Turning Shit Into Gold – The Art of Clearing Space for Incredible Moments (By Marc Quinn)

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A few weeks ago, I was walking down the street when the most stunning woman was walking by me. She wore lots of things that jingled, her hair was done in some funky way, and she walked in a way that told me that she knew who she was. Men turned to look at her as she passed. Each of us along this 50 foot stretch of road were completely mesmerized. As I walked up to her, I just let myself enjoy how attracted I was to her. The smile I gave her as we passed said “You look stunning.” One of the mesmerized men on my side of the street was a young Brazilian guy in his 20s. I felt compelled to share the moment and so I walked right up to him and said “Man, she is fucking gorgeous, eh?” He was startled and blinked repeatedly as he came out of his trance to meekly acknowledge me. “Yes, yes,” he muttered with an embarrassed smile, and I carried on walking.

I realized in that moment that I had learned to become an author to incredible moments that all my old insecurities would not have allowed.

You know, things like “I must hide my natural attraction to beautiful women enough to appear cool but not enough so that people think I’m gay,” and my personal favorite “I must show her how much of a nice guy I am.”

Up to about 18 months ago, this would not have even been possible. I would simply have been too embarrassed.

When I was 15, my Dad won a competition on Virgin Radio here in the UK. His prize? £120 of electronics vouchers. He bought a modem. The conversation went: “No Dad, I PROMISE I won’t download porn when we get the internet. No, really, I think it’s lame. I won’t do it”. I never did ask my parents how much of a model child they thought I was, but the very idea that my parents would think that I had any sort of sexual impulse would have been horrifying to me. I did everything in my power to convince them I had none. No, I was a nice boy.

Within three years, I was visiting hardcore porn sites about 3 times a week and got far too skilled with the collection and disposal of paper tissues. Concepts like “will power” and “self-determination” were useless in the face of this addiction. I was completely dominated by porn, and for years I told nobody. I was convinced that I was tainted in some way – psychologically imbalanced or completely perverted. I wanted to be free, but I simply did not have a clue where to start. And so, this thing that some people say is “completely normal,” and others say is “completely wrong” sparked this journey to figure out how to handle my emotions around porn. I did not like the idea of rubbing off every time I had so much as an ITCH in my crotch. And honestly, I was pretty sure that women I was interacting with KNEW that I was chest-watching whenever they’d turn away.

One day last year, on one of the darkest and most depressing nights I had had in years, I decided to do something about it.

I sat down and wrote out every single thing that had EVER turned me on, and detailed my reaction to every hardcore image I had ever seen. By the end, I felt like I had exhausted my entire week’s supply of tears. I was balling for about two hours. Funnily enough, at the end of that experience, I felt completely clear. A strange thing happened after that night, I got the sense of having the most incredibly clear headspace I had had in YEARS. It took only a couple more weeks to finally get to a place where porn was the last thing I wanted to be doing.

The next day, I went out feeling a little tender, but I felt as though the emotions of every single person around me were coursing through my own body. Every smile had me giggle, every unhappy person broke my heart, and every tree I walked by I wanted to touch. I communicated with every person that day as though they were the most precious person alive. I had, what I now call A Clearing: an incredible opportunity to re-write my response to every situation and interaction I regularly had out in the world.

Funnily enough, as if by some strange coincidence, I had been on a communications course at that time to help me complete my inauthentic ways of being that had caused tension in every relationship I had. Funny, because I had the same experience of a Clearing after I had dealt with these relationships, too. Several months later, I joined Project Mojave. I went through my several weeks of aimless keyword research looking for my “market” (haven’t we all done it?). Then one day Clay asked: “What is the silver bullet for the problem that only you know how to fix?”

My head immediately dropped into my hands. My mouth dropped open, my eyes became wide in a “Oh, look, a train!” kind of way. Oh no, me? Really? But, can’t someone else do that job? I pleaded with God to give me ANOTHER silver bullet. Puh-LEAZE! Porn Addiction? No no no, but I’m a nice guy. Immediate thoughts came into my mind of going on video to tell people about my experiences and positioning myself as a leader who would face this problem head on with them.

VIDEO?! You have to be frickin’ KIDDING ME! Stop thinking, la la la laaaa!

On that day, My Porn Addiction Story was born. My next biggest challenge: how on earth was I going to explain this to my mother? Turns out, mum was unsurprised that I had looked at porn. Being “the Porn guy for every porn addict out there”…I think that’ll take her a little longer to get used to.

So many people look at their flaws, and the shameful things they did in their past and they see them as things to keep buried in the closet. In dealing with my addiction, I learned a lot about how to clear my headspace, and actually give myself enough space to find what I cared about – as well as being able to create incredibly fun moments of light-heartedness on-the-street/on-the-fly with complete strangers. If it wasn’t for my porn addiction, I never would have worked out how to actually deal with life with more fun than I could imagine. And so, this week I am launching my own coaching program The Clearing because I realized that you don’t need to have to beat off to porn every night for years, like I did, to have a fun kickass life (wait, that came out wrong!).

Later this week Clay is interviewing me on this blog, and has promised to ask me enough embarrassing questions about porn to make me blush right there.

If you are easily embarrassed, you may want to avoid that interview, but you will probably miss out a shedload of cool advice on how to grow yourself your very own personal set of cajones and give up screwing around on Market Samurai like it was the “Fountain of All Sacred Knowledge.”

I am not running this program to help porn addicts (although if you have that addiction, we would definitely work on it), I am running it because I truly believe that if you actually want to make it in whatever niche you have chosen, you’ve gotta be prepared to be a leader – not just a marketer – and for that you will need a big enough Clearing to really stand for the people you are wanting to help. The kind of leader who will create moments with people on the street as successfully and boldly as he will put their ass on the line for their “market.”

I am looking for people who are willing to start a load of fires in every area of their life and see how much trouble we can cause in the 9 weeks of the program. Come back on Thursday and I promise to make you blush, and maybe even have your own “head in your hands” moment, where you stop at nothing to make it as a leader in your niche. Seriously, why would you bother otherwise?

Marc Quinn is a complete pain in the ass. Getting far too good at job interviews, he decided to refuse all full-time work and help porn addicts instead using what he learned in Project Mojave. He loves to make people who work at Starbucks laugh, and actually coached a girl who worked at the unemployment office to leave her job and follow her passion whilst he was unemployed himself. He is launching The Clearing Coaching Program this week, which is better than any other personal development program out there in that it doesn’t suck, and he will not use too many sketchy personal development words – unless initially forewarned.