Episode 162: What’s Possible with Konstantin

Hey, you guys, a quick note before we start today’s episode. It’s another What’s Possible interview with Konstantin. Konstantin is from Latvia and all of these episodes, you guys, all of them, they’re so good. I want you to listen to all of them. And Konstantin’s episode is really fun and unique in the sense that he talks about being in the program for three months, working hard for three months and nothing working. 

And then he talks about the one thing that shifted it all for him. And so I really want you to hear this and listen to this, it’s so good. He’ll also talk about how he was an Ironman runner and did all the iron mans. We’ve had a couple of clients who have done those and said, yeah, I can do Ironmans, but quitting porn was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. 

And so please enjoy this episode. Also make sure you go and listen to the past ones, they’ve all been so good. Enjoy today’s episode and we’ll talk to you guys later. Bye bye. 

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 episode. Today we’re here with Konstantin, we’re doing a What’s Possible interview, or like a story of hope is also what I’m playing with calling these. 

So Konstantin is here to tell us a little bit about his story and his journey in quitting porn. And so, Konstantin, I’ll let you introduce yourself and then just kind of tell us a little bit about your story and I’ll stop and we’ll chat along the way. 

Konstantin: Hello, Sara, thank you for this opportunity. My name is Konstantin and I’m currently 38 years old. And basically I did a lot of hard things in my life before, but quitting porn was by far the most difficult thing I have done. So I would like to take this opportunity and tell a bit about my journey and hope that maybe it will be interesting or even useful to the listeners.

So I started with porn as a teenager, as you do, at about age16 when I first had access to the internet. And I was single at the time and it was the normal thing to do and it quickly became a habit. And as you do, I carried on with this habit for all of my future relationships as well, on the side. In the background it was happening all the time. 

This bad habit peaked for me when I was 27 when my life circumstances drastically changed as I quit my day job to start my own business. Not only starting my own business added a lot of stress and anxiety to my life, it also added a lot of free time with myself because I worked from home and I wasn’t restricted by people around me. And it was like the perfect environment to nurture this bad habit. 

Sara: Yeah. Right, like starting a business, all of your stuff comes up. 

Konstantin: Yes. 

Sara: All of the emotion, all the stuff you’ve been trying – 

Konstantin: And it’s 24/7. Like you can’t escape that. And the porn was like the perfect escape, for a moment at least. 

Sara: Totally. 

Konstantin: At that point I started viewing almost daily, sometimes several times a day and it quickly integrated into my routine. Like after a stressful day of work, that was the thing to do to relieve stress. And so it carried on. 

Eventually my life progressed. I got married. I got two wonderful kids, two wonderful daughters were born. And my porn habit carried on as well, obviously as a secret from my wife. And my life got progressively better. I started my own business and my business progressed. I married a wonderful woman. I have wonderful kids. We moved to a big dream house that we wanted. 

But despite all that, I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t happy. I was always sad. I was unmotivated. I didn’t want to sometimes wake up in the morning. I didn’t want to work, I didn’t want to play with my kids. And sometimes even had some suicidal thoughts. 

It was strange because life gets better, but you feel worse and worse. I couldn’t understand why. I even thought it’s some kind of genetic disease or something. Like I knew that my dad was prone to depression, and I just thought that that’s the way my brain works. 

Sara: Yeah. 

Konstantin: As with porn, I thought that it wasn’t a problem. As long as nobody knows and nobody gets hurt, I get to do whatever I want and it’s nobody’s business. So that was the kind of deal with myself. I get to relieve stress, I get to have some simple pleasure, but nobody knows and it’s not a problem. 

But I read a lot. I read a lot of nonfiction. And once I stumbled upon a book called Dopamine Nation by Stanford professor Anna Lembke. The book is on the topic of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that is responsible in our brain for motivation, for our desire to do something. Like when we see tasty food, like a burger, for example, or something, the dopamine gets released. 

When we watch an interesting TV show or play a game, dopamine is released. And, of course, when we watch porn, dopamine is also released. The caveat with dopamine is that our body can produce only a limited amount of it. So if you use up all your dopamine to watch porn, for example, then your dopamine level drops after that. And it drops for a significant amount of time, for days, weeks, or even months. 

