Repost: The Novelty of the Quit My quit is amazing! Took me time to...

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Alberta Quits

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6,984 Days Quit

Repost:  The Novelty of the Quit

My quit is amazing!  Took me time to get to that point as often I just hated it and the entire process.  I kept at it and when the smoke screen cleared, I saw the reality that my addiction lied to me that I needed to smoke.  Freedom is amazing!
How is your quit today?

KTQ
Cara
D6084

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Novelty of the Quit
From Peter_is_in on 7/7/2007 10:23:10 PM

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When the Novelty of your quit wears off
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Quitting smoking is a major step for many people. It takes a lot of energy to invoke a quit. We psyche ourselves up for a quit and when we jump in we experience many emotions. From feelings of pride to struggles with cravings we spend a lot of time in our early stages of quit thinking about smoking, not smoking and our overall battle with the addiction.

We join a place like this, the Quitnet, and receive all sorts of support from other members. Some of us share a lot of ourselves with others while we step into our new journey. All the words of encouragement and support are welcomed by anybody. It makes our quit more doable and gives us the boost we need. We watch our meter and count the days and the cigarettes not smoked. It is a very intense stage in our quit filled with emotions that carry the full spectrum of our feelings. The rewards for the quit however are the big-ticket items. They move us forward and the anticipation of future rewards carries us through some of our rough moments.

But as we move on, the rewards, the milestones and the ‘way to go’ rewards lose their impact for some. There are people that even show up less at this support site during later stages of their quit and don’t have the same feelings as the beginning days, those days of excitement.

Now what? During all the beginning stages of our quit we were so focused on making it happen that in some cases other things going in our lives took second place. Even some of the stresses we had could wait. The focus has to be the quit! But what happens after the intense first stages of our quit. When life goes back to normal what do we do with our quit. Do we give it the same focus? Are there enough rewards to staying quit to keep the battle going? Do we give as much energy to our quit as when we started? Has the novelty worn off? Is it the novelty wearing out that weakens the quit? Do we return to how we coped with stresses and problems and go back to smoking as an answer?

Repost: The Novelty of the Quit

My quit is amazing! Took me time to get to that point as often I just hated it and the entire process. I kept at it and when the smoke screen cleared, I saw the reality that my addiction lied to me that I needed to smoke. Freedom is amazing!
How is your quit today?

KTQ
Cara
D6084

********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Novelty of the Quit
From Peter_is_in on 7/7/2007 10:23:10 PM
... Show more

Teach

5 hours 2 minutes ago

6,984 Days Quit

5 hours 2 minutes ago

We need to keep the rewards of quitting as an ongoing routine for ourselves. We need to create rewards for our own personal milestones. We need to keep the excitement of quitting and all the great reasons for doing so. We need to look at ourselves and extend the quit into viewing our reasons why we smoked in the first place. To remove the dependence on smoking to mask or solve our problems is a project each person should take on when they quit smoking.

In my first stages of quit I felt a zero... Show more

In my first stages of quit I felt a zero chance of smoking. I was so focused on my quit. So determined to make it work. So what happened when I messed up after almost 6 months of a perfect quit? Did I lose the novelty . . . the novelty of being a non-smoker?

I am reminded of the brand new car I bought a couple of years ago. Wow was I careful with it. Almost daily I checked it for scratches and made sure that it looked its' best. Washed it frequently because I was proud of it and wanted to make sure it looked good. Well, when the novelty wore off (which didn't take long) I washed it less, stopped looking for scratches and now it's just another car.

Maybe we should keep checking for the scratches and dents in our quit. And when we see them we should repair them quickly, before rust sets in. And oh, while we're at it maybe we should wash and polish our quit every day. Then we would have something we can be proud of, in all its' sparkle and shine, and worthy of our desire to look after it . . . just like when we first got it.

So how is your quit? . . . does it need a wash and shine?

Peter