One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Victor Hugo, who said, "He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and carries out that plan, will have a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. ... But where no plan is laid, ... chaos will soon reign." If we don't have a plan, we're in trouble in our world today.

Every time that I would feel sad or angry or isolated, I would remember, "Oh, that made me feel good." So I went to it. When I found myself not involved in anything, or just downtime--you're just tired or really even stressed out at times in life--you just sort of looked for that escape. I would go to bishops, and I would stop the behavior. And that--I was being sober. But I was not in recovery. I was not dealing with whatever other influences that I needed to deal with. So when the shame kicks in, then they can go, "OK, I made a choice that has negative consequences. And I still have worth. I still have value." And by doing that, we go into self-nurturing. We go, "Well, what was off? Maybe I need to eat some good, healthy food. Maybe I need to decrease my stress. Maybe I need a rest." We actually look at the root issue that they're trying to fix through the addiction. I'm a big believer in goal setting. I'm a big believer in making plans and objectives to overcome the affliction. Heavenly Father is a great goal-setter, in the sense that His goal is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." And so it is with any individual. If someone is struggling with pornography, they ought to recognize it. And they need to set a goal, an objective, that "I'm going to get over this." If you can envelop that in love--if you can envelop that in kindness and long-suffering and still be goal-oriented and accountable and follow up--that's the best formula for success. I heard someone recently who had been involved in pornography say that at first, he had made a goal of, "I'm never going to do this again. This is going to be gone from my life." Then he had a setback, and then another setback. And he felt so much shame and was so upset with himself. He said, "Then I decided I was going to make a goal of partaking of the Savior's atoning sacrifice and to try to move forward and progress." And this helped him so much because none of us are perfect. I need to have a plan of how to deal with it. And so that is, try to exercise. It's by writing in my journal and letting those negative emotions out in a healthy way. It's by serving every single day, finding even a tiny opportunity to serve. Getting up early in the morning and just having some quiet time, say a few prayers, and just self-examination. My current bishop, he was like, "I want you to start going to the family history class." Once I found a name, it lit the fire within me. And now that's become one of my coping mechanisms. And you know, the things like having the picture of your family or the picture of the temple or whatever those things are that kind of bring you back from--"Oh, I really don't want to go there, because this is more important to me." Those things help. I've learned I need to just avoid different scenarios. And I'm not always successful. And we understand that it's a process. It's about perfectly understanding our weaknesses and being perfect about coming back to Christ. There were a lot of things that I tried. And I think ultimately, it was all of them together--reading books, and going to meetings, and getting exercise, and eating healthy, and praying, and working on our relationship. And that's the work I needed to do. I couldn't just pray to Heavenly Father to take this away. We're all going to have afflictions of one kind or another. Some of them are more obvious. Some of them are physical. Some of them are spiritual. Some of them are mental, etc. These kinds of experiences give us building blocks of our testimony. By drawing upon the Savior's Atonement and calling upon His infinite gift of allowing us to repent, we put in place these building blocks. And so I bear my testimony to anyone who's viewing this, that I want them to know that I know and I have a witness that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you and want you to progress and return to Their presence and live with Them eternally. But that's a journey. That's a journey. And we're all on that journey to try and improve.