Recovery Mindset for Vacations | 4 Keys to Stay Sober from Porn Both During and After Travel
- Jake Kastleman
- Mar 19
- 25 min read
Vacations are supposed to be a time of relaxation, adventure, and connection. But if you're on the journey to overcome porn addiction, they can also be uniquely challenging.
Without your usual routines and support structures, it’s easy to slip back into old habits and relapse with porn. That’s why adopting a recovery mindset for travel is crucial.
I'll share four key principles that helped me stay strong and sober on my recent vacation. These strategies—rooted in psychology, behavior, and spirituality—can help you stop watching porn and stay grounded in your porn recovery journey.
1. Bring Structure into Your Vacation
One of the biggest triggers for relapse is a lack of structure. When you’re in a new place without your usual routines, your brain craves stability. And if you don’t provide it, addiction patterns can creep in.
Early on in my sobriety, I needed a very rigid schedule. I needed certainty because porn addiction thrives on anxiety, perfectionism, and the overwhelming need for control.
These emotions create a pressure cooker in your mind, and when that pressure builds, the craving to escape through pornography addiction grows stronger.
Now, I have more flexibility mentally, but I still maintain a simple daily structure. Each morning on vacation, I took time for personal mental and spiritual reflection. I went on walks, journaled, and prayed. I also outlined a rough plan for the day—nothing strict, just a general idea of what I wanted to do with my family.
These things kept me engaged and prevented the restlessness and boredom that can lead to cravings.
If you’re wondering how to stop porn addiction while traveling, don’t let your days become aimless. Plan interesting activities, stay engaged, and avoid excessive downtime that can lead to temptation.
2. Tone Down the Intensity & Get Present
Many people struggling with porn addiction have a high-intensity mindset. We push ourselves hard, hold ourselves to impossible standards, and constantly feel like we have to achieve something. That anxious energy can follow us on vacation, making us restless and uncomfortable in moments of stillness.
For me, I had to consciously remind myself: It’s okay to slow down. It’s okay to just be. I didn’t need to have every moment scheduled. I didn’t need to seek out constant novelty or excitement. Instead, I practiced mindfulness—being fully present with my wife, my son, and my surroundings.
If your vacations are usually packed with activities, try allowing some space for stillness. On the flip side, if you tend to sit around watching TV or playing video games, recognize that too much passive pleasure-seeking can trigger porn cravings. It creates a hunger for more easy dopamine hits, which can make it harder to quit porn and stay in control of your recovery.
3. Grow Relationships Instead of Seeking Self-Gratification
Addiction is inherently self-centered. It’s driven by the mindset of I want my pleasure, my escape, my relief. When we bring that attitude into vacation—thinking only about what we want to do—we set ourselves up for failure.
I learned that shifting my focus outward made a huge difference. Each morning, I centered my mindset on serving others and strengthening relationships. I focused on how I could bring love, kindness, and laughter to the people around me.
That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself. You absolutely should! But when your main goal is to connect with others rather than chase your own pleasure, the need for artificial highs—like pornography—loosens its grip on you.
If you’re struggling to break free of porn addiction, consider this: every day, ask yourself, How can I grow relationships today? How can I make a difference for others today? When you prioritize connection over self-focused indulgence, you step further into the recovery mindset.
4. Watch Your Nutrition & Physical Health
This one might surprise you, but what you eat and how you move directly impact your recovery from porn. Your body and mind are deeply connected, and when you neglect physical health, your mental resilience weakens.
On vacation, I wasn’t perfect with my diet—I ate out a lot. But I also made sure to balance it. Each morning, I made my own healthy breakfast, exercised, and got my metabolism going. I didn’t have access to a full gym, but I did bodyweight workouts in the backyard—push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and runs.
Why does this matter? Because when you let your physical health slide, your mental state follows. Junk food, inactivity, and poor sleep all increase stress and anxiety, which fuel cravings.
