One would think, with the wish and desire to be free of cigarettes, healthier, different, better, more recovered, free from mental anguish and crippling fear and needling ego, that I would be eager to change.

 

 

You would think.

And I am.

But what I think is change and what is really change are sometimes two different things.

Yes, I want to change... yet how often is it that what I really want is a different result -- absolutely! -- but from my same, comfortable process?

Or yes, I want to change, but on my time table..... which is not a very realistic one.  And if it doesn't happen in the time I decree, then I give up.  Not with a big, dramatic temper tantrum.....so easy to clock for what it is....oh no, the much sneakier (and in its own way sicker) slow fade back to same old same old.

Or yes, I want to change... but what I really want is to feel like the kind of person who wants to change, I want to look like the kind of person who wants to change... I want to look like the kind of person who is working to change... but I really don't want to change.  I'm just posing.

The real challenge for me today is to be deeply willing to be different, and by deeply I mean in my secret heart, not on the surface where it's all the Miss SoberJulie Show.... for myself more than anyone else, actually.

As many wiser than I have observed, it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful. 

I always thought that was about external changes thrust upon me...and certainly, it applies... but lately I've come to see how with  help  it is I who can be my own catalyst for real, substantive change in my outlook and behavior... and it is also I who can be my own saboteur, my own stumbling block... my own jailer.

I don't smoke (and for myself, drink or drug) one day at a time, and that is enough powerful transformation for any one addict/drunk/junkie to experience.  But to settle for that alone, as I stay clean and sober and free of disastrous substances like nicotine, day by day, is throwing the gift back, I believe.

Some days this kind of thinking does indeed qualify as being too tough on myself.

But other days, if I'm not ruthlessly honest about these things, I'm just living in the bullshit.

 

What a powerful, honest post!  I especially like this: 

 

 

As many wiser than I have observed, it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful. 

I always thought that was about external changes thrust upon me...and certainly, it applies... but lately I've come to see how with  help  it is I who can be my own catalyst for real, substantive change in my outlook and behavior... and it is also I who can be my own saboteur, my own stumbling block... my own jailer.

I love this post.

Quitting smoking has served as a catalyst for other changes in my life,

I am far more honest and current with myself than I used to be.

Smoking hid a lot of inner gunk but, once it hits the light....it isn't arduous to see or adjust.