Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - So here's the million dollar question. How are men like us who work hard, have good motives and a God given purpose supposed to fulfill the calling on our lives and the dreams in our hearts, all while establishing sexual integrity, thriving relationships, and a meaningful connection with God. That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Sathiya Sam. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Yo, yo, What is going on, my man? It's Sam here. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Thank you so much for listening. I am so honored that you would take a little bit of time out of your day to listen to little old me. It's going to be a lot of fun. Today. We're talking about how to navigate changes in life and of all the subjects that we get that are sort of in that secondary layer of recovery subjects, this one would have to be at the top or if not close to the top of the list. So, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:01:00) - Well, you know what? Actually, before I get into that, let me just quickly mention a couple of things. So number one is at the time that this episode comes out, I might actually already be a dad. If not, I'm pretty darn close. It's just wild, wild times. And so a bunch of this content has been recorded in advance so that I can have some time off to be with my baby and of course, my wife. Second thing is that we are doing some hiring and by the time this comes out, the positions might have been filled already. We don't really do much mention of it here on the podcast. That's just because the podcast content scheduling is a little bit funny. But we were we are hiring a coach in an appointment center, so if that's something you're interested in, go through our website, you should be able to find it all there and you can just submit a contact form. If not, And then the third thing to mention is that we as usual, we want to make sure that you guys are getting all the resources you possibly can to fuel your recovery.
Speaker 1 (00:01:59) - And I know that most of you that are listening to this are on social media. So, look, here's the deal, okay? If you want to really make a full recovery, you probably either need to eliminate social media or you need to at least make sure that your social media feed is curated to further your recovery, to strengthen your recovery, to foster recovery. So where am I going with all of this? Well, if you're not following me yet on socials, on TikTok, on Instagram, and if we're not friends on Facebook, go find me in those places and let's add a little bit of recovery. Life to your feet. I can pretty much guarantee you it will help. And look, we give away some really good stuff on social media. There's some things that we give away there that we can't even give away on the podcast. So you're going to win either way. The link is in the show notes to, I think, my Instagram right now. We're going to add in TikTok eventually.
Speaker 1 (00:02:52) - We're just doing a little bit of experimenting over there, but it is the same handle. If you want to go, follow me there. Sethi Me, Sam, I look forward to seeing you there. Okay. Let's let's talk about navigating change in life. So when I say that this is sort of like a very prevalent secondary topic, what I mean is you have your, your primary topics around porn addiction, which are basically, you know, the more clinical, spiritual, biological, psychological sides of what causes the addiction and how to treat the addiction. And those are those are subject matter that is clearly directly connected to pornography, to porn addiction and to sexual misbehavior. But there are there's sort of a second ring, if you can imagine, a second ring of subjects that are connected, but indirectly. And I would say there's even a third ring. And that's something we can just talk about another day. But handling change in life is in this secondary ring. It's not directly related to recovery.
Speaker 1 (00:03:55) - It's not the same as like saying do Emdr or talk to a Csat or do some inner child work journal. You know, those things are like direct recovery related concepts. Whereas learning to navigate change in life, it has major implications for recovery, but it's just not quite as direct. But without fail, when we run our Q&A calls, which happens throughout the week with our clients, I think we run 9 or 10 or I gosh, I don't even know how many we run anymore. We run a bunch of them. And on these calls, one of the questions that comes up almost, almost always is, look, I'm going through a major change in my life. It's a transition professionally and career wise, or it's a transition relationship wise. It's either a breakup or I'm engaged now instead of dating. I'm married now. Instead of being engaged having kids. You know, the list goes on and on, different changes. You're moving places Like we basically always have big and small changes going on in our lives, and the big changes in particular can be very, very triggering because change means loss.
Speaker 1 (00:05:02) - Change means pain. Change means grieving, Change means uncertainty. Change means a whole bunch of things that are uncomfortable. And pornography becomes a very accessible medication when we are dealing with these things. And so I say all that to say, guys, that it's. It's important that we are aware of maybe where we fall short during changes like what is it that stresses us out? What's our typical coping response? For me personally, I shut down, I isolate, I get into doer mode. Let's just get it done. Shut up. Stop talking about it. Let's just plow through. Like I can really be quite crass when I'm in that distressed state during transitions and at the same time, we've had some just unbelievable stories come out of our community in the last few weeks of guys who have gone through major life changes like becoming empty nesters or having a kid or whatever, and they've been able to stay clean through all of it. And I just like start pumping my arms like, yes, like let's go.
Speaker 1 (00:06:09) - That's what this is really about. Because you have to remember, it is actually not that hard to quit porn for a couple of weeks or even a couple of months. Some guys can even do it for a year or two. But if we're talking about freedom, freedom's a long term game. And if you play this game long enough, at some point you're going to encounter some life change. And so when you can endure life change and maintain your freedom, it is a wonderful, wonderful sign that the roots of freedom are actually going deep within your soul. And for that you should be really proud. So I even encourage you guys, like reflect back a little bit. Have you gone through any major changes and were you able to handle them successfully? Because if you were, you should be really proud of yourself. That's a great accomplishment. And if you didn't, hey, not a big deal. But let's chalk this up to a learning experience and let's figure out what it is that we can do to learn from this and leverage it so that next time we have a better outcome.