If you want to overcome porn addiction and stay sober during travel, make intentional choices about your nutrition and exercise. You don’t have to be extreme—just be mindful.
Embrace the Recovery Mindset
Staying sober from porn during and after travel isn’t just about avoiding temptation. It’s about adopting a recovery mindset—one that brings structure, mindfulness, connection, and self-care into your daily life.
When you approach vacation with this mindset, you don’t just survive it—you thrive. You return home feeling stronger, not weaker. You experience deeper relationships, not just fleeting pleasure. And most importantly, you continue to build the life of freedom and integrity that you’re fighting for.
So as you prepare for your next trip, remember these four keys. Keep your structure. Stay present. Focus on relationships. Take care of your body. This is how you stop watching porn on vacation and break free.
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Episode 89 Transcription: Recovery Mindset for Vacations | 4 Keys to Stay Sober from Porn During and After Travel
You may have been told that quitting porn simply requires discipline and self-control. That you just need to be more productive, more focused, and more motivated. Man up! What's wrong with you? Why can't you just stop? Have more self-control.
Don't you even care about your wife or your kids? I'm here to tell you that these voices are lying to you. Through a personal journey of over 20 years, as well as working with men from the U.S. to the Middle East, I can tell you that porn addiction is just a symptom. And here on the No More Desire podcast, we don't deal in symptoms.
We pull up the roots of addiction by building a recovery mindset and lifestyle, one step at a time. Welcome to the show, my friend. I'm so grateful to have you.
Let's take one more step together on the path to not only quit porn, but lose your desire for it entirely. It's time to go deep. Hey, this is Jay Kasselman with No More Desire.
Welcome to the show. Today we're going to talk about the recovery mindset for vacations and four keys to stay sober from porn during and after travel. Today's going to be maybe a little less traditional of an episode, a little more off the cuff than usual.
I've been on vacation with my family in California for the past week. And then this upcoming week, I have jury duty that I'm actually attending, which is completely random, but when is it not random for any of us? And so this week is going to be very crammed. I actually had to reschedule all of my clients from Thursday and Friday of the week to cram them all into Monday through Wednesday.
So I'm slammed from the beginning to the end of the day, all three of those days this week. So the time I would typically have to really give care and time to a podcast episode and a blog, I simply don't have this week. So nonetheless, I have some really important things to share with you, things that are from my personal experience this past week on vacation with my family.
And I've done a podcast in the past on relapse-free business trips. And this episode is going to be different in that it is my firsthand insights for staying sober on vacation from what I just experienced, my personal reflections. And this is from 10 years of sobriety.
Now I just hit over a decade last month. I'm very grateful for that, blessed by God to have that be the case in my life and blessed by angels and, yeah, the power of God, my friend. So a lot of changes that have occurred over that decade for me.
So I know from working with clients, I know from what I do professionally and what I've experienced personally that vacations can be really hard for people. And I know that they can lead to relapses, both for people during and after travel. And I know that historically they've been very hard for me when it comes to sobriety, when it comes to mindset, when it comes to mood, experiencing cravings.
And there have been a lot of advancements in my mindset over the years to understand myself better, to understand the burdens that I've carried psychologically that have really fueled cravings for porn or for alcohol or for food or for whatever kind of behaviors or substances might be addictive. What's fueled that for me? And then the mindset and the lifestyle shifts that I've had to go through in order to really take my foot off the gas on my perfectionism and rigidity and really a lot of pressure on myself. Those have been some of the most core dynamics of what has led to a lot of relapses on vacations in the past throughout my life.
And so really talking today about what has changed when it comes to vacations over the last 10 years of my life and what have I learned. And I'm here to share all of that with you today. Some of these key core concepts.
So for this reason though, especially now, yes, I'm sober. It doesn't mean I don't face cravings for all sorts of things. It doesn't mean that I don't still deal with an intensity of my mind.
