Episode 155: Keep It Simple – Learn and Move On

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer. 

Hey everyone, welcome to today’s podcast episode. I am really excited to introduce you to the Keep it Simple series. And the reason I decided to do this is because, well, there are a lot of podcast episodes and it’s easy to think that it’s all complicated and there is so much to do and so much to learn. 

And one of the things that I really want to help instill into all of you is that we’re not going to operate from overwhelm anymore. We’re not going to go and fall into the overwhelm traps. We’re going to take tiny little steps, day by day by day by day. I love what someone recently said in a What’s Possible interview. They said just let the program seep into you day by day by day. And we’re not going to learn it all at once, we’re not going to master it all at once, we’re going to take it slow and simple, slow and simple. 

And as you do that, the principle of compounding success, success is built off of tiny little steps over time, not massive, big changes, at least typically. And that’s how I want us to approach this. When we get into like, “Oh, I’m going to quit cold turkey or I’m going to learn all of this and be all done in a month, we can fall really easily into the all or nothing trap and get discouraged. 

And so I really want us to think in terms of years and not in terms of months. Where am I going to be in three years, instead of where am I going to be in three months? That’s going to help our vision. It’s going to help us make decisions that are going to be long-lasting. It’s going to help us make decisions that we really, really want for our lives. Not quick, band-aid solutions. Not get rich quick schemes. Not these decisions that are immediate quick change. 

To see success I really think the key principle is thinking in terms of years, not thinking in terms of months. So, keep it simple. We’re going to talk about six different milestones that I cover in the program. And what I have for each of these milestones is I have standards of what I want every client to understand and to really have in their bones with each milestone. 

So we’re going to talk about each of those points, I’m going to talk about them, explain them. We’re going to keep it simple. If you can do these things, you can quit porn absolutely. 

Now, before we dive into this, it’s been a while since I’ve shared a podcast review. This one says, “Hi, Sara. I’ve been listening to the podcast since June 18, 2023, the day after the last time I watched pornography. I’ve been dealing with the struggle of abusing porn, objectifying women and trolling the internet. 

I have been stuck with this for over 30 years. Dealing with shame and guilt of being sexually abused from a very young age, I turned to porn to cope. Not thinking it was controlling me, it quickly became so overpowering that I did not know how to stop. I was previously in another men’s group which helped for the short term, but I always found myself going right back to my old habits. 

From the first episode of your podcast, I found a sense of clarity and understanding of why I kept going back, buffering. I wish I found you years ago. I’m only about 53 episodes in and already know your explanations and methods have helped me tremendously and I feel better about my future of a porn-free life. Thank you for your commitment to help the many men and women like me to free ourselves from this heavy burden we carry.” 

Thank you so, so much for sharing this and for leaving this podcast review. Honestly, honestly, thank you. When you do this, it gives other people hope. It helps other people feel like they can do it. And it also really helps the podcast get out there so we can find more people who need this. So thank you so much. 

If you haven’t left me a review yet, I would love it if you would do so. You can do that on Apple. It’s very easy, you just scroll down and it’s right there. Or you can do it on Spotify as well. So that would be awesome if you wanted to rate me on Spotify. 

Let’s hop into this. So keeping it simple, we’re going to talk about learn and move on. This is the first milestone or the first thing that I have my clients work through in the program. 

So if you’re not aware, in the program we have so many things. The bulk of the content is the milestones program where you go through and you complete all of the tasks and videos and assignments in each milestone to learn the skills that you need to. It’s a lot of application. It’s a lot of diving into yourself and what specifically there is for you. 

We do these milestones. We do weekly coaching calls and we have a couple of calls every single week. We do live coaching calls, regular coaching calls, relationship calls, calls on each specific milestone. We do support group calls. 

There are a bunch of bonuses, like the failure turnaround bonus. If you fail, what do you do? Go do this and in five minutes you’ll have turned it around and have a plan and feel really good about it. Instead of that failure just being something that we ignore and don’t think about, we’re using it as something to move us forward instead of something that’s setting us back. 