So if the porn is a very stimulating activity, it releases a lot of dopamine and it’s also very easy to access. It’s a few clicks away. And it turns out, if you use a lot of porn, you use up all your dopamine reserves and you have nothing left for the rest of your life. Like you don’t have enough to enjoy playing with kids, to enjoy your marriage, to enjoy your work, to enjoy your hobbies. 

And it turned out that this thing that I was feeling, this sense of demotivation and sadness is called a dopamine deficit disorder. And it described me exactly. 

Sara: Does she talk about other dopamine, like games? You said games, food, whatever that may be. 

Konstantin: Yeah, games, drugs. Yes, all of that stuff. So when I read this book, I decided I needed to quit. For the first time in my life I understood that porn usage is a problem. And if I want to be happy for the rest of my life, if I want some improvements, I need to quit. So what could be easier? 

Before I continue, I think you need to know some things about my character. I’m the type of person that is very good at setting ambitious goals and achieving them. For example, a few things that I’ve done, I did Ironman races, triathlon races, which consists of 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 run, a marathon, all back to back without breaks. And you need to finish within 17 hours. So I did two of those. 

I swam across the forest channel from Asia to Europe. I started and maintained a couple of international businesses. And I was a stay at home dad for two years, which is undoubtedly the hardest on this list. 

Sara: I agree with you there. 

Konstantin: Yeah, yeah. 

Sara: I always tell people, they’re like, oh wow, you’re a working mom. I’m like being a working mom is so much easier than being a stay at home mom. 

Konstantin: Yeah, much easier. Yeah, and much easier to do an Ironman than stay at home with the kids, 100%. 

Sara: I love it. 

Konstantin: So I have no issues with things that require some willpower, dedication, routine. And so I thought if I just decide to quit porn, then I will do it no problem. And guess what? It didn’t work. So I made a decision. And then a week passed, maybe. I saw some improvements in my mood, as it was told in the book. Things become gradually better, but then I relapsed. And then again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again. 

And I tried everything that I could think of. I tried accountability apps, schedules, reducing the volume, like everything I can think of. As I usually do when I encounter a problem, I throw everything at it. I read all the books that I could find, Your Brain on Porn and several others. I joined all the online communities, watched all the YouTube videos, learned a lot of how things work, how your brain works, but nothing helped. 

So I kept relapsing and I couldn’t do anything about it. It’s the first time that I felt this helpless in my life. I never had to quit something before. I never smoked. So this was a new experience for me. I couldn’t understand why. Why it’s so easy to go and do a workout, for example, even though it’s difficult, but it’s so easy not to do something. 

Sara: Yeah. 

Konstantin: And then I kind of realized what’s the main difference here. I’ll give you an example. Like when I trained for an Ironman, I had this swim practice session in the pool early mornings on Fridays. I had to wake up at 5am on a cold winter morning. It’s dark, it’s cold, snow everywhere. I had to get in the car, drive to the pool and then dive into the cold water and do this workout before work. And I did that every Friday. I never skipped. 

And believe me, when your alarm clock goes off at 5am on Friday and it’s cold, the last thing you want to do is go jump into the car and then dive into the cold water. 

Sara: Yeah, sounds miserable. 

Konstantin: Yeah. But you just use some willpower and all you need to do is prepare your bag in advance in the evening. You use your willpower to get out of the bed, to get dressed and get in the car and it’s done. Once you’re in the car, you’re going to the pool. There’s nowhere else you can go. That’s it. That’s all the willpower you need. 

When you’re trying to quit something, you need to actively not do something and you need to do it 24/7. I have so many opportunities to watch porn, especially since I have a free schedule and work from home a lot. You need to get out of bed in the cold morning, like every minute for every day of every week or of every month. And it’s just impossible. 

And I figured that’s why you can use your willpower and routine to exercise, but you can’t use it to quit a bad habit. It’s just impossible because you need too much of it and too often. 

Sara: That’s a great analogy, yeah. Really, really, really difficult. That’s why people burn out so quickly with their willpower. 

Konstantin: Yeah, just a few days and you’re out. 

Sara: Right. 

Konstantin: The same with dieting, you just can’t do it forever. 

Sara: Right. 

Konstantin: So I was desperate and I decided I need some accountability. I needed to tell someone because I was alone on this problem before. I figured that maybe if I tell someone it will be easier, I will have some insight, maybe some feedback. And I decided to open up to my wife. 

She’s a very smart woman. She has been supportive of me in everything, like in all of my sports and business, in everything, like everything I decide to do, she was always 100% in. 