I am what you'd refer to as a highly sensitive person, which can be seen as a negative thing in a lot of arenas. But though I considered myself a victim to that in the past, I don't consider myself a victim to it now, at least not for the most part. There might be a part inside me that still kind of thinks of it that way in some ways, like why am I so sensitive? Why do things feel so intense for me emotionally? Why are they so challenging? And this is actually what I've seen with, to be honest, all of the clients that I've worked with.
They're all highly sensitive people. And sometimes they don't realize that in the beginning, but it becomes very apparent throughout our work together. And that often comes with perfectionism.
But as I said, not considering myself a victim to it or like it's some kind of malady or curse, which it can certainly feel that way. I'm not saying it never does, but it's also a major gift, right? Our greatest vices can be our greatest virtues or our greatest weaknesses can be our greatest strengths. And so for me, being someone who feels things intensely, and there's about, according to statistics, about 25% of people are HSPs, what they would be referred to as.
And this is a real thing within psychology and within the science of the mind. And this has been researched and studied. About 25% of people are highly sensitive people.
They deal with a predisposition to be highly sensitive. In other words, highest highs, lowest lows. They feel emotions intensely.
The other 75% of people are going to be a little more even keeled as far as the emotional balance in their lives and how intensely they feel things. And there are strengths and weaknesses to both of those. What's such a blessing to me is I could not do the work that I do or work with the clients that I do, have the insights that I do, if I was not an HSP, quote unquote.
And the same goes for all of my clients and all of the people that I've interacted with, both those that are struggling in addiction now and who have overcome it. You have immense and incredible strengths. Your mindset is an amazing gift.
And it may not feel that way when it's utilized for darkness and it's taking over your life and it's destroying you. But when it's used for good and it's a strength, it can be utilized for amazing structure and conviction and dependability and ambition and deep feelings of nurturing and love for others, compassion, kindness, and an ability to feel things deeply so that you can comprehend, introspect, and look deeply into matters to understand them at a greater and more quality level, then perhaps some other people might be capable of getting to or might not be as readily able to see. And again, I could easily trade off with those people who are not in that HSP group.
In fact, in many ways, I'd like to trade them and in many other ways, I wouldn't. But throughout the course of my life and my history, I wanted to trade places with those people so that I could feel things less intensely. So maybe you feel that same way and hopefully you don't just see that as like, yeah, HSPs, whatever.
And if you do, that's okay, too. So kind of in referring to vacations and staying sober, when someone who is highly sensitive excuse me, when someone who is highly sensitive is out on a vacation, they're away from a structure, they're away from work, they're away from their comfort zone, they're away from their normal day-to-day, the predictability, the structure. And for this very reason, I have actually myself avoided going on vacations for years.
Other than rare occasions, I have avoided it. And I have actually both consciously and unconsciously sabotaged opportunities to go on vacation because it can feel so fearful and stable and scary for me, which can sound so bizarre to someone who doesn't understand that. They're like, it's fun, go have a good time.
But for someone who feels things intensely, I tend to be quite a serious person, though I can have fun, I can joke, I do all those things. But I do feel things quite intensely, and so when I'm brought outside that comfort zone and that structure, man, it can feel destabilizing, and that's a challenge. So I'm finally, with all that said, I'm finally at a point in my life now where I feel I can venture out and I have things figured out well enough with my sobriety after a decade of sobriety and well enough with my psyche, and I'll include in that sobriety, right, well enough that I've been sober from porn for 10 years, I've been sober from masturbation a lot less time than that, but for a significant amount of time, that now I feel I can go out and feel more stable, more at ease, more able to handle my emotions, the ebbs and flows of the intensity of emotion, negative and positive, and be able to actually stay sober, be okay, not face all these massive cravings on vacation.
So it's still not easy, but I can be okay. So for some, again, this may not be the case. Perhaps when you're on vacation, you feel great and everything's easy, but for me, I thrive off of structure, as many of my clients do, and many of them fight that, but when they actually get engaged in structure and they have rules and boundaries they live by and they have routines that they follow, they glue to that, they're magnetized to it.