We have the difficult moments process. If you’re having a hard time with an event coming up, maybe you’re going on vacation or you’re going on a work trip without your spouse or whatever moment is hard for you, you go through that process and it helps you create a step by step by step plan to make it through these difficult moments. 

We have the discouragement turnaround, the shame turnaround, the overwhelm turnaround, if you’re stuck in these emotions. All the stuff is here. You have everything you need to quit porn. The thing that’s going to keep us from doing it might be those emotions like discouragement, shame, overwhelm, and so there’s videos to help you get out of that if you’re stuck in that. 

There are trainings on how to have difficult conversations, breathwork trainings, all sorts of good stuff. There’s the spouse calls, so your spouse can come to these calls for free and get some really great help. It’s really important to me that the spouses get help that is trauma-informed and it’s not just, “Hey, get over this.” That’s not helpful. And their feelings are 100% validated and whatever they’re experiencing is validated. 

And so the goal here is that we’re getting some independent help so that we can come together interdependently. In the future, what I want to do is create more of a sister program for the spouses, because right now we just have those calls and not really a lot of other support, just the once a month calls. But if you’re in the program, your spouse gets access to those for free and they’re really, really valuable. Really, really valuable. 

Anyways, I’m not going to keep going. But we’ve got a lot of that and it’s lifetime access. Also the Ask a Coach board where you can submit things to the Ask a Coach board and get a response in a couple of hours, 24 hours-ish. And you get lifetime access to that. So you can ask a question on that board anytime. And it’s completely anonymous. No one else is going to see it but the coaches and you get an individualized answer. 

And so really, our goal is to give you as much support as you possibly need. And our promise, our commitment is that we’re going to work with you until you quit. So that’s the milestones program. That’s the milestones content, and the first one I want to talk about is learn and move on. 

So here are the goals of the client after they finish learn and move on. We want to make sure, number one, that the client doesn’t fall into an all or nothing trap. 

So the all or nothing trap is I have to quit cold turkey or once I give in I just binge and binge and binge and then we try again next week. Or it can look like if I slipped up today, that means I’m going to start over again tomorrow. Or if I slip up this weekend, I’ll start again on Monday. It’s all or nothing. I either have a perfect day or I just binge today or I watch multiple times per day. So that’s really, really important that we’re not falling into the all or nothing trap. 

A big key step in helping us do that, and this is point number two, is that the client understands how to turn slip-ups into stepping stones. Now if y’all have been to any of my live events or watched my webinar, you’ve probably heard me use the example of how to turn slip-ups into stepping stones Jenga versus Super Mario Brothers. 

So a lot of times when it comes to quitting porn, it’s like we have to go 30 days, and if we go 29 days, we’ve got to start all over. We have to go three months. And if you don’t go three months, sorry, you’re starting over. What this is like, it’s like playing Jenga, the game with the blocks. And one wrong move, you pull out one wrong block and the whole tower comes crashing down. And so you’re on edge. 

It’s fun for a game. It’s not fun if you’re trying to quit porn. Instead what we want to look at this like is Super Mario Brothers, where you’re playing and playing and playing and you get killed by a ghost fish and you go back to your checkpoint. You don’t start all the way over. It’s not like the game is over. It’s like, oh, I was killed by that ghost fish, let’s try again. Go again, killed by the ghost fish. Okay, let’s try again. Go again, killed by the ghost fish. 

And eventually you get really good at Super Mario Brothers if you play enough, right? And if you die enough and if you get killed enough by the ghost fish enough, and you use it instead of just giving up and throwing it on the floor, you keep going, you get really good at it. And then you master Super Mario Brothers. 

And so these failures – And it’s easy to see this in other areas of our life, right? Like I use lifting weights as an example a lot of times. But you lift to failure. And if you don’t lift to failure, you’re not getting strong enough. If you’re not failing, you’re not getting strong enough. And then the next time your muscle builds, so you can lift even more and you lift to failure. That’s the goal. 

