DAY 2:
Today is Day Two of my two week challenge, I’ve been looking quite hard at myself the past few days and I don’t like what I’m seeing. I’m gaining weight, drinking and smoking heavily, and not being focussed on my goals or dreams.
This morning I made a decision that I am not going to drink a sip of alcohol, or smoke one cigarette for the next two weeks, I’m even going to walk at least 4kms everyday (essentially to work and back).
As it’s only day two, I really don’t have much to say, I do have the withdrawal shakes in my hands, but my mind is strong and occupied. I’m going to hold off buying nicotine patches for as long as I can.
When I was listening to Tony Robbins, and studying NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) about a year ago, I noticed that scarcity and patterns are the biggest trouble-makers when you’re trying to kick habits.
Scarcity: When I’ve tried to give up smoking in the past it was always on the last smoke, and when I’d have nothing to do - I was feeling as if I was going to miss out… miss out on a ciggie, or the feeling of doing something when I was having a ciggie. When I look back I realise that’s awful, what was I thinking?!? Hindsight is 20/20.
Patterns: Beer goes with Ciggies, in my mind the Beer tastes better when accompanied with a Ciggie, and vice versa. So if I try to give up just one the feeling of scarcity shows it’s ugly head, so they both have to get up and leave together. Back to patterns, the first thing I would do in the morning is jump up make a gorgeous cup of coffee and then run out to my shed and have a ciggie. No more coffee in the morning, no more ciggies, makes sense to me.
When I got up this morning, I started to scratch that pattern, I got up had a bowl of iron man food, and straight away got ready for work - It’s harder for me to smoke when I’m dressed for work. The Will was there nice and strong this morning, I have a good feeling it will be for a while to come.
Wish me luck