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Share your quitting journey

Vanity Is For The Young

JonesCarpeDiem
4 12 127

When we've reached our genuine self, there is no pretense.

You say what you're thinking without worrying about who's listening.

As a smoker we can sometimes become a politician until we get our cigarette.

(to the point of not listening.)  🙂

aging...aging...learning what's important

years later:

A turn in front of the mirror helps us realize we no longer need vanity.

It is at that point, we have arrived.

We aren't competing for a job or someone's affection.

We are "self validating."

We are who we are, hopefully, well tempered by time,

we believe we have most of life's workarounds handled.

Part of quitting forever is learning to face our emotions.

I think that is also part of losing a quit. 

As time passes we grow in acceptance and realize

SMOKING IS NOT REQUIRED.

If you're my age, you've been to the real circus more than once, with peanuts.

Wasn't that an experience?

So where can that vanity go? I say give it to the young.

They may feel they need it to compete. We are free.

Onward and Upward!

12 Comments
About the Author
Hello, My name is Dale. I was quit 18 months before joining this site and had participated on another site during that time. I learned a lot there and brought it with me. I joined this site the first week of August 2008. I didn't pressure myself to quit. HOW I QUIT I didn't count, I didn't deny myself to get started. When I considered quitting (at a friends request to influence his brother to quit), I simply told myself to wait a little longer. No denial, nothing painful. After 4 weeks I was down to 5 cigarettes from a pack a day. The strength came from proving to myself, I didn't need to smoke because I normally would have smoked. Simple yes? I bought the patch. I forgot to put one on on the 4th day. I needed it the next day but the following week I forgot two days in a row I put one in my wallet with a promise to myself that I would slap it on and wait an hour rather than smoke. It rode in my wallet my first year.There's nothing keeping any of you from doing this. It doesn't cost a dime. This is about unlearning something you've done for a long time. The nicotine isn't the hard part. Disconnecting from the psychological pull, the memories and connected emotions is. :-) Time is the healer.