Ciggyfree Blog & Gov Alert

Sometimes, change just feels strange.  In addition, radical change can feel strange.  I have used this quit smoking business as leverage to make other changes in how I live.  And at times, I just wonder how I did it.

As I write this, it is the last day of the seventh month since I last smoked.  In that time I have had my ups and downs, both with the quit itself and with my life as a whole.  There were a few times I was very close to giving up, but I did not cave in.  The success I have at quitting is a springboard for making other changes.  Some almost as hard as not smoking.

It is funny how some things, like habits or material objects, can get to the point of defining us.  I was as much a Pepsi drinker seven months ago as I was a smoker.  It was a rare thing indeed for people to see me without my soda pop.  However, I quit that too, when I quit smoking.  In fact, I quit many of my bad eating habits, and I even started exercising.  It was almost like becoming a different person.  I am certainly a smaller person then I used to be, having lost over eighty-five pounds.

A person at work yesterday asked me if I felt like a different person after having lost so much weight.  I told her that I did not really feel much different, because before my self-image did not match my actual appearance.  In my mind, I never saw myself as a fat guy.  As I look back now, this self-delusional thinking was the main obstacle to feeling better.

I got an email a while back from a lady that is involved in another quit-smoking site.  She made a statement that has stuck with me, that is; “to change your life you have to change your mind”.  For me that struck a chord that resonates to this day.  It is one of those obvious truths that we need to have pointed out to us, but then never forget.  Because changing my mind is exactly what I have done.

It is a different world now, than it was seven months ago.  And it is not the world that had changed so much, it is me.  Once in a while, I pause in the daily grind, and just kind of wonder what happened.  It also makes me wonder what will happen next.  It will be interesting to find out.

Zzyzx

Last 10 posts by zzyzx

• One Year Anniversary - Woooo Hoooo - Now Back to Work - March 6th, 2007
• Eleven Months!!!!!!! - February 6th, 2007
• Surviving the Holidays - January 4th, 2007
• More Work To Do - December 14th, 2006
• Winter Weather - December 9th, 2006
• Nine Months!!! - December 6th, 2006
• The Neverending Story - November 30th, 2006
• Not-so-happy Holidays - November 27th, 2006
• Thanksgiving - November 21st, 2006
• Still Some Craving - November 18th, 2006

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed