Life Masturbation Is a Debilitating Addiction. Here's How to Quit It.

Once all the foreplay is gone, you can finally do what matters.

Photo by Miikka Luotio on Unsplash

Some of my readers have masturbated their entire lives away.

It’s soul-crushing. (Masturbation equals procrastination times ten.)

They’re addicted to “the idea of…” But when it comes time to take action and show up, they make up an excuse.

The technique works at first. Then after years of putting off their goals they start making emergency calls to life coaches who can’t wait to charge them for a non-accredited counseling session.

Life doesn’t have to suck like this.

Hate masturbation

If you do anything worthwhile in life, you’re going to attract haters. They will make up the nastiest shit about you and pretend it’s fact. They’ll get mobs of lost souls to share their thoughts and copycat their lies.

The temptation is to be dragged underwater and drown. How?

Well, by responding to haters. By giving haters energy when they don’t deserve it. By spending your time following their rotten bread crumbs over a cliff that wipes out your joy in life.

Jack Dorsey got a lot of hate when he listed his companies, Twitter and Square, on the stock exchange. The stock price of Twitter never really exploded until recently. Investors called him lazy for meditating one hour per day. Investors wanted him to work longer and only be in charge of a single company.

Jack is a dreamer though. He quit masturbation and chose building. Now he’s accelerating the growth of blockchain technology. The hate from his investors is turning into love because the greedy buggers are making money off Jack’s ability to see the future of technology before it happens.

Hate is addictive. The solution isn’t to react. Silence the noise. Let your work do the talking.

The masturbation of impressing others

My fiancé is a terrible influence on me sometimes.

She force-feeds me to watch a reality tv show on Amazon called “Luxe Listings Sydney.” The show celebrates privilege. It’s about a group of wealthy real estate agents who love ripping off buyers and sellers so they can buy the latest Lambo 4WD.

The entire show is about how these real estate agents impress others. It’s all image, zero substance. You wouldn’t trust any of them to choose a human over a $5 bill.

They masturbate all day trying to look good. Even the drink they order has to look impressive to the bartender. God forbid the bartender thinks they’re cheap!

All of this impressing others masturbation causes them to work long hours. One of the main stars of the show even jokes that he’ll happily take calls while on dates. A life partner just isn’t as important as impressing random strangers on tv and adding more zeros to a bank account that is clearly overflowing.

I wanted to cry after watching it. All fluff. No meaning.

A lot of people live their lives like this. They masturbate time away to earn money to buy stuff nobody cares about. On the day of their eventual funeral, the material possessions are auctioned off by the Salvation Army for cents on the dollar. The Lambo 4WD doesn’t fit in their human-sized coffin (and cemeteries don’t allow for luxury cars to be buried with bodies – yet).

The masturbation of impressing others can be beaten by forgetting about what other people think. You’re not a mobile mind reader with the power to control millions of random people’s brains. Hallelujah.

Future masturbation

Predicting outcomes is another form of life masturbation.

The truth is you could be taken out by a rogue tornado tomorrow. Nobody knows what mother nature has in store based on the one 1000 years of abuse humans have given her angelical soul.

The future is where enormous anxiety hides.

Solution: What you do today is the future.

One step at a time. Do the best you can. Forgive yourself for the giant fuck ups.

Escape the life masturbation game like this

My friend Ayo says, “fall in love with the doing.”

He’s bang on. When you’re focused on the doing and not on the pretend fakeness of masturbation and overthinking, your life starts to fall into place. Doing produces progress. Progress adds real meaning to your life.

Doing forgets about all the external forces and focuses on the most powerful force: you.

Others will do what they’re going to do.
Screw it.
You do you.

Add this one superpower

The last step to defeat life masturbation is to be open-minded. There are no absolutes. Whatever your brain thinks today can be completely reprogrammed, thanks to the psychological revolution of neuroplasticity.

I meet too many people who are addicted to the mirage of life masturbation because they refuse to open their minds and consider that a lot of what they believe is bullshit. Unless you created the universe, then some of what you know is wrong. In my case, in 2011, I realized pretty much all of what I knew was a disaster.

Mental illness forced me to live a life of daily masturbation.

Open-mindedness reminds us we can always pivot. It’s not too late.

Doing fused with open-mindedness eliminates life masturbation and opens you up to possibilities you and I could never contemplate. That’s the best part. Random events are a gift that make life amazing.

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