They want that in order to feel stable. They want a schedule and systems to feel stable and peaceful. So take all that away.
It can be very hard for me, and so I needed to learn how to lean into that on vacation because out of necessity, it is less structured. So, and then after vacation. So stating that, even if you feel more at ease and at peace, you're able to be present on vacation, how is the transition for you back to real life? When you're back to the work and the responsibilities and the stress, do you often relapse after vacation? So that's another matter altogether, and these often go hand in hand, but for some people they'll get hit harder on vacation or hit harder after, or maybe both.
So we're going to address staying sober from porn both during and after travel, based on my personal insights after being clean over a decade and what's brought me to success. So let's talk about those four keys to stay sober on vacation. First off, as I've really stated, you want to bring more structure into your vacation.
Yes, you're not in your norm, you're not in your comfort zone, you're not at home with all your, you know, maybe you eat healthy and as you cook and you're able to keep your nutrition up, that is extremely powerful for your sobriety. If you rip that structure out from underneath you and you don't keep any of it during vacation, you're probably going to relapse if you are currently in a place where you're just in the initial year or couple of years of getting sober, you're still in a vulnerable state. And so you really want to be cognizant and very mindful of things like your nutrition.
We'll talk a bit more about that. But you want to bring structure into your life, into vacation. So for me, when I go on vacation, and with my previous business, I actually, when I was running a TikTok channel, I did a post on this of me up at about 5 a.m. or 5.30 a.m. I was outside in California and I was sitting on a bench up before everybody else in the house and I did this little selfie video of myself talking about, this is how I stay sober on vacation.
I get up early, I go out, I read scripture, I pray, I journal, I get some exercise in for the day. There was a gym that I went down to that was with the hotels we were at. I do all of these things in the mornings before others wake up.
And is that hard? Yes, it's so hard. It's not something that I prefer. I would love to just sleep in and do things how everybody else does them and just relax and chill out and not worry about it.
But to be frank, the people who don't do those things and who don't wake up and have things like walking and being outside, praying, studying scripture, these things that are spiritual, if you're not religious, maybe that's mindfulness meditation or some kind of emotional processing and getting mindful with yourself and writing out your emotions, gratitude writing, journaling, exercise. The people who don't have these things on vacations are those who are struggling with addictions, be it any nature of addiction, food addiction, drug addiction, alcohol, porn addiction, other behaviors, social media, video games, and they're giving into those on vacation and they're living by craving. Or it is those who have never really been addicted.
It's not so much a thing for them. They're fairly stable and they just have a less intense and sensitive mind. They're not so much in a vulnerability to pain so quickly and mood changes so quickly and so intensely as some of us who've struggled with addiction might be.
I'll also say what plays into that, I was addicted to video games for the time I was four years old. Unfortunately, my brain developed around that and my dopaminergic system developed around video games and eating a lot of junk food and things that really got me used to easy pleasures. That probably impacted the way that my emotions work.
That's unfortunate. That's a sad thing. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is.
This is one of the things that I'll tell people again and again. Because they'll complain. They'll say, why do I have to do all these things on vacation? Why do I have to get up and do morning routines and exercise? Why can't I just relax? Why can't I just take a break from all of this? What I'll say is you cannot compare yourself to someone who's never been addicted.
It's not you. That's not your life. You're not someone who can just go on vacation for a week, throw all caution to the wind, do whatever you want, eat whatever you want, and have no structure, no responsibilities, and be okay and not relapse.
You're not. It's not you. And it took me years to finally accept that and say, you know what, I cannot take a break on recovery.
Even on vacation, there's no time that I can take a break on recovery. And my morning routines, my dailies as I call them, are crucial. They are a cornerstone of my recovery.
So keeping those routines in the mornings, or even if they're in the evenings or the afternoons, whatever they might be, but typically it's going to be in the morning to start your day that way if you can. And maybe that might require an inconvenience on other people's part. It's not like I'm perfect in waking up at 5 a.m. every day.
