Ciga Rest

Refocus

Today's Horscope

           A positive approach draws positive results.

           Get ready to make important changes for the better.

Can life be predicted by the stars? Or rather, is it that we focus on the prediction and shape it to fit our lives?

One common mistake smokers fall prey to is that when quitting we concentrate on what we are depriving ourselves of.  This only reinforces the temptation and drives it deeper into our thoughts; therefore, leading to defeat.  Rather than focusing on what we are “giving up”, we need to refocus on what we personally dislike about our habit. It could be the stinky odor that follows us or the wasted money or the heaviness in our chest or our yellow teeth or our extra wrinkles or just the fear of an early death.  The key to success is for us to refocus our attentions. 

The concept of refocusing is not a new “fad”. It is the basic simple solution that the bible offers us for resisting temptation.

              Run from anything that gives you the evil thoughts …

             but stay close to anything that makes you want to do right.

                                  2 Timothy 2:22 (LB).

Rick Warren elaborates about the bible’s profound truth for defeating temptation in his book The Purpose Driven Life.

Chocolate Friend or Foe?

This morning’s adventure began with my mess magnet (daughter) helping herself to a carton of chocolate milk from the fridge. Don’t ask me how, but she managed to nick the bottom corner of the carton open. Chocolate milk dripped inside the fridge, across the floor to where she placed it on the counter. A puddle of chocolate milk formed on the counter and ran down the cabinet. Then she proceeded down the hallway across the area rugs to bring her favorite drink into her room. Needless to say a chocolate milk mess was everywhere. Today, chocolate was my foe.

It is debated whether or not chocolate is an ex-smokers friend or foe. Some articles express that chocolate provides a sugar “high” similar to the nicotine “high”; therefore chocolate is an ex-smoker’s friend. However, I would caution on how much chocolate an ex-smoker consumes. In David Zinczenko’s Abs Diet he classifies a mini snickers bar as an allowed power snack.

Other articles believe that ex smokers should eliminate chocolate altogether from their diets. They feel that the sugar “high” induced by chocolate actually encourages an ex-smoker to pick up the butts, since the urge for more of that good feeling generates the craving for nicotine.

I guess, as an ex-smoker you have to be your own judge as to whether or not chocolate will be a friend or foe.  

What's the Limit

How much would you pay for a pack of smokes? When I first started smoking cigarettes were a mere 50 cents. Today they run close to $5.50. The most I ever paid for a pack occured on a business trip to Brooklyn, New York about two weeks ago. I ran out, or actually had good intentions of quitting. (I didn't want to be "stinky" hanging around the head honcos.) But anyways, I caved in and bought a pack at the hotel gift shop. Well it was no gift, it cost me $11.50. Can you imagine.

On average if you puff a pack a day for $5 a pack, then that's $1925 (if my math is correct). Two thousand dollars could equate to a relaxing cruise on the Caribbean. Image what five years cost. (Easy math $2000 * 5 = $10,000).

Just another incentive for a smoker to quit.

Strategy Part 1 .... Wear the Bikini

After setting the date the smoker needs to establish a strategy. The leadership guru John Maxwell states in his books “Hope is not a strategy”. There are many different tactics to assist the smoker to throw away the pack. Actually the smoker will smoke the pack to the end before quitting – another procrastination tactic. In all seriousness there are just as many strategies to quit smoking as there are for loosing weight. A smoker just needs to pick one and be done with it.

I have quit many times before using many different methods and for various lengths of   time. My best record is 2 years. Two years, what fool would go back to smoking after two years. This fool did. But anyways, I know I can quit, I’m just having a problem starting. My blog is a new personal strategy that I have developed for myself – public humiliation. I can’t quite possible walk away from this a failure. Not an acceptable choice for the competitive nature that lies within me. And I know that this strategy will work for me – see Closet Smoker post for more details.

Just today, I heard about a similar concept that 20/20 did on helping others loose weight. They gathered a group of overweight people, took extensive photographs of them in tiny bikinis, and made the agreement that if they did not loose twenty pounds in two months their bikini pictures would be displayed on national TV. Read the story to see how this strategy panned out ...

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1725982&page=1

Setting the date ...

When it comes to quitting, that is smoking; the first thing a smoker needs to do is set a date. Sounds like a wedding. But the quit smoking date is not an event looked at with as much enthusiasm.  Smokers are the best procrastinators when it comes to setting the date. Towards the end of the year, the favorite start date is New Year’s Day. Well, we all know how successful our New Year’s resolutions fare. When it’s not the begining of the year we say we’re going to a start after we finish a stressful project, or after this social event, or after we loose ten pounds. The next thing you know a new year starts and we follow the same viscous cycle.

I’m going to stay true to a smoker's form and not quite set a date yet. But I will. I just need to get through our team’s first quarter release this weekend.

Cold Turkey

Today I was thinking of quitting cold turkey. But that thought quickly changed as my husband needed me to retrieve some paperwork. In the five minutes left unattended, my daughter, Sam, managed to get a hold of my brand new bottle of Lancôme makeup. Our dog, a 15 year old Springer Spaniel named Buster, was painted from paws to snout. He looked beautiful! Needless to say, today was not the day to go cold turkey.

But maybe I do have a chance, since the first day of the Calendar for Quitting is a day where smoking is allowed. Take a peek at the calender located within this site http://www.healthlink.com/health_tlc.asp