Speaker 1 (00:07:05) - All right. Now the other side of this. Okay. And where I'm kind of going with this today is that we want to get to a place to where we can navigate the changes of life and maintain our freedom. Now, what does this look like? Well, I'm going to kind of separate changes of life into two categories. Okay. One is planned changes and one is unplanned changes. Okay. My wife and I, at the time of this recording, I, like I said, this might this might be a little bit outdated, but my wife and I are getting ready to become parents. We planned for this, so we not only plan to become pregnant, but we've then had nine months to prepare for becoming parents. So we're about to undergo a major life change. I am going to be sleeping a lot less. I'm going to be under a lot more stress. My wife and I are about to have a huge adjustment to our marriage, to the way we relate to one another and connect with one another.
Speaker 1 (00:07:54) - And even just the time we get with each other, it's going to be radically and vastly different. The kind of attention that I'm going to get from my wife is going to be significantly less because she's about to enter motherhood where she is responsible for doing a majority of raising this kid in the early years. And so everything is about to change and I've been able to plan for it now. Sometimes you have changes in life where you can't plan for it. Somebody passes away suddenly or you lose a job. Like, you know, things happen suddenly. And what I what I want you to know is that whether it's planned or unplanned, the ways that you navigate the changes of life and still maintain freedom are basically the exact same. What we want to do is we want to acknowledge changes in life as a major stressor, and we sort of have different templates depending on what kind of life stage you are in. And I don't mean like, are you single, are you married, do you have kids? Are you a grandfather? Whatever.
Speaker 1 (00:08:55) - I don't really mean it that way. What I mean it more so is are you in a high stress season of life? So my wife and I are about to enter a high stress season. And what that means is are our needs and the things that we prioritize get severely reduced. And what we want to do is we want to uphold the things that matter the most to us. So an example would be working out. I love working out. I'm working out 3 or 4 times a week. I'm at the gym probably five days a week and I really enjoy it, but I work out for like an hour to an hour and a half most days. Well, I'm probably going to have to shorten that or shrink that or make some adjustments. So is exercise still a priority for me? Yes, it is. But the way it looks is going to be very different to accommodate the season. So similarly in recovery, what we want to do is we want to always have an idea of which things what are the few things like I'm talking about maybe three at the most, ideally 1 or 2 things that are moving the needle the most in my recovery.
Speaker 1 (00:10:03) - These are the things that we want to have as staples. Okay. And then we want to build some some bonuses around them. So, look, as long as I get my conversation with my spotter every single week and as long as I show up to my group coaching call, if I do those two things every single week, I'm in a good shape now. If I can look, if I can. If I can get some journaling in there. If I can get some God time in there, you know, then man, then. Then like I'm doing awesome. But what we want to do is we want to have those those fundamentals identified. Why? So that when you go through change, a major change in your life, you can say, look, I'm going to have to part ways with a couple of these things because they're they're important, but they're not moving the needle as much as these other things. And these are the things I'm going to focus on. So planned or unplanned, you can always identify the core things that are having the greatest impact and prioritize them.
Speaker 1 (00:10:59) - And I'm telling you guys, if you're willing to do this, you can handle any change in life planned or unplanned, and you will come out on the other side in full freedom. Look, I have been clean for seven and a half years. In that time, I've gone through sickness and health with my wife. We've called off a wedding. We had. We put a wedding back on. We've got married, we've moved house, we've moved cities. We've lived in a different country for seven months. We traveled Europe for five weeks. We're about to have a kid. I mean, we have bought rental properties. Like we have gone through all kinds of stressors in our lives. And I've been fine. It's not like I'm even tempted during those times anymore because I'm able to kind of shrink down to the core things that I know are important to me. For me to stay healthy, for me to stay sane, and I make sure that those things happen. And as long as those things happen, I'm good and I eventually I'll get through it.
Speaker 1 (00:11:52) - I'll have more bandwidth to add in some other things. But for the time being, here's what I'm going to focus on. And so I want to encourage you guys have a similar approach. You'll be amazed. You will literally be amazed at what happens and what you're capable of. You just got to set yourself up for success. So that's everything for today. Guys, thank you so much for listening. Hope you have an amazing day. Stay clean. Hey, everybody, it's Lithia again. Thanks for listening to Unleash the Man Within. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about a free e-book that I wrote for you called The Ultimate Guide to Porn Recovery. It provides a basic framework for the recovery process and a few of my top tips completely free of charge. You can get it now at WW Waltman recovery guide.com that's W WW Waltman recovery guide. Com. Now if you've been impacted by the podcast and you want to show some support in less than 60s, there are three ways you can do that.
Speaker 1 (00:12:47) - First, you can leave a rating or review on your podcast platform. This lets people like you know that the content here is valuable. Secondly, you can share this episode with someone in your life that might benefit from the content. If you're passionate about helping other people experience freedom and success in their lives, this is one of the easiest ways to do that. And lastly, you can subscribe. I personally only listen to the podcast that I subscribe to. If you're seeking daily encouragement, guidance and insight in your recovery journey, I highly recommend subscribing to Unleash the Man Within. Thanks for listening. I look forward to connecting with you very, very soon.
Speaker 2 (00:13:25) - The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast by Sathiya, Sam and his guests are for general information only and should not be considered medical, clinical or any other form of professional advice. Any reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk.
