by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Urge Surfing and Gaining Mastery of Yourself for REALNESS
One thing that a lot of men I talk to are held back by is unwanted feelings and thoughts that they’d rather not be having because they fear they’ll end up going down a down a path they don’t want to go down:
The most common of these types of these by far are sexual or lustful thoughts and feelings where they’re suddenly triggered by something in their environment and start to fantasise or experience urges that pull them out of the present moment.
When this happens, they find that they’re no longer grounded in reality and no longer acting from their realness but reacting from automatic programs shaped by past experiences, conditioning, and habitual reactions to life…not life itself.
This is where Urge Surfing comes in:
This article is about how we can start to deal with these kinds of urges in a real way that leads to self-mastery over time because when we return to what is real, we reclaim power over ourselves and our lives.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Urge Surfing: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- Urge Surfing and Gaining Mastery of Yourself for REALNESS
- Sexual Urges Are ‘Normal’ – How We React to Them is the Source of Our Problems
- Being REAL: “Whatever We’re Feeling Is Whatever We’re Feeling”
- The Two Traps That Keep Men Stuck
- The Real Approach: Observe and Become Aware
- How to Practise Urge Surfing (Step-by-Step)
- A Powerful Three-Step Strategy to Support Urge Surfing
- Staying Loose Instead of Building Resistance
- The Importance of Vision, Goals, and Habits
- From Reaction to Response
- Urges as Energy for Growth
- The Final Word: Urge Surfing & The Real Path to Mastery
Sexual Urges Are ‘Normal’ – How We React to Them is the Source of Our Problems
The first thing to understand and accept is that having sexual urges is completely normal and healthy – they’re simply a part of your biological wiring and not a sign that something is ‘wrong’ with you (though you might interpret your urges this way if you have underlying shame and/or guilt unconsciously guiding the way you see yourself).
Problems with sexual urges only really arise when:
- The urges become a distraction from real life and our real purpose
Or: - They lead to behaviours or addictions that we know aren’t good for us and the people we care about.
Unfortunately, many men carry deep shame and guilt around sexual thoughts because of whatever ‘stuff’ they’ve been through in the past and so they interpret the mere presence of these urges as evidence of personal failure (shame) or some kind of moral deficiency (guilt).
Because of this, when urges arise, they begin fighting themselves internally and this internal conflict is what creates suffering because of the unfortunate law of life that:
When we believe we “shouldn’t“ feel something, we resist it, but when we resist it, we strengthen it.
Or, as Carl Jung famously said:
“What you resist, persists”.
This is why allowing yourself to ACCEPT that sexual urges are ; is one of the first steps to overcoming their power over you because when you remove the shame, you remove the inner battle and when you remove the battle, you regain clarity to focus on your REAL life.
Being REAL: “Whatever We’re Feeling Is Whatever We’re Feeling”
When it comes to being REAL, a nice simple rule of thumb to try and follow is:
Whatever we’re feeling is whatever we’re feeling.
What this means us that when we drop all the stories, interpretations, and beliefs about our feelings and allow ourselves to become free enough to simply experience them as they are.
In the case of whatever sexual urges you might be feeling, this means that they’re not moral conclusions about who you are as a human being – they’re just energy moving through you (“emotions are e-motion, energy in motion“).
When we stop interfering with this energy through mental resistance, it can move naturally through by arising, intensifying, and then passing – just like a wave.
This is why when we try to resist the irresistible and throw a mental spanner in the works (telling ourselves we “shouldn’t” be feeling what we feeling” etc) then we just end up prolonging the experience and amplifying its intensity.
This is why we can say that fastest way through an urge is to stop trying to get rid of it and to just BE with it.
(We look at how you can literally do this in a second).
The Two Traps That Keep Men Stuck
When sexual urges arise, most men fall into one of two forms of resistance that actually prolong the problem and make the urges more difficult to deal with in the long-run:
1. Trying to Do Something to Get Rid of the Feeling
A lot of men attempt to discharge the energy immediately through some kind of action:
Unfortunately, these actions aren’t grounded in realness and are instead behaviours driven by impulse rather than awareness (for example, mindlessly getting some kind of release, texting an ex, or whatever).
