A Change is Needed

For anyone who has taken notice and kept track of my "Quitting Progress" you may have noticed that my progress has been past due by nearly two days. The problem is that I failed my Goal 3. I was half-way through the first of three days and caved. Quitting is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I hate it, but the reality is that I started something that requires a little more than a half-baked plan to quit. That is why I have decided to change my strategy, and although it will probably mean that I will not quit before I have to buy more cigarettes; I am determined to quit.

In my first attempt, the way I did it was this: complete each goal and then take a day in which I allowed myself to smoke. The idea was that I would be weaning myself off of the stuff over the course of about a month and half. This time around, if I happen to cave during any one of my goals, I will restart the whole process. It doesn't matter if I'm at Goal 34 (go 34 days without smoking), I will restart and go back to Goal 1. I may decide against this, because it seems self-defeating at that point, so perhaps once I make it that far, I may not go back as far as Goal 1, but perhaps Goal 20 or something like that. Do you see my point though? This way, the progress is less stressful, but still progress.

The fact is that I cannot quit on my own strength. I'm a lousy quitter at something I enjoy. If I love something, I won't let it go. With smoking, I have a love-hate relationship, because it's the only thing that can calm me down anymore since I've become dependent on it. What I need is God, and prayer support from my brothers and sisters who know of my struggle. There are some who still don't know, and if they don't then let them remain ignorant. Some know, but choose to embrace a more critical perspective on the whole situation. The rest are those who truly understand what is happening, or maybe they don't understand, but they know that God does and they put their trust in Him. I need those who put their trust in God to pray for me that He will continue to give me strength and peace as I go through this process to quit smoking.

Until next time,
De Facto