In fact, on this past vacation, I woke up more like 6.30 or 7 a.m. And so it took me extra time in the morning, about an hour and a half, to get all that stuff done with exercise and my spiritual and mental well-being and journaling and all that. And my wife was with my kid while I did that. And then, of course, I gave her time after that while I hung out with my son.
And she took her personal time for spirituality and mental work and whatever she wanted to do for an hour, hour and a half, right? Okay, so that gives you an idea. It might be inconvenient. It might be a burden.
Try not to go too far on that. Try not to get in the way of events or other things that you have scheduled as a family all to say, you know, I've got to stay sober and I've got to do my routines. Try to feel that out, right? And try to get engaged and understand that if I do not complete these routines, I will not stay sober.
Therefore, I need to wake up a little bit earlier than I typically would like to on a vacation, which means I need to go to sleep earlier. That's another thing I'll say is I had multiple family members, and this is no judgment of any kind. This is the way they chose to do things.
They're staying up till 11, 12 at night, later at night, playing video games and going out to eat junk food and stuff and, you know, playing board games and all that. I would love to partake in all those things. It would be really fun.
But I know for me, it's going to be detrimental to my mindset. It's going to set me up to be vulnerable to addiction cravings, and being vulnerable to addiction cravings means I'm vulnerable to relapse, and I'm not going to put myself in that situation. I'm just not going to.
So I'm the humbug. I'm the party pooper that's like, sorry, guys, got to go to sleep. And my family all knows that.
My wife's siblings and the people we spend time with, they know about me and my routines. And we get along. Obviously, we love each other, and it's awesome.
They get that, and they actually support it. They're like, this is what Jake, you know, this is how he likes to live his life. I support it.
It's good that he does that, and that works well for him. And so we both don't judge each other. We both recognize what each other wants to do, and we're cool with it, right? That's how I choose to do things on vacation, what makes me feel good and feel okay.
The other thing that I'll say about bringing structure into vacation is setting a daily schedule. Now, as I say this, I'm not suggesting that you have to have your whole day scheduled out from front to back, though for you, especially if you're early on in your sobriety and you feel a great sense of anxiety and a need for stability and a need to have certainty, right? Because needing certainty and the rigidity and the kind of the paranoia, the anxiety, these are all things that go right along with addiction. They're actually the drivers of why we then crave and go to addiction to escape.
It's because we feel so much intensity. We feel so much pressure, right? Perfectionism. So if you're in that state early on in sobriety, you may really need to set up your schedule day by day very specifically.
But the main point is, for me, and I didn't do this the whole time because now I can afford to have more flexibility and more uncertainty, more... There's a word for ambiguity. That's the word I'm looking for. On vacation.
But multiple days in the mornings when I was taking my personal mental and spiritual time and I was walking. I went on a lot of walks because it was warm and so I would walk and I would do my journaling and my study and my prayer while I was walking. It was great.
It was awesome. I loved it. It was a great way to start the day.
And so I would briefly, during that time, just kind of set out a general schedule based on what we've planned as a family, what we have going on today, what I would like to do with my wife, with my kid, all that. Here's what I have planned for the day. And I would kind of just generally outline that.
No specific times, nothing like that. Just here's what's going on so I could feel more calm. Because if I'm bored and I'm listless and I have nothing to do, I don't know what's going on, oh my gosh, it's the worst space for me.
It drives anger. It drives anxiety. It drives depression.
And then it drives cravings right along with all that. So have those expectations. Know events.
And the other thing I'll say is it's planning interesting things to do. Make sure on a vacation you're not just sitting around watching TV, playing video games, doing all those base pleasures. It's going to set you up for craving more easy pleasure, including porn.
That's just not a space you want to go to, including masturbation, right? You're going to crave all that because you're in a state of mind of just more, more, more pleasure. So number two is to tone down the intensity. Get mindful.
