There was a time when I believed that my life was perfect, or as close to perfect as it could get. I believed that bad things only happened to other people. I believed I could smoke without consequence, and that addiction was just a byproduct of my wonderful life. A side effect to the thing that I believed brought me pleasure.
I lived in that world for a long time. A willing slave to a plant, and the chemicals contained within it. And then almost imperceptibly, I began a morning ritual of coughing. Over time, this became anywhere from one to three hours of steady coughing even as I smoked. I realized that this is what put a crack in my beliefs.
You see, there was something tangible happening. Something that I could feel happening to me. Something that forced me to question my beliefs that everything was fine. Because every morning my body told me that everything is NOT fine. It forced me to realize that I was lying to myself. That the addiction, and my ritual of feeding it was becoming more important to me than the very life I thought I was enjoying.
Suddenly I no longer believed the lies that I’d convinced myself were the truth. It’s never easy the day we discover that we’re actually an addict. There’s such a stigma that comes with the word that it just takes a little time to accept. After lying to ourselves for so long, we first have to forgive ourselves for the lies that we created to keep our addiction alive.
With forgiveness comes the ability to change. We have to believe things that we never wanted to believe before in order to quit. We have to see through the lies that we told ourselves in order to keep smoking. We have to understand that the only way out of this addiction is to understand it and to change our belief in all of the lies that we told ourselves for so long.
It’s easier than one might think actually. Once we train our focus on a goal of freedom, the rest of it falls naturally into place once we overcome the fear of change.
Never believe that you can’t succeed! It’s a belief in life and the desire to grow old with our loved ones that carries us through. A desire to live a more perfect and harmonious life and a belief that we can actually achieve that dream of harmony.
It’s within all of us to quit. All we have to do is believe that we can and know in our hearts why we want to. The rest is just learning how to live a life of freedom. And in the end, that new life is something indescribably beautiful!! And to think, all it took was a belief that with time, we really can become a more perfect being . . .
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
Chuck
P.S. Just to let you know, I have to start another big job out of town tomorrow, so I won’t be around quite as much though I vowed to myself not to disappear completely as I have in the past. There’s just to much beauty and wonderful things happening here to avoid it! When I’m not able to come here, I do think of all of you and try to send strength. I’ll be checking in daily!