What are some other examples? Like sales, right? The goal is you’re learning from all of the failures. The more failures you get, the more successful you can be because your skills get better. So same with anything. That’s how we get good at anything, we try and we fail, and we try and we fail, and we try and we fail. And that’s what makes us good. It has to be the same with porn. 

And I’m saying this right now, thinking of a client who has some ecclesiastical leaders who won’t let him move forward with his goals in life unless he goes three months without quitting porn. And that, in my mind, is just so unhelpful. 

All it does is it creates pressure and stress. And I don’t know if the thinking behind it is that if we don’t set a three-month deadline, he’s just going to do whatever he wants. That’s not true. He’s trying really hard and he’s got to learn these skills. But it keeps him from being able to learn skills if he’s so stressed out about messing up every time. 

I’m frustrated, if you can’t tell. I’m frustrated with that mindset and with that thinking. I’m so frustrated with the thought that if you slip up, you start over. That’s not how it freakin works. It’s not. You slip-up and, oh, I was so much better than last time. And look, I learned these things. And when I slipped up, oh, this thing popped up that I wasn’t really aware of or I need to work through and I need to look at and I just need to change some things and I’m getting stronger. 

It’s like freaking learning how to walk, right? When you learn how to walk, you fall down all the time. And that’s what makes you strong. Now my son, he learned how to walk pretty quick, like nine months. And he just fell down, fell down, fell down. Anyone who has a baby knows they’re going to hit their head and they’re going to cry and they’re going to be upset. But they just keep getting up and going and they figure it out. 

But if they didn’t go through that process of falling down a bunch, they never would have the strength to keep going. Now, my daughter, and my daughter is perfect, right? I love her. They’re both perfect. My daughter also started walking pretty early, she actually took her first steps before my son, like eight months, which is really freaking early. But it took her a lot longer to actually start walking. 

And you want to know why? It’s because she would fall down and get so frustrated that she would just throw fits and scream and cry and wouldn’t try again. Probably because she saw her brother running around and was like, “I should be able to do that. Why can’t I do that?” But it took her longer to learn how to walk because she couldn’t move on from her falling, from her failures. And you don’t expect her to, she’s a year old. It’s just a really great example, right? 

And so what you have to do, though, this is the key, what you have to do is you have to learn from it and look at what’s going on and gather data and not just ignore the slip-up, right? So that’s the difference. We’re not just ignoring and justifying the slip-ups. We’re actually looking at what happened, taking time to analyze it and using it as a stepping stone, using it to gather data. 

Another example, if you’re trying to figure out a math problem and you don’t get it right the first time, like a really hard math problem, you don’t just erase all of your work and start over. You go back and you’re like, okay, what part didn’t make sense? Let’s see, what other data do I need? And you erase some of it and you figure it out another. It’s like a puzzle that you’re trying to figure out. That’s how we can look at this as well. 

And so another key point here is that the client understands how to use the learn and move-on a worksheet and the failure turnaround PDF. So one of the things in the program, I’m talking to you guys who are in the program, I’m reminding you, too, to do this. And those of you who aren’t, I mean, come join us. Come join us. Come work with us. Come do this with us. 

But the learn and move-on worksheet, it’s a worksheet that you fill out. Every time you slip up, you go through and you fill out those questions and you write down and you gather data. We’re gathering data, we’re gathering data. And then after you fill that out, you can send it to the Ask a Coach board or you can bring it to a coaching call if you need help, if you don’t know where to go, if you just want to talk it over with someone, we can do that with you. 

So you understand how to use the learn and move-on worksheet and the failure turnaround PDF, which is basically kind of pointing you back towards the learn and move-on worksheet. So it’s not just a justification failure, right? I did a number of episodes on this. It’s not like a failure just to justify like, oh, I failed and I’m supposed to fail. So let’s justify this and go and fail. 

It’s a progressive failure where you’re trying hard and you’re doing the work and we fail and then we learn from it. And we don’t make it this big deal. We don’t make it mean all these things about us. We don’t make it mean that we have to start over. We use it to progress. And that’s going to be the quickest freakin way to quit porn. So much quicker than you’ve got to go three months. 

