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Share your quitting journey

The Worst Never Came

SimplySheri
Member
4 10 203

~~Don't live the same day for 75 years and call it a life.~~  Robin S. Sharma

It's safe, isn't it, to stay in what you know.  Your work schedule, dinner with family, maybe a vacation every now and then.  Routine is comforting and we feel in control of our lives.  

Yet.....did you know that if we stop learning, we start dying?  Maybe that is due in part to our smoking because heaven knows that is where we are comfortable.  Maybe it's partly due to the fear of starting something new.  Something different.  Maybe we've been 'burned' in the past and have retreated into the safety of our comfortably boring daily routine.  When routine makes you live automatically instead of actively, life kinda leaves you behind.

Quitting screams "Danger!! Danger!!".  How do we live without that first smoke in the morning?  How do we stay in routine when our whole routine circled around our next cigarette?  What do we do when we lose control of our habits?

I started by giving up.  Oh, my gosh, I was soooooo tired of starting and stopping my quits.  I was tired of centering my whole life around cigarettes....smoking them and then trying to not smoke them.  So I gave up.  I laid down and said, "Addiction, do your worst.  I'm not going to play anymore."  I didn't see it as 'surrendering' to my quit at the time.  I saw it as giving up fighting my addiction.  I was ready for it to actually materialize and kill me because I didn't want to do this anymore.

Of course, the worst never came.  Not when I was lying in bed, craving a cigarette to the point I was crying.  Ultimately, I fell asleep and forgot that crave.  Not when I was stressed to the point of physically tensing up and wanting to scream.  I learned deep breathing really did help with stress so I turned to that.  Not when I woke in the morning wanting that first cigarette....I chose to wake up late so that I had to get the kids off to school and me off to work.  I didn't have time to remember I wanted to smoke.

I turned to yoga, I turned to deep breathing, I turned to exploring who I was.  It was a gradual process but one I took an interest in.  My giving up morphed into recovery and I didn't even see it coming.  And asking addiction to do its worst?  The worst never came.  I didn't go crazy, I didn't die, I didn't even make a fool out of myself as I learned to deal with my emotions.  Instead.....the best of my life began.  And now every day is something new or different or delightful.  Even in bad days, there is good as well.  And I'm so grateful each and every day that I quit...that I am who I am....that life itself loves me.

I am not living the same day anymore.  I continue to change, to grow, to learn.  You can't do that fully when you smoke because smoking will always pull you back.  

Call it giving up.  Call it surrendering.  Call it quitting.  Whatever you need to call it to stop the cycle of addiction from killing you.  Life truly is waiting for you....free yourself to live it.

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