One hour at a time…

[ctm]

I was doing some spring cleaning this weekend and stumbled upon what now looks like something that belongs in a museum.

When I first quit, I created a spreadsheet where each column represented a day and each row represented an hour.

The “one day at a time” thing was too much for me to do in the beginning so I took it “one hour at a time”.

Every hour, I put another X in the box and every morning, I filled in the blanks for every hour of sleeping the night before.

It might sound extreme, but it worked for me.  It’s pretty easy to build time on the fast track using this method and the numbers game helped A LOT in the early stages of my quit.

At this stage in my quit (approaching 1.5 years) counting hours almost seems silly.  I don’t remember the gory details of how hard the early days were, but apparently, they were hard enough that I had to take it “one hour at a time’.

OUCH 😞

I folded the spreadsheet and put it into my copy of “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking” by Allen Carr.  I like to have a reminder of how far I’ve come to help me remember that I don’t ever want to go there again.

The main reason I’m sharing this is to let new quitters know that what you’re feeling now is only temporary.  Take it “one X at a time” where X is an hour, a day, a minute, a week or whatever.  Be patient and before you know it, you’ll forget what it’s like to smoke and you’ll be not smoking effortlessly for days/weeks/months at a time.

Never Take Another Puff!!!!!