These kind of reactions are rooted in ego, fragmentation, and an attempt to escape from reality and so – instead of serving their deeper purpose or vision – they become distractions.
The urge is still controlling them (even if it doesn’t initially look like it).
2. Trying to Suppress the Urge
On the other side of the coin, we find others who try to pretend the energy isn’t there:
What this means is that they attempt to push it down, ignore it, or attempt to eliminate it through sheer willpower.
This is another flawed strategy because suppressed energy doesn’t just magically ‘disappear’ – instead, it just moves into the shadow and festers beneath the surface and where it creates friction, frustration, and eventual misery.
Suppression creates pressure but pressure eventually seeks release and when suppressed energy is released it EXPLODES instead of being unleashed in a controlled and life-serving way.
Both of these approaches – doing for the sake of doing or suppression – keep you trapped and leave you in a state where your urges master you instead of you being able to master them.
The Real Approach: Observe and Become Aware
The real approach is surprisingly simple:
Do nothing but observe and be aware.
This is where urge surfing comes in and can offer you a powerful way forward for dealing with the ‘problem’ of unmastered sexual urges.
Essentially, “Urge Surfing means observing the natural progression of an urge in a mindful way:
- The initial trigger
- The rising intensity
- The peak
- The natural decline
Every urge follows this pattern but even more important to remember is the fact that:
An urge will always decline if we don’t resist it – like a wave, it rises and falls.
When we observe from a place of AWARENESS and ACCEPTANCE, we begin to experience urges without being controlled by them.
Over time, we train ourselves to respond from choice rather than react from conditioning and so we can take real ACTION.
(Awareness, Acceptance, & Action will always take you where you want to be which is why my coaching containers are built around this model).
When we learn to ‘surf’, we can stop acting from who we think we have become based on the past and start acting from who we are choosing to become in our realness.
That is self-mastery.
How to Practise Urge Surfing (Step-by-Step)
Here is a practical method you can use when a sexual urge arises for you (or any other urge, tbh):
1. Notice the Trigger
Become aware that an urge has appeared:
Don’t judge it, don’t analyse it – just notice it.
You might say to yourself, “An urge is present” (or something similar) – this simple recognition creates space between you and the impulse and in that space you can make a CHOICE.
2. Locate the Sensation in the Body
Where do you feel the urge physically?
- Tightness?
- Heat?
- Restlessness?
- Pressure?
- Tingling?
Bring attention to the bodily experience rather than the mental story because that’s all it really is…a physiological sensation (the stories and interpretations you add are just old ego ‘stuff’ caused by that shame and guilt we talked about).
3. Observe Without Interfering
Watch the sensation and just let it do whatever it needs to do:
Remain curious without fighting, suppressing, or indulging.
Just awareness and then acceptance.
4. Ride the Wave
Stay present as the urge rises and falls and you’ll notice that it changes naturally before it eventually rises and falls.
The more you learn to urge surf like this, the more your confidence will grow and the less resistance you’ll feel when an urge appears because you’ll learn through direct experience that urges are temporary if you don’t HOLD ON to them by resisting.
Once you know something is temporary, it loses its power over you, and you can get back to being REAL.
A Powerful Three-Step Strategy to Support Urge Surfing
While learning urge surfing, it can help to use the following three-step strategy which complements the process by helping to regulate your nervous system and makes returning to presence easier.
Caveat: it’s important not to be perfectionistic here and to think that you’re always going to be fully present because mastery develops gradually and so, over time, you simply become faster and more graceful at returning to presence but there’s always going to be ‘something’ (an urge, a problem, an emotion, whatever) that pulls you out of presence again at some stage.
Being real is in many ways just about knowing how to return when the world shakes us (which it will).
Anyway, here’s a three-step process for when those urges arise:
1. Breathe
Slow nasal breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is the body’s “rest and digest” mode so consciously taking deep breathes when an urge or trigger arises can bring you back down to earth.
This is because when we’re triggered, the brain’s threat system (the amygdala) pushes us into fight-or-flight mode and makes us tense (getting our muscles ready for action) and causes us to breathe in a shallow and sharp way.