It was a very difficult thing for me to do, like to open up about this very sensitive topic. I was preparing for weeks. And finally, when we sat down to talk, my voice was shaking and I was literally crying when I was talking about that to her. As usual, she listened very carefully. She told me that she will support me. But when a few days passed, it turned out that it will not be as easy for her because as supportive as she is, she has her own issues. 

She has problems with her self esteem. And as she processed the things that I told her that I was watching porn almost daily for years, she started asking herself, why am I not enough? Why is he doing that? Why after we have sex in the bedroom, he goes to his room, closes the door and watches porn after that? Like why am I not enough? Are those women more beautiful than me? Why is this happening? 

She considered it cheating. I tried to explain to her that it has nothing to do with her, that I did it before her and before anyone. That it’s just a habit that I have in my brain. It has nothing to do with our relationship. It has nothing to do with sex even. It’s just I need this dopamine release. It could be alcohol. It could be video games. It could be anything, but it just happens to be porn. 

But it was still too difficult for her to accept. I was hoping for support, but unfortunately I didn’t receive it at that point. And I can’t blame my wife because I was so self-centered, so focused on my own feelings that I didn’t take her feelings into account. 

Sara: Yeah. And all of the love and support and validation to spouses who are going through this. It’s a whole other thing that can be really, really difficult. And all those feelings are valid and they deserve help and support and validation. 

And so that’s what a lot of clients will come in and find is, oh, maybe my spouse, this is now kind of becoming a relational thing. And so they’re not able to be an accountability partner, and that’s okay. 

Konstantin: And that’s okay because it’s not that easy. It’s not that easy. It’s not a matter of patting on the back and you’ll be okay. It’s work. It’s work. And at that point our relationship was at its lowest point. We were never this close to divorce. It was a very difficult time. 

So I was left on my own with an additional guilt and shame coming from my wife, unintentionally of course, but that’s what I felt. So the situation got even worse for me. 

At that point I started to consider getting a coach, professional help. So obviously my wife wasn’t a professional, she couldn’t help me. So I thought maybe somebody else will. And this is how I got to your podcast. I started listening. A lot of things you said made sense. It was a very fresh perspective that I didn’t get before in any of the books. Like removing the stigma, not treating it as an addiction, treating it as a habit and so on and so forth. 

So your thought process appealed to me a lot. And I decided to join the program and decided to jump into the one-to-one coaching together with that because one-to-one usually worked very well for me in different parts of my life. In sports, when you find a good person, communication is key, the fastest way to learn something is from another human being who knows how to do that. It’s always been like that. 

And that’s how I started working with Kat and started going through your Overcome Pornography for Good program. 

Sara: Yeah, let me just point out. So Kat is one of the coaches. I’m sure anyone who’s been listening to the podcast for a while will recognize her voice because she comes on and does Ask A Coach and we’ve interviewed her a few times, but she’s one of the one-on-one coaches in the program. 

Konstantin: And she’s amazing. 

Sara: Yeah. 

Konstantin: So I started the program. I kept filling the papers and there are a lot of them. Yeah, I kept going through the daily models, like learn and move on and all of those tools. Working with them with Kat, like asking a lot of questions. I think Kat was overwhelmed by the amount of questions that I asked. 

Sara: No, she probably loved it. I’m sure she loved it. 

Konstantin: Yeah, she did. I’m sure she did. I did all of that, but unfortunately nothing helped. I kept relapsing. I saw no improvement with my rate of relapses. As it was the previous times when I went through the books I learned a lot, I understood a lot, I gained a lot of new knowledge and insights, but I still keep relapsing. Nothing works. 

I did a lot of work. I had a huge pile of filled out papers, a lot of sessions with Kat. It was about three months in. The whole one-to-one coaching program is six months. It was halfway through when on one of the calls I told Kat that probably we should stop this. 

We should quit because it just doesn’t work. Probably, it’s not for me. I’m just doomed to stick with this. I don’t know, maybe it’s just I’m conditioned like that. I can’t quit anything. I said it’s good that I don’t do drugs because I will become a drug addict. And that’s it, that’s just who I am. It was a difficult time. I was ready to admit that I just will be a porn user forever. 

Fortunately, Kat talked me out of it. She validated my feelings. She told me that it’s normal that a lot of people go through that. And she convinced me to try more things. We didn’t go through the whole program, but she insisted that we continue. And I agreed. 