Sorry, I’m a little bit riled up thinking about this client whose leaders are putting that pressure on him. There’s compassion on both sides because they’re probably doing the best they can. And I don’t always know all the situation or all the details, especially this client I’m talking about, I just had coached him once. It’s not like a one-on-one client of mine, so I don’t know all the details, there could be more. 

But more often than not, I just see that there’s just not a lot of education around this. And it’s okay, people are doing their best. But maybe a quick note on that. If you do have leaders who are doing it this way, that’s okay. And let’s remember that you have the power and the authority in your life to make the best decisions for you. And just because they look at it this way, doesn’t mean that you have to, and you can make the best decisions for you. And you can maybe help educate them, if that feels good to you. 

All right, lastly, the last point here that we make sure the clients have. It says the client has adequate awareness of their slip-up patterns and triggers and knows how to move forward in addressing these obstacles. 

So this is something, and my coaches use all of these points in their sessions. But this is something that we would really coach on and really make sure that you understand. Your specific slip-up patterns in your specific triggers, do you understand these? Are you aware of them? And do you know how to move forward in addressing these obstacles? This is where it really starts to get personal and we’re doing the individual work, right? 

It could be emotions. Maybe you’re not aware of how certain emotions trigger you. It could be time of the day. It could be certain events. It could be boredom. It could be exhaustion. And there’s a whole bunch of techniques and processes and things that we would work on depending on what those specific slip-ups and patterns and triggers are. 

But a really important part of this learn and move on, this is why it’s the first thing I have my clients start doing, is the awareness piece. Awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. You cannot change anything if you don’t have awareness. 

You can’t change your patterns if you’re not even aware of your patterns. It’s going to be really, really difficult. And so the learn and move on, because so many of us there’s so much shame around it that we slip up and we’re like, “I just don’t want to think about it, I’m just going to do better next time.” The learn and move on is really uncomfortable in the sense that it makes you go back and look at what happened and what’s going on. 

And so a big part of the learn and move on too, is we’re also doing some shame work as shame pops up, as any part of you that wants to just not look at that and not think about that. We’re also doing some work and some love on that part. 

And what can be really, really helpful here is looking at it as data. Again, I’m saying data again, like we’re scientists. So instead of getting into all the drama about why did I do that? That was so dumb, I know better, that was really – You know, beating yourself up. 

We’re just, oh, I’m a scientist looking at this. I’m separating myself from the drama of it all and just looking at it like a scientist. Oh, that’s fascinating. I thought this when this happened. Oh, that’s fascinating, when this happened, this is what I did. Wow, just so fascinating. So that’s going to be really, really helpful as well. 

Okay. That’s what we’ve got for learn and move on keeping it simple. This is a very important skill to learn and to start practicing. You’ve got this. I also, of course, want to invite you, if you are feeling called, if it feels good to you, if it feels like a good fit for you, I want to invite you to come and join us and work through this stuff together. 

If you want to talk through whether or not it’s a good fit, we have some other payment options if that’s a barrier. You can reach out to us. By the time this episode is released, I’m recording it quite a bit early, but we should have kind of like a program ambassador who’s speaking to and helping people who want to talk to someone before they join the program or just helping people with decisions or answering questions. We should have someone like that. 

So just reach out to us for now, [email protected], we’ll help answer your questions. Okay, you guys have a great week. We’ll talk to you next week. Bye bye.  

I want to invite you to come and listen to my free class, How To Overcome Pornography For Good Without Using Willpower. We talk about how to stop giving in to urges without pure willpower or relying on phone filters so that you can actually stop wanting pornography. 

We talk about how to stop giving up after a few weeks or months. And spoiler alert, the answer isn’t have more willpower. And then lastly, we talk about how to make a life without porn easily sustainable and permanent. 

If you’re trying to quit porn, this class is a game changer. So you can go and sign up at Sarabrewer.com/masterclass, and it is totally free.