Good day Exer’s! I hope everyone is enjoying the day and that there’s no chance that you’ll smoke. At times holidays can be quite stressful, especially when we’re trying to lose an addiction. At times it seems like no one around you understands what your going through. And the reality is that unless they’ve done it themselves, they really don’t know.
Thing is that people will try to tell you what they perceive as normal. They will try to tell you that your just to edgy to fit into what they want to do. Don’t ever let this cause you to smoke. I mean, what is normal?
To me, normal is just a perception. It’s just what we decide is really normal. This is one of the things that make quitting so hard I think. All those years that we smoked, we perceived smoking as normal. To us addicts, it was abnormal to not have that cigarette. This is one of the weapons that the addict within can use against you if your not careful.
And yet, our minds can change that concept of what is normal to us. We can change our own realities in such ways that things can become easier for us. And a good place to start is to create that new normal for yourselves. You know, the one without cigarettes in it.
When I first had to deal with those withdrawals, I started looking for things that didn’t seem normal to me. I was edgy to say the least. My concentration was bad. I couldn’t sleep. But man, could I eat!
None of this seemed normal to me. It just wasn’t the way that I’d perceived my life before I quit. And this in itself agitated me. It made me want to smoke until I took a moment to accept that all of the above symptoms WERE my new normal. These feelings were new and yet they had to become my reality. To me, this had a calming effect for you see, if we understand our own reality then we can control that reality. If we can realize that the world hasn’t changed so much as we have then we can get on with the business of creating that new normal without cigarettes.
So hang in there my friends. Always try to understand that what others might call normal could be something totally different then what our new normal really is. Don’t worry, in time others will see our new selves as normal. In the meantime the trick is to not let others try to tell you what your normal is.
Kind of a strange blog I know. Sometimes I just write what comes to me.
Stay safe and keep your eye on the prize. It’s really worth the effort!!
