Hi all,
None for me today
I always feel like I take more than I give to this class. So since some are giving up smoking and others are looking to self-improve I thought I'd share my own experience for what it's worth, since I am far more experienced in not smoking than I am in not drinking (8 weeks, which is my longest by 7 weeks, in 25 years).
On 4 July this year it will be 16 years since I had a cigarette. Until my last cigarette on that day I was smoking at least 2 packs a day, and had been for many years. I never, ever, want a cigarette or think about smoking in any positive or nostalgic way, and know for a fact that I will never smoke again. This is not a smug or naive comment but a fact because after all this time I am able to see smoking for what it was and what I had done to myself. By the way, please believe me that until I stopped I could not imagine not smoking because I was a smoker, a smoker's smoker in fact, and the whole ritual of smoking was part of who I was, I thought. Anyway, I mention this only because I want to say from direct experience that one day, I don't know when, you will wake up and you will truly understand what you have given up and what it is to be free and you may literally have tears in your eyes, I did. It may be the first day, or later, who knows. But that day is waiting and it is fabulous!
On to self improvement. Before I stopped smoking I did no physical exercise ever and when I stopped smoking that didn't change for quite a long time. Then one day I just felt like exercising and bought a bicycle, much to the amusement of my still-smoking friends. As you give your poor body the chance to recover from all the smoke you have poured into it, it will at some stage want to do what's completely natural, what we're genetically set up to do, which is to exercise. But, I didn't feel that way immediately or push myself to do this, it just came naturally. Exercise is now a vital part of my life where it was totally absent before (it's also a reason I kidded myself that my drinking could be worse, but that's a different story for another day). So I suppose what I'm saying is that my experience suggests that sometimes it's ok to do one thing at a time, and that good things will flow from stopping bad things. Don't try to do anything that you don't really want to, too soon. If it doesn't feel right it might not be time, and don't give yourself a hard time about that.
This might all be a load of rubbish but if anyone finds it useful then it was worth it!
Good luck
OMD