Get present. Many of my clients, again, are high-intensity people. I'd say they all are.
I don't know that it's so much that way necessarily with like drug addiction or other things like that. But I've witnessed this certainly with pornography addiction specifically. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same case with most addicts in other realms.
But I do know with drug addiction or alcoholism or things like that, it can be more the partier, the firefighting type of mentality, I would call it from an IFS perspective, where you really live your life from this like impulsivity and partying and excitement and novelty. I find with a lot of people who struggle with porn addiction, it's much more, and I could eat my words over time as I work with more and more people, but for the most part, I have seen for sure, and this is reflected in the literature as well, this perfectionism and rigidity and intense mind and the anxiety, the anxiousness, the fear, the shame, I'm not good enough. So when you're on vacation, really practicing toning down the intensity and understand that for a temporary period of time, you're gonna practice being more present.
You're going to tone things down. You don't need as much structure or schedule or things that you're put out productivity, things that you're accomplishing, right? The vacations are more relaxed. You can be more present.
You can be more in the moment. And just, I'm talking to myself specifically, it's something I had to be conscious of each day because for me, if I lived vacation exactly the way I wanted, I would have things scheduled from beginning to end of the day. And I say this as if I put in the planning for all this previous vacation, which I didn't, and I need to be better about really planning things out.
And if that's what I want, I need to be proactive about reaching out to people and saying, hey, I'd like to do this that day. Would people like to do that with us? But then you're dealing with multiple personalities and different people who are more relaxed or like more structure or more free time. And so for me, I'd like to schedule stuff back to back and just go, go, go, because I want to do interesting things.
I want to have fun. I want to adventure. But it's not going to be that way all the time, especially when you have a two-year-old.
I've got a two-year-old, and there's a lot of things you can't do with a two-year-old that you could do with just adults. And so I spent a lot of time just hanging out with my son and playing. And I took him out to a restaurant and just really present with him and practicing just being present with what I was doing and focusing on him and chatting with him and going on a walk with him, being outside with him.
And we spent so much time outside. I mean, that's another thing I can say is like, get out, get active. That's not one of these four keys, but get out, get active.
This is so important when you're on vacation. So the other thing is to grow relationships. So when you're on vacation, I think as much as I can tell you, don't make it about your own pleasure and your own satisfaction.
It will kill you. It will destroy you. It will destroy your sobriety.
If you go out on vacation with the intention of, I'm going to get mine, I'm going to enjoy myself, I'm here to get my own pleasure and do what I want, it's a self-centered perspective. It's going to crush you. And why is it going to crush you? Because that is aligned with mentality of addiction.
If I am centered on my pleasure, my wants, my needs, what I want to do, that's the mindset of addiction. And so we really need to be mindful of every day kind of having this mantra or this theme, this motto of, I'm going to grow relationships today. I'm going to serve.
And this was a major insight for me, is on this past vacation specifically, was I don't have to do all these productive things. I don't have to have all this intensity or exciting things. I'm here to grow relationships with people.
And I had some very tender and positive, just mindful conversations with my family members. Again, my wife's siblings, people I was spending time with, my son, my wife. And that was great.
That was like so much of the meaning I was looking for. It filled that space that typically, craving and seeking pleasures and seeking novelty and excitement, it really filled a lot of that space when I could just get present with people. And right along with that, you want to center your mindset on service when you're on vacation.
And I'm not saying you can't. You can enjoy yourself. You can have fun.
You should do all that. Have fun. Do exciting things.
Hang out and do things that you enjoy. You're not there to just be a servant all the time. But in all that, you really want to center on this mindset of, I'm here to make this vacation good for other people.
And you can do that. I did that every day in my prayers in the morning, just centering it on the good of others and praying for others that they would have an enjoyable day, that they would experience great things, that it would be so positive for them, and that I'd be given words and love and kindness and acceptance and compassion and laughter and fun to spread to the people that I was with. And I don't say all that to be like, look at me, I'm so great.
