Stop Smoking

Ask me what one of the hardest things I ever did in my life was and I will tell you it was when I quit smoking. I also know that if I was able to do it so can you.

Smoking is a filthy habit. I know because I smoked for 30 years. I loved every puff. Although it’s been 9 years since I quit smoking (a pack and a half a day) I still crave one every once in awhile. Here are some of the things I learned when I was able to finally stop smoking.

Every time you quit and do not succeed it is another step in the process of quitting. You didn’t fail. You took another step. I must have quit 120 times before it finally worked.

The early days are hard. Do a new trick each day to distract yourself. On the first day I drank black coffee and sucked mentholated cherry cough drops. This resulted in a horrible taste in my mouth but was similar to having just had a cigarette.

Other days I chewed gum all day until my temples were sore from all the chewing.

Other days I sucked cough drop after cough drop.

The most intense time of it lasted about a week. It might not have been the most ideal way to get through that week, but it worked for me. Another thing I did was to reward myself for going through such a horrible experience and I practiced shopping therapy for awhile.

And, although I wouldn’t admit it at the time I did sneak a few cigarettes along the way. Trying to quit this terribly addictive disease was really horrible and there were times when I just couldn’t stand it anymore and I snuck a few. That lasted maybe the first month or so.

After that I was over the worst of it.

On the bright side? Food suddenly tasted wonderful. I mean I couldn’t believe how good a simple bowl of corn flakes tasted. Everything I ate was absolutely delicious. I ate a lot. And, gained 50 pounds, which I’m still struggling to lose. So, if you can see that you’ve set your feet upon a path of weight gain in the early days you can also counter that with an increase in exercise. The endorphins produced with the exercise will help with the whole process too.

I stopped coughing. I didn’t realize it but I had a smoker’s cough for years. I just thought I coughed a lot and, of course, while I was smoking I wouldn’t have admitted to it in a million years. There was an awful lot of denial going on.

Another plus was that I smelled better. On the downside I could smell everybody else better too. I had a particularly nauseating moment once on a crowded bus when one of the passengers smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in 6 months.

My car and my clothes smelled better too. I just had not realized how the stink of cigarettes had clung to everything around me.

They are passing lots of very strict laws in California. I believe you can’t smoke within 20 feet of a business. You can’t smoke in businesses. You can’t smoke in apartments anymore. You can’t smoke in restaurants or bars. You can’t smoke outside if your smoke drifts into anybody else’s house. You can’t smoke in the presence of a minor in a moving vehicle.

Look on the internet to get a counter sort of program for yourself. I have something called LastQuit. I don’t think it’s available anymore, but I still have it there to tell me based on my smoking a pack and a half every day how I’ve been doing:

How Long It’s Been Since I Quit: 9 Years, 3 Months, 4 Weeks, 12 Hours, 26 Minutes and 19 Seconds.
How Many Cigarettes I Have Not Smoked: 102,166
How Much Money I Have Saved: $21,403.95
How Much Life I Have Reclaimed: 11 Months, 2 Weeks, 5 Days, 17 Hours and 50 Minutes.

Good luck to anybody out there who is contemplating or who is already in the throws of quitting smoking. I will be thinking of you.

Give Me Some Advice

When you go to a psychic you expect to get some advice. You’re totally free to discount it once you’ve gotten it, but that’s sort of what you expect. It would be a total nothing to sit there and have somebody look you in the eye and say, “Well, I have nothing for you today. I have absolutely no advice for you, no comment to make, nothing, nada, zip.”

So, if you don’t always need a psychic where are you going to get some sort of insight into your life or your behavior from anyway?

Well, if it is advice you’re looking for you could just pick up a magazine. They are full of good advice. How to be popular. How to live longer. What supplements to take and which ones to avoid. In fact, if you listen to the stuff they talk about in magazines and on the internet long enough you’ll see that much of it is contradictory.

It gets confusing.

“I thought that was good for you. I’ve been doing that for the last 5 years thinking I was doing a good thing for my body and now you tell me studies show that people who do that are likely to keel over before they are 65? Yikes!”

What if you want to do something that is bad for you? What if you want to engage in a risky behavior or if you want to eat cream puffs until you are 347 pounds? Are you going to cut short your life?

Probably.

Then, why do people do that?

Why do people do bad things that are obviously bad for them? Against all advice and studies to the contrary they still insist on engaging in harmful behaviors? Why?

Deep down inside of you is your soul. Just pretend for a moment.

Deep down inside of you is that kernel of cosmic star stuff that is from source. Actually, every bit of you is that, bur for the purposes of this exercise imagine, just pretend that you are reaching inside to see, to experience to know that inside part of you.

Okay, I’ll wait while you reach. Past the pancreas. Keep looking. Farther. Look inside your heart. I’ll wait. I know it is there. You’ll know it when you get there because likely you’ll feel a little humbled and start crying. Hey, it happens to the toughest of us.

So, get to where you aren’t afraid. Get to that part of you that is smart. Get to the part of you that is connected. The part that doesn’t wonder and worry about whether they are dressed well, or are saying the right thing. Lost it? That’s okay. It’s still there. Quiet yourself and knowing where you want to go be silent for a few seconds.

The idea is to get a little bit of advice from yourself. All you want to know is are you doing the best thing that you could, all things considered be doing? Are you doing the bravest, most uplifting, useful thing possible?

I waited and the word came to me. Smile. That was it. I started crying. It was so very, very simple. It was so easy for me to do. I can handle that right now. I can smile.

It made me cry.

Conflicting Advice from Psychics

This is in answer to an email I got yesterday talking about conflicting information from psychics.

I think the reason why you're seeing conflicting information coming in from different people is that is just because they are different people. Spirit, from what I've observed, is seen, is perceived through a person's belief system. So, somebody who was inclined to deal with dark things might see a wicked or malevolent spirit. But, the SAME spirit in touch with somebody who is very much a religious person is perceived and thought of to be a saint or an angel or even God. Same spirit. It's just how the person is perceiving spirit to be. Does that mean the info is wrong? Even though it's all conflicting? No. It means you need to take it all with a grain of salt.

One person might say, "Okay, you're a ditz. And it isn't likely that you're going to stop being a ditzy person, so, no, I do not see you as ever being happy in this lifetime. Year after year you are going to blame other people for the bad things that happen to you and you're never going to take responsibility and realize that you cannot have the love you're thinking of."And, somebody else would say, "Yes, there is hope for you if you learn to take responsibility for your own actions and stop thinking everybody has to make you happy. The only happiness you will ever find in your life is the happiness you make for yourself."

Two different answers. Same information coming from two different people. It's just how they are set up. My advice is to continue to get all the different readings you can and then examine them all to find that common thread that is running through all of them. That's where you will find your own truth. And, it does not mean all the psychics you go to are cheating you. They are human beings and they are perceiving the information they get in whatever way they were raised and through their own belief systems.