There's just one way to make your problems go away.
And frankly, most people don't want to do it.
Which I understand.
Heck, it's just part of our biological programming.
We're hardwired to seek pleasure and move away from pain, and it's a major piece of our "operating system" that has allowed us to survive, thrive, and ultimately become the most dominant species on Earth.
The problem though, is that in the modern world there's nothing forcing people to directly face most of their issues.
If you were a caveman back in the day, you'd have no choice but to face the problem of warring factions committing acts of violence, fending off wild animals, and finding shelter from harsh weather. Your discomfort would naturally push you to seek water, warmth, food, and community to help carry the burden. There really was no escaping from the immediacy of the kinds of problems ancient humanity were facing.
These days, the script is flipped.
Most of people's problems are less immediate:
They're fat. Their energy is low. Their relationships and intimacy are struggling. They're not earning as much as they want to be. And a hundred other things.
And they hurt, for sure.
But none of them have the immediacy of a saber-toothed tiger stalking your village.
To compound the issue:
We also have much more escapism easily available to us. So the nature of the problems we're facing is that they're less immediate, and we have 1000 different ways of escaping the discomfort of whatever we're dealing with that are super easily available and allow us to numb ourselves with pleasure.
So here we are.
Modern humans in a modern world, with primitive biological programming that hasn't had the evolutionary time necessary to adapt, and that old programming that served us so well is causing massive problems.
It's part of our nature.
People can't help but want to escape from their discomforts with the sweet, easy allure of social media, youtube, video games, weed, alcohol, pornography, and the infinite other easily accessible escape hatches we have.
But that escapism loop will never fix your problems.
In fact, it'll just make them worse, burying them for later and allowing the wound to fester and the consequences to compound on themselves.
This is what I've realized:
Ironically, learning how to sit with your discomfort and face it head on, and move through it with strength, bravery, and maturity... is actually much less painful than the consequences of staying in the escapism loop. Sure, it frontloads the discomfort so you have to face it, but that allows you to dispel it and move on instead of pushing it under the metaphorical rug for later.
So I invite you to examine yourself.
Where is your escapism pattern holding you back from the progress you want to make? Is it in your relationship? Your career? Your health? And what are your brain's vices of choice?
It's time to take a closer look at this stuff.
And if you're like I was, and like a massive portion of modern humanity, then pornography is probably featured in your "top 3 escapes." Which makes sense, because it's ridiculously alluring and addictive to the male brain, which incidentally means that it's one of the most destructive forms of escapism possible.
That's why, if it's still part of your lifestyle, I wholeheartedly recommend taking a closer look at that form of escapism first.
It's like a therapist once told me:
If you're in a boat surrounded by crocodiles that are fixated on taking a bite out of you, focus on the crocodile closest to the boat first. Once you kill that one, you can move on to the next one. You can't beat 7 crocodiles at once, but you can overcome the biggest threat first. Then face the next, and the next. And sadly, pornography is that biggest threat. As much as we may wish it didn't carry such negative consequences, it simply does.