It's so nice to hear this feedback from you! Thank you so much!
It definitely is hard to "stay quit." I also tried over and over. Focusing on the benefits and having a positive view of myself in the future was the only thing that worked for me. (I still feel bad about that knee-jerk judgement of the smoking group outside my office building, but those folks were the trigger for my brain saying, "I want to be a non-smoker.")
I applied every other trick I could think of as well, from giving up the things that go with smoking (coffee, phone conversations) for a few days to doing more exercise to replace smoking urges.
If I had known other tricks related to my vain streak, like helping my skin look better, I'm sure they would have helped too.
And, by the way, if you backslide and have one cigarette, or even one occasionally, in my view that doesn't need to mean you are automatically "un-quit." As I was in the process of quitting, I would backslide from time to time and have one smoke, or half a smoke. It literally took years before I knew I would never have another cigarette as long as I lived.
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Hi Trish:
It's so nice to hear this feedback from you! Thank you so much!
It definitely is hard to "stay quit." I also tried over and over. Focusing on the benefits and having a positive view of myself in the future was the only thing that worked for me. (I still feel bad about that knee-jerk judgement of the smoking group outside my office building, but those folks were the trigger for my brain saying, "I want to be a non-smoker.")
I applied every other trick I could think of as well, from giving up the things that go with smoking (coffee, phone conversations) for a few days to doing more exercise to replace smoking urges.
If I had known other tricks related to my vain streak, like helping my skin look better, I'm sure they would have helped too.
And, by the way, if you backslide and have one cigarette, or even one occasionally, in my view that doesn't need to mean you are automatically "un-quit." As I was in the process of quitting, I would backslide from time to time and have one smoke, or half a smoke. It literally took years before I knew I would never have another cigarette as long as I lived.
Best of luck to you!!
March 12, 2010 - 3:43pmThis Comment
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