Hello!

I hope everyone has been doing great on their personal goals! I feel as though I have been neglecting my blog a little bit lately, but I promise it is not intentional. I met with Sandy again last Friday and although I wanted to record some of our session to post on my blog, I didn’t have anyone with me to do that for me and I thought it would be more important for me to focus on what we were discussing, than to worry about recording the discussion. During my last session, Sandy told me that I really needed to start thinking about a “quit date” because the longer I waited, the harder quitting would become. I have to admit, I feel as though I have come to a standstill in my journey of quitting smoking.

Even though I have managed to maintain the reduced amount of cigarettes I am smoking each day, I haven’t been able to come up with my next goal, which should be reducing the amount I smoke each day even more or coming up with a quit date. I still have the same reasons for wanting to quit smoking and I still feel very strongly about quitting, but I feel as though I am missing the focus or drive needed to reach my overall goal! I have been having a really hard time managing my stress and time, which has made it difficult to keep up with everything involved with the program, and has made it even harder to visualize myself as being smoke free. Sandy and I decided that between last Friday and the next time we meet, I need to pick a day and go through the whole day without smoking.

I am really trying to increase my positive mental talk in order to retrain my brain that I do not need to smoke. This does not seem like a difficult task to most people, but the hardest part is actually remembering to think about what you are doing, i.e. thinking about what you were doing when you smoked, what you were thinking and actually thinking about why you decided to smoke in the first place. Smoking has been a part of my daily routine for a while now, and it is hard to replace something you have become so acquired to and then completely remove it from your life. I am hoping by the next time I blog I will have made a decision regarding my quit date and that I will also have a more positive update for you all!