September 4, 2010...the last day I smoked a cigarette.
Besides my pregnancy, this is the longest I’ve gone without smoking. I have tried to quit many times, but this time was different: I decided to undergo hypnosis. I’d always been skeptical of the process – convinced that it would not work on me. Well, when a relative, who’d been smoking longer than I’d been alive, declared that he was now a non-smoker - after hypnosis (and he has been for the last 6 months). I thought, well hell, I can give it a try.
In all honesty, I was ready to let it go.
In all honesty, I was ready to let it go.
Since that day, my life has completely changed. I didn't realize it before, but smoking took up a lot of my time and a lot of space in my head. Without it, I feel as if I have all the opportunity in the world to pursue the life I really want. I’ve gone skydiving. I’ve started running again. I’ve actually signed up to run in a 10k. I have more energy. I don’t smell like an ashtray. The normal color has returned to my lips. It’s quite remarkable. The best part is that every single day I am getting closer to the person I always knew I could be. I am remembering who I really am.
One of the things lost in the haze of smoke is that I am a runner. I have always been, since I was a teenager. During my high school summers, I would wake up at 6 a.m. to run around my neighborhood. I love the feeling I get while running, just me and my thoughts. It calms me down. I just couldn’t reconcile exercising and then having a cigarette right after - so I kept smoking, but not running. I’d see people jogging on the street, or running in marathons on TV and feel slight pangs of jealousy. I knew it should be me out there with them.
I started smoking when I was 20. I’m not entirely sure why…I think I thought of it as an effective way to deal with stress. Many people in my family smoked, and it didn’t seem like that bad of habit.
Well, by then I wasn’t really running regularly anymore, so I didn’t quite feel the impact. Besides, at 20 you feel absolutely, intoxicatingly omnipotent. Nothing can hurt you. It never crosses your mind that if you were to fast forward almost 15 years, you'll still be smoking, living a painfully sedentary lifestyle and you won’t believe the astronomical number staring back at you from the scale.
I have to tell you, before the hypnosis, I would say that I wanted to quit, BUT that I absolutely loooooved to smoke. The taste, socializing, the after dinner cigarette or the one you have with a good, stiff drink. Nothing could beat it, or so I thought.
I didn’t realize until after I quit that cigarettes were fused into my perception of who I was. After being hypnotized, I completely lost the desire to smoke, but it was pretty disconcerting not to know what to do with myself during those times I’d normally be smoking.
If I wasn’t smoking, what in the hell was I supposed to do? If I wasn’t smoking, how would I relate to my friends that I smoked with? I’d spend a lot of time in my garage, smoking cigarettes, cranking out blog posts and other writings – it was my Fortress of Solitude. If I wasn't smoking, would the words still come to me?
It turned out that all of my anxieties had no merit – I found other things to occupy my time, I still spend time with my friends (and not want to smoke at all) and obviously, I’m still writing, but it was scary that first week, being a newborn non-smoker.
I’m sharing all of this with you because Brick Sandwich is about empowerment and growth. I’m growing right along with you. Quitting smoking has been like having a metaphysical growth spurt. Clearing this huge hurdle has made everything else seem that much more possible. It affirms the founding principle of Brick Sandwich: You can do anything you want.
Please believe me when I say this: If I can move past this, you can move past whatever hurdle you need to move you life forward. It's not always easy, but on the path to getting what you want, the trials are truly trivial in the end. It makes reaching the goal that much sweeter.
To top it all off, this isn't the end...this is just the beginning.
Watch out world, here I come!
Please believe me when I say this: If I can move past this, you can move past whatever hurdle you need to move you life forward. It's not always easy, but on the path to getting what you want, the trials are truly trivial in the end. It makes reaching the goal that much sweeter.
To top it all off, this isn't the end...this is just the beginning.
Watch out world, here I come!
