Day 146 - redesigning life

[Lasttimeagain]

These days in finding I'm not thinking much about smoking at all. There are fewer and fewer moments where I think  'wow I used to smoke in this situation.'  I'm still coming on and reading and participating on this site and whyquit site at the end of the day. But overall, I'm really getting used to the new lifestyle. I'm also much more sociable and more present at work these days and it's leading to better relationships with coworkers. I'm applying for a new job opening soon and it's a pretty good bump in pay and opportunity, so the improved relations could help to get that. I'm up against another person for the position, and she's also pretty qualified for the position  so we'll see how it goes. However, I'm so happy I'm not smoking now. If I were, I'd probably be out there smoking away and thinking and worrying about it rather than be inside talking with people and improving and building interpersonal relationships. I'm also finding I'm physically stronger and healthier nowadays from both the quit and the exercise. Not coughing all day and being ten pounds lighter helps a ton. This week I've even been kind of sick. In the past I'd probably be pretty severe by now and potentially have bronchitis. Instead  I've still been able to hit the gym each day and feel pretty good afterwards. It seems like the exercise is helping to minimize the severity of the cold. Perhaps it's just that I'm not smoking that's minimizing the severity of the cold.

Well, it's day 146 and I'm getting close to day 150. That will be 100 days away from my last quit which lasted 250 days. This time I'm absolutely determined to get past 250 and push to a full year without smoking and then to a full calendar year without smoking. I have gotten to about 8 months quit a few times in the last 20 years, and before that two years quit twice. But I haven't gotten to 9 months quit in a long time and I haven't been off cigarettes for a full calendar year since I was basically a young twenty something. I spent most of my twenties, all of my thirties, and a good portion of my forties smoking or quit for a short time. My goal is to be quit for the rest of my forties  and all of my fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties  and to a hundred and five without smoking. One thing I've noticed on this site and whyquit is that most of the people using these sites are in their fifties and sixties. All of them say they wish they had quit earlier. I'm planning on doing that. I had an uncle who smoked till about 42 who then quit and lived a long and healthy life till 96 upon which one afternoon he layed down for a nap, put his glasses on his nightstand and fell into his final sleep. No disease, no sickness, no infirmities, and sharp as he ever was (he invented those little wands you turn to open and close window blinds). That is the way to go, in my thinking. So, I've quit smoking at a similar age as he did and I'm hoping to have the same good luck and fortune he did as he aged. Aside from some good luck, the most fundamental prerequisite is that I never ever take a single puff of another cigarette. Others seem to be getting regular exercise, eating relatively healthily, having an appreciative mindset, staying active and curious and always looking to learn and do new things no matter how many birthdays you have celebrated. It seems that those who approach life with a joyful attitude are the ones who are most successful. I read a book once in which the author postulated that rather than success leading to happiness, happiness leads to success. Happiness is not something you search for, find, work for, earn, buy, get from another person, get from a drug, achieve, or arrive at. Happiness is something you choose to do, no matter what the situation is, and it is a precondition for all other success in life. Happy shouldn't be an adjective. It should be a verb. Like, rather than being our becoming happy, it seems that happy is something you do, like you need to decide you're going to do happy. You just gotta decide to do happiness. Then just start saying you're happy, tell yourself you're happy, do things with a happy attitude. I'm certain, now, that this will lead to success in every area of life. When I used to smoke, I never felt happy while smoking. In fact, while smoking I was almost always doing unhappiness. Griping to myself about all the things I didn't like or talking poorly about others. It just seems like nicotine had something to do with that. I mean, if you're constantly in a state of withdrawal, how could you feel or do happy? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we can or should be giddy with delight all the time or that we can't or shouldn't have a difficult day. I'm just saying that we can choose to do happy even when we are having a difficult day and we can focus more on doing happy at a more general level of our lives. Doing a happy attitude overall. Well  that's my thoughts for tonight. No more doing unhappy fueled by nicotine anymore that's for sure.