And I’m really glad I did because things changed when we got to the beliefs milestone. So the program is split into different milestones. And one of them is when you challenge your beliefs that you have about porn. And I’m a technical person. Like, I work with computers, I like to approach everything from a technical perspective. And so I did with my beliefs. 

I tried to write down the pros and cons, the benefits and drawbacks of watching porn for me. I took a sheet of paper, drew a line in the center, and wrote down all the benefits that porn gives me to the left and all of the drawbacks to the right. With the drawbacks, it’s pretty obvious, there are a lot of them. I was focusing on all of those bad things a lot. That it ruins my relationships. It makes me unhappy. It makes me sad. It removes my sexual energy and so on and so forth. The cons are obvious for any person that’s trying to quit. 

The more interesting part was the benefits. Like, there must be benefits. Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep returning to this habit, even though it brings so many bad things? And I thought a lot and I made a list of three things, three main benefits that porn gives me. 

First of all, it relieves stress. The one that I mentioned about my business, like when you had a stressful day and you go and watch porn, you immediately feel that your stress is relieved. It’s a great way to feel relaxed, to fall asleep faster. Some people use alcohol for that. There are a lot of ways, but porn works great. To watch porn after a stressful day, amazing. 

The second one is pleasure. Obviously, watching porn is a very pleasurable activity. You get physical pleasure from this dopamine release, hormones and all that stuff. It’s just how things work. Like, orgasm is pleasurable. 

And the third one is new experiences. So as I progressed with my porn usage, as it happens, it was also described in the Dopamine Nation book, that in order to receive the same hit, you need to increase the intensity. So my genres became more and more extreme over the years. And I thought that porn gives me this opportunity to get new sexual experiences that I would never be able to get in real life. Well, so obviously, you don’t get to participate, but at least you get to watch other people do that and get sexual pleasure from that. 

So three things, relieve stress, pleasure and new experiences. And there’s this scale, on the one side you have benefits and on the other side you have drawbacks. And, obviously, since I put so much effort into quitting, the drawbacks are more serious. They are overweight. That’s why I want to quit. 

But why do I keep relapsing beside that? And when analyzing my thought process, I realized that your perspective, the way you perceive those benefits and drawbacks, changes depending on where you are on your relapse cycle. When you just relapsed, the cons, the drawbacks are very, very big. 

Like when you just relapsed you think, I will never do that again. How could I do that? Like it ruins my relationships. It ruins my sex drive. It ruins my life. I will never do that again. And the benefits are very, very small. They are far away because you just orgasmed, you don’t feel that. But the more time passes after your relapse, the bigger the benefits become. 

I didn’t watch porn for some time. It will be very pleasurable. There are all of those videos, new videos must have come out that I can watch. I’m so stressed right now, I need to relieve my stress. And all of those benefits seem very big. And the drawbacks, you kind of forget about them. 

So the benefits and drawbacks stay the same, but your perspective on them changes depending on your relapse cycle. And it was a very, very key insight. I was very close to the solution to my problem. But everything clicked after I started questioning the benefits side of my sheet of paper. 

Are those benefits real? Do I really get those things that I think I get from watching porn? And I started looking at them one by one from a technical perspective, as I’ve told. 

So number one, relieve stress. Obviously, when you watch porn, your stress is relieved. You immediately feel relaxed. But if you were to measure the stress in your life with some kind of units, I don’t know, stress per minute or stress per hour. This unit doesn’t exist, but let’s imagine it does. Does watching porn reduce your stress over a week or does it increase it? 

Sara: Yeah, right. 

Konstantin: Like if you take a step back, not in the terms of one day, but in one week. So, obviously, you have stress from work, then you relapse, your stress is relieved. But then the next day you have to go through all of your day with low dopamine levels. You suffer through your work. You suffer through the time with your kids. You suffer through the time with your wife. You relapse, you have to hide it. When you watch porn, you have to hide it from your wife and your close ones. That’s additional stress. 

Then you feel the sense of shame and worthlessness. That’s a lot of stress. And if you add all that up, the porn actually adds stress, but not relieves it. Like if you just take a step back, in the course of weeks, months and years, porn added so much stress to my life that no relapse could relieve it. 

Sara: Yeah, let me comment on that really quick. The buffering, right, that’s a term that we use to escape. 

