practicing what i preach

I made a post recently on quitting smoking where I said I would be trying my method soon. If you want to read up on the steps, go here. And yes I invented the method myself.

I started step 1 yesterday. Step 1 isn’t the quitting part, it’s the part to prepare for the quitting.

Here are some things I found out already.

Marking every time you light up in a memo pad truly drives home the fact that you’re addicted. As I write this I’m on my 24th cigarette of the day (falling in from yesterday as it’s after midnight right now.) Sound bad? Not really. I thought I was smoking a lot more than that, but thankfully I’m not. For those interested in how many packs that is, 24 cigs is 1.2 packs (there are 20 cigs to a pack.)

What I do is mark the pad before I light up. This further reminds me that it’s bad. I see all those little marks and it makes me feel terrible knowing I smoked that much. But it’s a good thing to be reminded of how bad it really is as it will help me quit that much faster.

I feel a sense of accomplishment already by marking the pad like I’m supposed to. If I stay diligent and keep marking the pad I’m confident I’ll be able to kick the habit.