When you actively breathe slowly through your nose, extend the exhale, and maintain a steady rhythm then the intensity of the urge often decreases within minutes because your body starts to feel ‘safe’ again.
2. Move
Movement is really important because it can help to discharge stress hormones and release tension (again that have kicked in because we entered fight-or-flight mode).
Some things that you might do whilst you’re giving yourself some time to surf that wave:
- Go for a walk
- Do push-ups
- Do some yoga
- Shake your body
- Stretch or dance
- Literally anything that gets the body out of that tense ‘triggered‘ state
Movement loosens the system and helps energy flow rather than stagnate.
3. Change Environment or Focus
Sometimes the simplest solution is to remove yourself from the trigger environment or – if that’s not possible – to shift your focus:
- Engage in meaningful work
- Talk to someone you can relax and be real around
- Concentrate on a task aligned with your purpose
- Redirect attention to your body or breath
This prevents your mind from continually scanning the environment for the original ‘threat’ (whatever triggered your urge in the first place).
Staying Loose Instead of Building Resistance
A short version of everything that’s been said in this article is that instead of meeting urges with a wall of resistance, the ideal strategy is to as stay loose, grounded, and open as possible.
When we do this, we allow the energy to move through us rather than fighting it and then from this foundation of acceptance, we can transmute the energy:
Sexual energy is powerful life energy that can be redirected into creativity, productivity, connection, or purpose but only when we’re not trapped in reaction – we simply can’t transform energy that we’re actively fighting.
The Importance of Vision, Goals, and Habits
Urge surfing and mastery becomes far easier when your life has direction because if our energy surpasses our lifestyle then we’ll never know what to do with our energy and so it will turn against us.
When you have a clear sense of who you’re becoming, then you naturally want to act in alignment with that identity instead of allowing your urges to force you into acting as an outdated or weaker version of yourself.
Three things help massively here:
Knowing Your Vision
Who do you want to become?
What kind of man are you building yourself into?
A strong vision provides a reference point when urges arise so that you can direct your FOCUS on to something more REAL.
Know Your Real Goals
Goals stretch you towards your vision so that you can channel energy into meaningful action.
Without goals, energy seeks random outlets and your urges will just end up dominating you.
Cultivate Habits
Daily habits ground your identity in something real and create structure and momentum that allows the results you get to compound over time.
When your life is aligned with purpose, your urges can finally become fuel for your real life rather than distractions from it.
From Reaction to Response
The deeper purpose of urge surfing isn’t just controlling your behaviour but reclaiming your freedom.
This is because when you learn to observe/surf rather than react, you create space and in that space a CHOICE is given.
At this juncture, you can ask yourself:
- Does this action align with who I am becoming?
- Does this serve my vision?
- Is this real or just reinforcing old patterns I want to grow beyond?
Making the choice for realness over ego (old patterns) is how we move from automatic scripts to conscious living.
Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you’re ready to go deeper into finding regulation and realness.
Urges as Energy for Growth
The bottom line is that your (sexual) urges aren’t your enemies – they’re just signals, energy, and a ‘part’ of being human.
When approached with fear and resistance, (sexual) urges create suffering but when approached with awareness and acceptance, they become power.
By staying real – which means remaining grounded in the present in the process of your life as a whole – you can use this energy to energise your life rather than have to try and escape from it.
Whatever you’re feeling is whatever you’re feeling.
When you start to embrace this then urges lose their grip and your presence becomes more natural as you learn to trust yourself and life.
Ultimately, what you’ll start to realise is that you’re not your urges, impulses, emotions, or any other temporary ‘thing’ – you’re the awareness that observes them.
The Final Word: Urge Surfing & The Real Path to Mastery
Mastery does not mean never experiencing urges – it means not being controlled by them.
The path is simple, not always easy, but one you can condition yourself over time to walk in a real way:
- Accept what arises
- Observe without resistance
- Breathe, move, and ground yourself
- Stay connected to your vision
- Return to the present again and again
Each time you do this, you strengthen your capacity for awareness and each time you return to presence, you become more real.
In that realness, is freedom because you’ll find that you can transform your urges into energy that serves your growth, purpose, and relationship with yourself and life itself..
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to become more present and grounded in your own life and to master the things that are blocking your realness then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you find your feet again.
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