My journey isn’t over yet . Nope . My quit isn’t finished yet . Am I successful , I don’t know . I think I am to a degree but I prefer to think only when I’m gone from this earth will you or anyone know if I was successful . I can only be successful this moment . I feel good and that’s all that matters . Good because today I don’t have thoughts of living life with a cigarette in my hand . I don’t think about them ( aside from Ex ) and I am not tempted by them . It was freedom that I was looking for.
Note : If you think differently than I and success is your main goal , that works too . Perhaps you’ve combined the two together . Success equals freedom .
I do not want to minimize your interpretation of success or freedom and what it means for you . I just share my testimony and my perspective . I think how you think is important to overcome this addiction . Just never think you can’t do this because I will spell check that 🙂 You CAN do this .
I think I can call myself successful in the sense that I worked at my quit with site help and support . ( posting not smoking worked for me ) .I used what I needed to move forward from that help and did what I needed to do to keep my quit . Personal success for me in retrospect is not really the number of days quit but the effort I put into it every day to be where I am today . ( I had a short term goal with a long term outcome . ) I followed a fun and very effective short term list of goals to reach long term .
We can not plan for what trigger we may have next week because we don’t know what they will be if any , but we can plan not to smoke no matter what should they tempt us to smoke . We can use tools such as distraction , delaying , discussing our feelings or crisis , deep breathing , drinking water etc . We can use HALT to stop . I personally worked through all the triggers when they arose one day at a time just by making smoking not an option . Some of those triggers tested me over and over too and took more than one kick at the can to beat but persistence to overcome them without smoking pays off . Some of you might find this in your own quit but again every one of us will be different , we all have different triggers and different intensity of triggers and they will arise at different times .
Each of us will have to put whatever effort is needed today to get through to tomorrow . Each of us will have to do what’s required to do . Each of us will have to take an action to receive freedom .
When craves resurfaced I tried throughout to be observant . To discern addict thinking from goal thinking . Of course sometimes a crave can be so crippling you don’t feel you even have that ability to think at least I did not and of course the more we fight the more it resists and pushes us harder to do what we don’t want to do . Thats when maybe many will stick their head in the freezer or bite into a lemon or a dill pickle . These are great suggestions and according to many work .
I did not do that , I just ran freezing cold water over my head and brushed my teeth . Do what works for you , you do the work . You own your quit , or your quit owns you .
I tried as best I could to acknowledge the craves were there, the hard times were real and normal and that it was part of the process to healing . Then I did something different . You have to master that by doing it consistently and then it will pass . Feed the positive , starve the negative constantly and your quit will grow.
When my mind was fixated more on smoking then ( an elder seeing where I was headed ) would say and reminded me not to entertain those thoughts but instead diffuse their intensity by doing what I said I would do … “do something different “ , and then they would say : remember “ smoking is not an option “ . It was those gentle reminders that were constant and trustworthy that saved me many times .
You will use a motto that works for you . It might be nope , it might be “ not doing that anymore “:or one of your very own that you can draw strength from when it seems impossible to hold on .
Sorry , I know many newcomers will never read this … I know I couldn’t read long posts when I first started . I chose to be an open book with my journey ( something I never thought I’d do being a very private person ) but I did not expect to write a book lol .
