My Advice to You, the New Quitter:
Live your life in “day-tight” compartments.
In other words, treat every day as its own separate thing:
Don’t waste time and energy regretting what you did (or didn’t do) yesterday (or the day before that, or the day before that…); the past is over, it’s carved in stone, you can’t take it back, and you can’t change it.
Get over it.
And don’t waste time and energy worrying about what might happen tomorrow (or the day after tomorrow, or the day after that…); you can’t do anything about tomorrow until it becomes today.
A lot of stress comes from trying to live in some other time than right now; it can’t be done, and yet, we try: we think, “If only I’d quit sooner…” or we think, “Maybe I should wait until tomorrow to quit…” but the thing is, the only time we can quit is today.
In fact, the only time we can quit is right now. While we’re having that monster crave…
Here’s a little thought experiment for you:
Imagine you’re a smoker and you’ve just boarded a plane for a transcontinental flight. You’re stuck on the plane for 8 hours, and there’s no smoking.
You settle into your seat, half an hour goes by…
And you get a crave.
But you can’t feed it!
What do you do?
You pick up a magazine, take out the book you brought along, turn on the in-flight movie - something to get your mind off the crave.
Eventually, the crave goes away. Even though you didn’t feed it.
Where did it go?
Who cares? The point is, it went away, all by itself, even though you didn’t feed it. And every crave you have while you’re on that plane will do the same thing.
Here’s another little thought experiment for you:
Imagine you’re a smoker and you’ve just checked in to the hospital for some elective surgery. You’re going to be stuck here for a few days, and there’s no smoking.
You settle into your bed, a half hour goes by…
And wham! You get a crave.
But you can’t feed it!
What do you do?
You pick up a magazine, you take out the book you brought along, you turn on the TV - anything to get your mind off the crave…
Eventually, the crave goes away. Even though you didn’t feed it.
Where did it go?
Who cares? Once again, the point is, it went away, all by itself, even though you didn’t feed it. And every single crave you have while you’re in the hospital will do exactly the same thing.
Now for the $64,000 question: do the craves get stronger or weaker the longer you’re in the hospital?
If you’ve ever been in this situation as a smoker, you know the answer: they get weaker.
Because you can’t feed them.
So why do you think the craves are going to act any differently now that you’ve chosen not to feed them than they did when the airline or the hospital told you you weren’t allowed to feed them?
They’re not.
They’re going to go away, all by themselves, without you feeding them, and the longer you go without feeding them, the weaker they’ll get, until you barely notice them any more.
How do I know?
Because I started choosing not to feed them any more on November 19th of 2001, and I can’t honestly remember the last time I had a crave. It’s been years. And before you say, “Well, that’s easy for you to say; you’ve been quit for over 6 years!”, remember this:
I started out on day one, just like everybody who quits. I decided that I was not going to smoke, just for that day, that hour, that minute… that I was not going to smoke right now. Then, on day two, I made the same choices again. On day three, same thing.
If you look back over my journey so far, you’ll see that I’ve been quit for a little over six years. But if you look a little closer, you’ll see that what actually happened was that I chose life - I chose not to smoke - just for today. 2,233 times.
Break it down to its most basic, and what I did was simple: I chose not to smoke, just for today. And you can do the same.
Choose life, just for today, and tomorrow will take care of itself.
Promise.