Konstantin: Buffering, yeah, exactly. 

Sara: Buffering, it’s like your brain thinks it’s a solution. But really, the more we buffer, the more of that emotion that we feel. It’s like a little trick. It relieves it for a minute, but when you zoom out, we can see how the buffers aren’t making life better or aren’t decreasing the emotion that we’re trying to escape. The buffers typically will increase it or add to it. 

Konstantin: Yes, and I stumbled upon a perfect analogy for buffering that I loved a lot. It was in relation to smoking, but it applies to porn perfectly. It’s like a relief from wearing shoes that are a bit too small. Like you’ve been walking in small shoes for the whole day and then you relapse and you remove those shoes. And that’s a relief. But what if you just stop wearing the shoes? Wouldn’t it be better for you? You wouldn’t have to feel the relief because there would be nothing to relieve from. 

And this discovery made me realize maybe my life isn’t so stressful. Maybe porn makes it stressful. And that’s why I need all of those reliefs. Maybe if I stop, I won’t need this tool to relieve stress as much, at least. 

Sara: Yeah. 

Konstantin: And the same thought process for pleasure. Does porn increase pleasure in my life overall or decrease? Of course, it decreases the pleasure that I get in my life. It decreases the dopamine levels. 

I get less pleasure from work. I get less pleasure from playing with my kids, with my wife and everything else. Like I get this tiny boost of pleasure for one moment and then everything else becomes miserable. Over a course of weeks and months, porn decreases the pleasure in my life. 

And for the new experiences, this was the easiest one. Like if you call jerking off in front of a screen a new experience, then something is wrong with you. It’s not a new experience. It takes away your sexual energy. And if you have that extra sexual energy that you can turn into creativity in your bedroom, you will have much more new experiences than you would otherwise. 

And basically, this discovery just turned every benefit that porn had into a drawback. And then suddenly everything moved from the left side of paper to the right side of paper. And on the left side of the paper with benefits, it became empty. 

So this constant tug of war, when you pull in one direction and in the other direction, it was over instantly. I realized that all of those benefits that come up when you don’t relapse for a long time, they were a lie. And it was over just like that. 

It was one drop that tilted the scales and I basically lost the desire to watch porn forever, immediately. It was like a dam exploded and all of the water started running. Everything made sense in this one moment. I even decided that I will have a last porn session to close this thing off. I opened my favorite website, browsed through the thumbnails, and I realized that I have no desire to do that. I closed it and never returned to that again. 

Sara: Yeah, amazing. 

Konstantin: Yeah, it’s been six months and this one click was enough to solve the problem for me. Kat was very happy to find out that, but we had to stop the sessions with her early because we had nothing to discuss left. 

Sara: Perfect. That’s great. 

Konstantin: Yeah, the goal achieved. She was kind enough to teach me some breathing techniques, because she’s an expert in that, because I asked her to. But basically, we had to stop the program one month early because the problem was solved. 

Sara: Yeah. How has it been since then? 

Konstantin: It’s amazing. Like everything that I thought would become better became better. My sex life just exploded. It’s so much better than it has ever been. Like my marriage is on the peak, it’s never been better. I feel a lot more energy at work. I enjoy the time with my kids a lot more. 

It’s an ongoing process, like it didn’t solve all my problems, of course. But at least it gave me the energy to do that. And I was completely right thinking that porn adds stress to my life because I do a lot more than I did, and I feel a lot better than I did. 

Sara: Really nice. What a great example, too, of just that desire piece, really looking at that. Like if we want to quit porn, getting rid of the actual desire for it, which comes from the beliefs and the thoughts that we have around it. What a cool, awesome example of that. Thank you for sharing all of that. 

Konstantin: Yeah, I realize that my path to this healing is maybe unusual in some way, but I’m really proud of that. It was definitely the hardest thing I did. Unfortunately, it’s not the thing you will go and brag about to everyone, but internally it gives me so much confidence that I can do whatever I desire to do. 

Sara: Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. So good. And that’s why we do these interviews, is because you’re probably not hearing from your coworkers or your family or the people in your community these great stories, but we need to hear them. We need to hear them. 

Konstantin: Exactly. 

Sara: Okay, so what would you tell someone who was, maybe someone who’s in your shoes, who was in your shoes where you were a year ago? Is there like one piece of advice that you would tell them? 

