Share your quitting journey
Always around this time of year, as I'm sure a lot of you have, reflect back on the past year or even over the last couple of years and gauge how far or how back you've gone. Resolutions were never a thing for me. I knew I would never keep them and usually was a promise of an unattainable goal. I look back this year the same as last year and remember the struggle I went through back in 2015 trying so hard to quit smoking.
I read all that I could possibly read. I was going through the steps slowly as they suggested under My Quit Plan. I was trying so hard to cut back on smoking way back then to make it easier on myself when I finally hit the scheduled quit date of 12/31/2015. Two more days I kept telling myself. I was even having nightmares about the impending date. I was seeing it as a death sentence. That little nagging voice in the back of my head kept telling me, oh, you can wait for another year yet. Cigarettes aren't up to $70 a carton yet. You know you set that measure of when you were going to quit.
Oh, how I tried to talk myself out of quitting. Took me until January 25th, 2016 to finally do it and never blogged until I had a good solid 30 days in. Somehow in the back of my mind, I knew I was going to fail. I actually think I set myself up for failure. My mind was going overtime replaying the same scenario and making one excuse after another. You see, two years ago I was just like you. I was hopping on that gerbil wheel and spinning myself into a tizzy. I was petrified because of all the horror stories I heard of quitting. All I heard was it was the hardest thing I ever did, but the best decision of my life. If I only had a crystal ball then to see what I am today, I wouldn't have put it off for so many years.
I'm happy that I dug my heels in, I stuck with it. Instead of twirling telling myself I couldn't do this, I said I'm not going to let this control me. I am in control. Not a substance in a cigarette. It's the substance, nicotine, that controlled my existence for so many years. Cigarettes just happened to be the delivery method. I finally separated the two and it all began to make sense. Yes, quitting is hard, but that's what keeps me from ever going back. It's nice not to be a slave anymore............
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