Stop Doing These Things, They’re Making You Hate Yourself

#1 Watching porn

I look at the way some people live and it makes me think — no wonder they have anxiety.

There are a certain set of activities that automatically lower your self-esteem if you do them too much.

Instead of believing the new societal trend that you can do whatever you want without consequences, understand the connection between your behavior and the way you see yourself.

Ditch the following activities altogether because they’re toxic.

Watching Porn

“A little porn doesn’t hurt.”

Sure, I’ll grant you that. But how many people watch just a little bit of porn?

Constantly ejaculating into your hand from watching videos and images of other people having sex on a screen can’t be good for your confidence, self-esteem, sex drive, or any of it.

Having a never-ending stream of dopamine hits isn’t good for your brain either. I’ve had that experience watching porn — suffering from the paradox of choice with my dick in my hand. Too many videos to choose from for the ‘ending.’

Excessive porn use and masturbation have been linked to erectile dysfunction. It’s been linked to anxiety and depression. It can cause issues in marriages and relationships. And a lot of men use it as a scapegoat to cope with the fact they don’t think they measure up with women in the real world.

Don’t just take my word for it, ask the millions of men who’ve joined movements like no-fap because they realize how much of an issue, an addiction, porn has become in their lives.

Having a Few Too Many

Alcohol is the only drug people question you for not doing. It’s kind of strange that such a destructive drug is so normalized in our culture. A night of too much drinking and a few poor decisions can change your entire life or cost you your life, or someone else’s.

Jordan Peterson put it well in an interview with Theo Von:

“You might say, why do people drink too much? If you like alcohol that’s a stupid question. Well, cause it’s great. So why stop? You do stupid things when you’re drunk, you compromise your health, it’s really hard on the people around you, it tends to turn you into a liar, and it screws up your life.”

But, you don’t drink and drive, so you’re good. You’re not a binge drinker, so it’s fine. You just like to have one or two to relax with your buddies after work. Maybe a glass of wine after a long day, a few days a week, maybe all week. You don’t get drunk, you just like the taste.

I drink. I’m not saying don’t drink, ever. But I am saying that alcohol is pretty much poison and it creates a slippery slope that has a ton of consequences.

Building Your Identity Around This False God

I’ve never come across someone with politics as a central piece of their identity that looks happy. And political affiliation as a central piece of identity has been running rampant.

I kid you not, half the profiles I see on dating apps have some sort of political reference or reference to a topic that has been politicized. You see it on social media profiles. Is that really what people think is most important about them? That’s all they have? Is this where we’re at as a society? I’m afraid so.

Nobody cares about political issues as much as they love to virtue signal, finger-wag, and be smug self-righteous jerks. Both sides.

This quote from The Last Psychiatrist says it perfectly:

“Everything on the Internet is Porn. Your goals & visions should only exist in your Minds Eye. You should only be able to see them by manifesting them into reality Constantly viewing a life you don't live isn’t motivation, it’s masturbation that robs you of focus & imagination.” — Brother Lobo

Human beings are social animals that have a comparison mechanism wired into them. At least when you’re in person you can size someone up more accurately. Online? Everyone’s confident, everyone’s a genius, and everyone’s beautiful, except for you of course.

The internet is here to stay and most of us are trapped in it for good, including me. But be careful to not let your brain get turned into total mush. Every time I watch Wall-E it seems prescient like that’s exactly where we’re headed. We’d rather live in the fake world than the real world. The metaverse is already here — look at your screen time.

All of these points aren’t meant to be finger-wags. They’re meant to wake you up a bit and temper some of these habits that, when overlapped, will make you feel bad about yourself.

Throw Out the Baby and the BathWater

I’m not some puritanical type of person at all. I’m very libertarian when it comes to letting people choose how they want to live. It’s a free country.

But, there are some ways to live that are objectively better than others or are at least very subjectively better than others. What am I trying to say here? I’m trying to say you can’t just live any way you want and expect things to go well. Without some organizing principles and standards for how to live, you’re going to get lost. You’ll fall into nihilism.

“God is dead,” because people think they’re smarter than God. They’re not. They need some structure, guidance, and wisdom. If you take out the fanatical aspects of religion, like telling people they’re going to go to hell if they don’t believe, the vanilla tenets of Judeo-Christian ethics are pretty good. We built a society on them. Society is falling apart without them.

Mainly, it’s falling apart because many of us don’t see each other, ourselves, as divine. And I’m just defining divine as someone special because they miraculously appeared on this planet when the odds were slim to none. When we lose that and reduce ourselves and others to something less than that, we can end up hating ourselves and each other at the same time.