of the solution.

1. It is the discomfort that comes from the lack of focus that often leads us astray. Based on my own experiences it is not during times of focus that my urges start acting up. Rather, it is often during moments of multitasking. The body finds multitasking incredibly uncomfortable and thusly tries to direct you toward an activity that involves focus. If you think about which activities involve the most focus it is not surprising why we find our bodies sending us in the direction of p and m. 
2. The second reason why focus is critical for success is since just like focusing on lust leaves little room for reason, so to focusing on good leaves little room fo bad. Learning Torah is extremely useful for combatting the yetzer hara since it strengthens our connection to reality and thus severs the connection to darkness. But in addition to this learning is also helpful in combatting lust because learning Torah can involve immense concentration. It fills up the mind with goodness and thus leaves little to no room for bad thoughts to enter and grow. Additionally, learning Torah is soothing for the mind because as we said the mind loves focus.

In conclusion, I am going to work on not fighting but rather directing my body. My body wants focus, so I will give it what it wants. Instead of having it focus on destructive thoughts, I will try to direct my mind to focus on positive things. 

Day 3: You never HAVE to act out
It seems that many times the Yetzer Hara will get you to act out by telling you that in a certain sense you don't have a choice. Even if you can hold out for a hours you won't be able to hold out forever. At some point, you will break and therefore you might as well break now rather than later. At least after you break now you can get the thoughts out of your head and be productive again. At the moment of behira this can feel like a solid argument and I find myself falling for it quite often. 

The mistake in this argument is that you don't HAVE to fall. You never HAVE to act out. Nothing is going to happen if you don't. You are not going to die. You might be uncomfortable but you won't die. Tie a person to a chair and you will see nothing happens to them. So there is no argument in "I HAVE to act out". If you simply wait you will still be there but the urge won't. 

By the way, the same goes for all negative urges.

every word you wrote is so so good, i love the way you come in, keep it up

The mental activities of cravings and urges disappear over time unless you actively maintain them with your attention. Given time, they will run their course and disappear. If they aren’t gone in 10-15 minutes, then chances are you are still exposed to the stimulus that cued the urge in the first place. Just don’t give in no matter how bad the urge is and it will pass. All the urges you have ever had have passed. Once you have denied an urge, you know you can do it again and again. And after a short time, there will be fewer cravings and the ones you have will diminish in intensity. Waiting them out is a great step to recovery.

Day 4: Don't Rely on Inspiration

First I want to disclose that the urges have now started to rile up. I am now strapping myself in for what I know will be a bumpy ride. I am so thankful that this forum exists and I wish all of you the success in your journeys. 

I want to admit that balance has never been a strong suit of mine. I have many times in my life gone full steam ahead on a given project only to wear myself out/lose interest and give up. Often after failing in Shmirat Enayim, I gain intense motivation to stay clean. However, with time, as with all other emotions, this determination starts to fade. It is after this inspiration starts to dim that the Yetzer Hara creeps out of its dark hole and begins its assault. I think that the key here is not to rely on inspiration. Inspiration might help us get started but by itself it cannot keep us clean. 

You make a very good point, acting on emotions like guilt are not healthy and never last.
We need to have real concrete reasons why we are doing this (i.e. staying clean even though it's a bumpy ride) and review them frequently when the initial inspiration wears off.
You seem really motivated, keep strong!
The urges wont last forever they always go away when you forget about them and they never go away when you focus on them. 
Things like reading, going on a walk,  working out, listening to music, basically anything that's not a time waster can help distract you.

All the best and keep up the posting.

Thank you so much

I really appreciate the support!

Hey Guardian,

I always encourage people to use the forums and I think it is how I was able to get myself out of the mud. You really hit the ground running and have some great posts! 

Keep coming on and try and gain some GYE friends to hold you accountable when you lose your balance. 

One day at a time and you will see great things happen! 

I want to speak about a paradox that I have been thinking about.
How is it that we ever sin?

If we know G-d to be true and that sin separates us from G-d how is that we ever sin.  

An idea I learned from my Rabbis is that if we are not going up we are going down, there is no stagnant place in the world, everything is always in motion. So too is our vision of reality. Our vision of reality is either getting clearer or it is getting blurrier. 