I say all that to speak sense of like, this is the recovery mindset. This is how you do it. And this is a big aspect, getting your focus centered outward.
So the other thing is, the key number four is to watch your nutrition. And I kind of mentioned this earlier, but I couldn't just go crazy while I was out there. Yes, we ate a lot.
Like we ate out so many times. We ate out at restaurants a minimum of once a day. And so I'm not just like some rigid psychopath about like, we home cooked all our meals and we only did productive things and we were 100%.
I definitely ate out a lot. And is that like the best thing for my mindset?
But the best thing for my recovery and all that, no, not really, but it's vacation. And you gotta let loose a little more, I think. At least for me, I felt like I was okay.
Again, this depends on you, it depends on your mindset, your perspective, but watching that nutrition, right? And so each morning for me, for instance, I was spending time, I made my own breakfast. So I would have all my morning routines, I would get a good workout in, and I just did things in the backyard, push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups and squats and all that. I went on a run, that's what I would do each day so that I could get my metabolism up and be able to eat more because I knew I was gonna go to restaurants, I knew I was going to eat a lot more food than typical or a lot more rich foods and things, right? So I exercised to get that metabolism up so I could make some room, and make some room so that I could eat those things and not feel horrible all day or feel like I was just a pleasure garbage disposal, right?
So got that exercise in, made my breakfast of, and it sounds crazy, but millet and chia seeds and cacao powder, I'd cook that in a pot and make that as my kind of breakfast cereal, if you will, and then I have some eggs and I make a smoothie.
And so we bought the groceries for that at the beginning of the week, and I made all that every day while I was out there for breakfast. And that's my go-to, like that's what I make for breakfast, pretty much for the most part, every single day for years I've done that because it makes me feel amazing. And it's also a lot of food, it's very satisfying.
I eat a ton, I have a very high metabolism, and that's been due in part, or I would say in large part, due to my exercise and due to eating so healthily that impacts my gut health, it impacts the way my body functions, keeping my metabolism up, and there's so many different aspects to that. But getting that breakfast in solid every morning, a really healthy breakfast, and making sure I got plenty of vegetables in every single meal, and that would mean sometimes coming home from a restaurant or before a restaurant, I'd eat veggies before or after going so that I could get those vitamins and minerals, those phytonutrients that feel good, right, and it would amp up my mood and I'd feel stable and feel good. So hopefully this helps you see, sobriety is about an overall mindset and lifestyle of recovery.
And as you do all these things that I've talked about today on your vacations, this is increasing and boosting your mood, it's boosting your ability to stay sober, you're gonna feel much more motivated to stay sober, much more stable in your mind, in your body, in your soul, right? You're doing all these things for your good, you're focusing on the good of other people, you're sending yourself on service, your mindset is one of mindfulness, presence, kindness, right? You do all this, and is all that a lot? Yes, it's all a lot, but you get used to it. There's just, eventually, there's just no other way you can live because it becomes who you are. And living alternatively is just not an option anymore.
You can't just live for pleasure because it doesn't feel anywhere near as meaningful to you. So remember on vacations, one, you go for structure, morning routines, planning interesting things to do, two, tone down the intensity, get mindful, get present, three, grow relationships, focus on service, and then four, watch your nutrition. And also along with all this, of course, keep in mind that this doesn't happen all at once, have compassion for yourself, have understanding for yourself, build up to this over time when it comes to vacations, and when it comes to your recovery mindset and lifestyle, don't expect yourself to do it all at once.
So if you liked today's episode, please follow this podcast, rate this podcast, and hit the notification button so that you can get updated every time I send out a new episode. And this will also help many other people find this podcast as well. God bless and much love.
Everything expressed on the No More Desire podcast are the opinions of the host and participants and is for informational and educational purposes only.
This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of a qualified mental health professional.
If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or a desire to harm others, please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
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