Konstantin: I think that everyone’s journey is unique and something that worked for me wouldn’t work for somebody else. But the advice I would give to anyone who is struggling with anything, keep looking for solutions. If one thing didn’t work, try another thing. If it didn’t work, try another thing and repeat until your goal is achieved. Never give up. 

Sara: Well, and I’m assuming that’s probably your mindset that has had you successful in so many other areas of your life, too. 

Konstantin: Probably. 

Sara: Yeah. And what a great example, too, of like you are the authority and you have the answers inside of you. And it’s great to have someone help you pull that out or give you encouragement and help you see some of those things, but those clicks for you in your mind about relieving stress, the porn increasing and decreasing pleasure, the new experiences and switching those were so powerful because they came from you. 

Konstantin: Yeah, and because they came on top of everything I did before that. Like nothing, even a failure, it’s not for nothing. Like your failure just adds to your experience. It adds to this pile. Like if you are standing in front of a wall and you need to get across that, you need to pile a pile of bad experiences first and you can climb on top of that pile and then get behind that wall. 

Sara: Yeah, I love that visual of we’re standing on a pile of failures and that’s how we get over the wall. So good. 

Konstantin: Yeah, that’s what I believe. Yes. 

Sara: Yeah, really good. Okay, so how do you feel going forward? Do you feel confident going forward? Where do you see yourself in a year or so with this? 

Konstantin: I was afraid that I would come back to it at some point, but so far it’s been six months and I still have no desire. I am pretty confident that this part of my life is over. 

Sara: Yeah. 

Konstantin: And that’s a great relief for me. The benefit of me going through that journey is that I have young kids who are yet to struggle with this problem in the modern world. And I can pass my experience to them. And I’m really grateful for you for that podcast because I will save that episode and I will just make them listen at some point when they’re old enough to understand that their dad was going through that as well. 

Sara: How sweet. Oh, how sweet is that? I love that. Well, thank you so, so much for coming on and sharing your story. Such a beautiful story that’s going to resonate with so many people. Thank you for talking about those big three points that you noticed with the belief. That’s huge. That’s huge. That makes me want to do a whole podcast on those three points and just reference you. 

Konstantin: It was huge for me, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that opportunity. 

Sara: Yeah, so good. Okay, anything else you want to share or do you feel good? 

Konstantin: I would like to thank you for everything that you do. You change a lot more lives than you think, I think, I believe, because there are a lot of people struggling. But you and Kat especially, you create this atmosphere of acceptance that is very necessary as a first step to overcome this problem. 

Sara: Well, thank you. I didn’t say that so that you would thank me, but thank you. Thank you. And I just like reminding, you know, you’re the hero here of your story and you’ve got all of that inside of you and you made that happen. And so congratulations. Thank you for sharing. So much to learn from. 

Oh, I was going to share. We’ve had a few clients that have done the Ironman stuff and they all come in and they say the same thing. They’re like, I could do Ironmans, but when it comes to porn, like it’s so hard. It’s just such a different thing. 

Konstantin: Different beast, absolutely. 

Sara: Different beast. And then I was also going to share, I love that you share you had all these successes in your life and that’s when you realized, oh, I’m not necessarily happier. 

Konstantin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Life’s getting better, but you’re still miserable. 

Sara: I had a really similar experience where I had hit a big goal in my business that I’d been working on for a while and my happiness levels had not changed. It was the same. And I was like, what? 

Konstantin: Now, what is this for? 

Sara: What? So are we just not happy? Is that it? Like, no matter what happens, we’re just not happier. And I had to really learn how to – There’s the success skills, and I was really good at those. But I had to learn how to increase my happy skills. And that took a lot of work and that was kind of hard. 

Konstantin: Yeah, because how you feel has a lot to do with what’s happening in your brain, your chemistry. If you have the most amazing life and you sleep four hours a day, there is no way you will feel good. 

Sara: Right. 

Konstantin: The same thing if you eat crap and the same thing if you watch porn on a regular basis, like there is nothing you can do that –  

Sara: Any success won’t make up for that.  

Konstantin: Yeah, any successes, it just nullifies everything. 

Sara: Yeah, so good. 

Konstantin: It just doesn’t work. 

Sara: Yeah, really good. Okay, well, thank you so, so, so much. I so appreciate having you on. All right, you guys have a great week and 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.