Just like the glasses, I am wearing. They are not clean right now they are getting dirtier as I am writing this post (very slowly) and I can clean them but the point is that they are either getting dirtier or cleaner (either going up or going down).

Therefore, if we understand that we can never stop our vision from getting blurry then we must learn to clean it. 

But how do we clean it?

In Alei Shor, Rav Wolbe explains that the key is to be mindful. A person with daas is a person who is mindful of the "sunrise and sunset, of a beautiful view or the development of a child. He notices the wonders of creation and he plants faith in his heart". In other words, a mindful person is a person that goes around and thinks and notices things. He might observe how he is thinking, how someone else is feeling, when he walks into a room he asks himself what is the optimal behavior here considering my relationship with ploni, or maybe he just notices something in nature. 
The point is that a mindful person is constantly thinking and observing. It is very easy for us to go through our life on auto mode and just go from one thing to the next and not even think. Even very intelligent fall into such behavior. 

This, in my opinion, if one of the greatest dangers. It is not that our vision is going to getting blurry. That is going to happen regardless. The danger is not cleaning it (not taking a moment to stop and think). When you stop and think (be mindful) it is the equivalent of cleaning the glasses. 

When we stop and think we are cleaning our vision of reality and see things for what they are. Once we tap back into reality it is much harder to sin. 

Btw, obviously learning Torah is an amazing way to "clean our glasses" but two things:

1. We are not always learning Torah but we can practice mindfulness almost whenever & wherever.
2. It is still possible to go on auto-mode and not be mindful when learning Torah.

So one of the things I am working on is to try to be mindful. Before I say something or do something, ask myself what am I feeling, what is so and so feeling, etc. 
And when I am thinking something to ask myself why am I feeling this, is this me that is feeling this or is this my body?

Thank you!

Life is a Highway

I want to talk about an amazing song called "Life is a Highway" I highly recommend listening to it.

[Verse 1] Whoo um, yeah
Life is like a road that you travel on
When there is one day here and the next day gone Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand
Sometimes you turn your back to the wind
There is a world outside every darkened door
Where blues will not haunt you anymore
Where brave are free and lovers soar
Come ride with me to the distant shore

[Verse 2]

There is no load I cannot hold
Road so rough this I know
I will be there when the light comes in
Just tell them we are survivors

[Chorus] Life is a highway
I want to ride it all night long
If you are going my way
I want to drive it all night long

Now I don't exactly what these words mean to the artist that composed them but I know what they mean to me.

• Life is like a road.

  
  

  • As we move through life we encounter different struggles.
    

• "Sometime you bend, sometimes you stand".

  
  

  • We don't win every challenge.
    

• "Sometimes you turn your back to the wind"

  
  

  • But often we manage to go against the "wind" and fight our Yetzer Hara
    

• "There is a world outside every darkened door"

  
  

  • Even when we fall G-d provides us opportunities "a world" to pick ourselves up and grow.
    

• "Where blues will not haunt you anymore"

  
  

  • And we can escape the defeatism that the Yetzer Hara provides.
    

• "Where brave are free and lovers soar"

  
  

  • And the brave have the courage fight to take control of the reigns of their inclinations and "soar"
    

• "Come ride with me to the distant shore"

  
  

  • So please come join me on this journey whose end seems so "distant"
    

• "There is no load I cannot hold"

  
  

  • There is not a challenge that G-d gave me that I am not capable of overcoming.
    

• "Road so rough this I know"

  
  

  • Even a challenge as great as this one
    

• "I will be there when the light comes in"

  
  

  • I will be here standing when the Moshiach comes
    

• Just tell them we are survivors

  
  

  • We will let our loved know that we were SURVIVORS

Please join me for this journey on this "rough road".

It will get bumpy and we might fall along the way.

But the key is to keep the foot on the pedal (to keep growing).

With time and effort, we'll be free.

I found that I have two main triggers. 

1. Being Stressed
2. Being Bored

Being stressed is something that I want to speak about at a later point. But something I noticed is that I almost never fall when I am being productive. Rather it is when my mind is engaged in mindless things that I often act out. 
I recently installed a software on my computer called RescueTime. It tracks all my activities on my computers and categorizes them based on how productive the activity is. It then quantifies the results and tells me how productive I am. I noticed that it is very helpful as it pushes me to keep working on the next thing and thus limiting moments of boredom.