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Share your quitting journey

Day 113 - Seeing the positive

Chuck-2-20-2011
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When we quit smoking it can feel like such an overwhelming experience, especially if we’ve never experienced anything like it before. If we’ve never had the internal conflict within ourselves that smoking creates. If we’ve never had to try to control our own emotions even when the addict within intensifies every emotion we feel.

When this happens, it’s so easy to look at the negative aspects of quitting. It’s so easy to feed our internal addict with thoughts of how horrible this quitting business really is. And rest assured when we do that, our internal addict is more then happy to help us to intensify the entire experience. We can actually fuel that part of us that doesn’t really want to quit simply by how we perceive our quits.

It seems like it’s so much easier to see the negative then the positive. I think this is because the negative part of quitting really is right in front of our faces. The discomfort that comes with the physical parts of our quits. The reality that some part of us really doesn’t want to quit. The memories that come when we no longer smoke.

These are the things that can either drive us crazy or in fact can propel us onward to freedom. It’s really how we look at things that make a difference. The reality that every one of us knows to be true is that smoking is deadly to us. Smoking ruins our futures and robs us of so much freedom and money. We know these things and we know that though these are negative things, if we quit they suddenly become positive because what we’re doing is reversing what once was a negative aspect of our lives.

And yet it’s so easy to forget these positive things when we begin our journey. The body and mind scream at us on those first days causing us to question our very commitment to our quits. The days drag on as we observe the changes that are taking place in the world around us. Really, it’s not so much that the world changes as we do.

I noticed when I went outside the other night and looked around. It was such a beautiful sunset. The kind I used to watch while smoking. I realized at that moment that yes, my addiction had spun itself deeply into every aspect of my life. My addiction had at one time had me convinced that nothing could be the same without cigarettes. That the world would somehow transform into a place of darkness or hopelessness without cigarettes. That there could be no life without the comfort of the nicotine.

This is yet another of the many fallacies that an addiction can create. In reality, the world is much the same. There is still the same beauty that was always there. There is still that feeling that we get deep down in our souls when we look at the beauty that surrounds us. There is still that same life for us to enjoy only now we can enjoy it free of the shackles that were our lives before we quit.

So really, contrary to what our internal addicts tell us, what we are doing is one of the most positive things we could ever do for ourselves. The benefits really do outweigh the temporary discomforts that we must go through at first. And with each step that we take, the cloud that is our addiction clears just a little more. The mist that our addict has worked so hard to place in front of our faces begins to fade and the reality of what we are doing begins to take total control of our minds and bodies.

We begin to lose the belief in what the addict has been whispering to us all of these years. We begin to see life for what it really is rather then see the illusion that is our addiction.

But really, once we get past that point in our quits where we can put away our fears. When we realize that we really can walk this world without cigarettes. Once we know once and for all that our freedom is within our grasps. This is the day that we know it was all worth it. This is the day that we kick the negative out of our quits and smile in the realization that yes, we are free and yes, the world looks like quite a positive place indeed!

Onward to freedom

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