Hello Exer’s! Hope all is well. Me, I’ve reached somewhere in the realm of eighteen months since I quit and I gotta tell ya, life is so very wonderful which to me translates into freedom! But it wasn’t always that way.
No, I was once like many of you who are here on those first hard days, learning to take a commitment and translate that commitment into a reality. Taking those first scary and yet crucial steps toward a new life. You know, the one that doesn’t have cigarettes in it. There are so many ways to look at what we do when we decide to quit. The first thing that we have to see differently is the reality that we are addicts and probably will always be addicts to a degree.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the rest of our lives will be a battle against ourselves but it does mean that in order to beat an addiction we have to first understand that we are indeed addicted. We have to do this in order to understand how to quit. For me, the first thing I had to do was forgive myself for ever becoming addicted in the first place. I had to shed all of the negativity that goes along with the realization that I was an addict.
Once that was done I was able to focus more freely on the important stuff like building the foundation that I would need for success. My foundation contained a lot of things all equally important in my opinion. The foundation contained knowledge about the addiction and what to expect when I quit. It contained my burning desire to be free. It contained a true realization of my inner self and most important of all it contained the plan that I would use to quit.
For me, quitting successfully was a combination of a solid quit plan, a belief in that plan and a bit of visualization just to keep the old mind and body focused together on the ultimate goal of freedom. Those of you that already know me know I used Mt. Freedom as my visualization tool. This mountain contained the trials and tribulations that seem to come with quitting an addiction.
The urges in my mind were the slippery slopes that are encountered along the way. I saw myself either walking carefully over them or navigating around them. The hard days where any little thing seems to translate into a desire to smoke were the boulder fields. The learning of myself and why I wanted freedom so badly were my vision of the top.
And so me and the little screaming child inside that I called the addict within took this journey together because I decided that keeping the addiction close was safer then trying to completely ignore it. But there was one element that remained true. I never wavered from the path to freedom. I never really lost my footing and most importantly I was always able to keep my eye on the prize which for me was attaining the summit of Mt. Freedom and waiving the banner of freedom high for all who were climbing behind me to see.
The only time I looked down the slope was when I wanted to see how far I’d come. This strengthened my resolve to continue the climb to freedom.
The bottom line is that it doesn’t really matter what tools you use to quit so long as you do quit. Me, I still look from the summit around to the other things in life that I’d like to do for you see, once you manage to achieve freedom then there’s just a lot more time to do those things that we’ve always thought of doing and never believed that we could.
So if you haven’t started the journey yet then what are you waiting for? If you have started and are beginning to doubt that you can make it then come here to all the wonderful people who are here for you to make those times just a little easier. If you’re a few months into your quit then just remember to be careful and not let that addict within bother you to much with it’s seemingly endless whining. After all, the thing to remember is that the addict is not your friend. Freedom is your true friend and one that your going to become very fond of after a bit of time.
Take it one step at a time, one week at a time and soon you too will be standing on the summit of Mt. Freedom and like me you’ll be wondering what all the fuss was about in the first place.
I can’t wait to see you there! I know you can do it just as I did so hang in there. Be true to only yourself and never take your eye off the prize of freedom! It may be a hard journey but I’ve never taken a journey that was more worth it!
Onward to your new life my friends!
