Share your quitting journey
A saying my daughter always uses is "Remember back in the day, Mom." Hey, just because I grew up with black and white TVs with those huge tubes, cell phones were known as cordless phones, party lines were not something you had at a club, all phone numbers started with a prefix of a set of letters.......
I remember some people saying, oh, I just smoke when I go out. Oh, I just smoke when I drink. Oh, I just smoke on the weekends. MMMkay. I'm a little jealous that you can do that because I sure as hell can't. I remember setting my mind to stop smoking. Key word here "stop." I was never sucessful. I remember the built up tension at work after about 4 hours not having a cigarette or on a flight just waiting to touch down to dash to the smoking section. Those are very hard to find nowadays, aren't they?
I never learned the words forever quit or what they meant. Psh, you either quit or you didn't. That black and white mentality is what made me fail. Okay, so I can't quit so I won't do it right now. I'll do it right after this carton is gone. I'll do it when the 18th comes around. In my case, I skipped the setting the date thing. it created too much anxiety for me, too much anticipation of failure. Once I tracked my cigarettes, once I put in writing my replacements for my triggers when I finally understood what that all meant, once I printed that paper and slapped it in front of my face every single day for 30 days, I jumped right in.
There's nothing to fear but fear itself. Everyone has a different experience in the first 30 days. You have to learn to experience them to remember them and then learn to let it go. Ride that bucking bull for that short 3 to 5 minutes. It passes, doesn't it? Every week they get fewer and far between. And trust me, there will be a day that you will wake up and it won't be the first thing on your mind. We all have the strength within us to do miraculous things. It's just that last step................
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