Sure, we can read a book and hope all your answers are in there, but we are all individuals with different chemical makeups and different emotions and different backgrounds and different thoughts and philosophies. So one book doesn't have the answers for all of us. Now, we have to find the right book. That could take hours. That could take years! What if nobody wrote it yet! Forget it, too hard.
It is hard. Nobody ever told us it was easy and it's not. It's hard. But what is so horrible about life being hard? I mean, what is so horrible about working on something? We are such a selfish society. We are so spoiled. We prefer to sit on some high pedestal, perched up above the clouds and call out our wants and needs and expect them to be delivered to our door. We are so accustomed to not working hard. We are so very pampered. And this quit ain't carry out! You are going to have to work on it.
You can't sit high on a cushioned perch and expect your quit to work. You can not lounge through a quit. It is not going to happen. You are going to have to come down here in the real world and work. You are going to have to come up with some answers all by yourself. You are going to have to search and seek and discover and reveal things inside of yourself. And you are not going to escape it. If you think you will, you won't quit. You might go through the motions and you might quit for a while, but a real quit, that lasts months, is going to take hard work and honest-to-God changes.
So, the reward isn't going to be a cigarette. And in order for that to sink in, you are going to have to find the answers. You will have to find new rewards and new reasons for everything. Your whole world needs to be rebuilt. That's hard. But it's worth it.
It's like anything that doesn't work anymore. You just can't ignore it. You can't turn your back on it and hope it fixes itself. It won't. It only gets worse. If you don't stop smoking, someday you might face an operation or worse, sudden illness without warning. And you might miss your grandchildren's graduations. That's what isn't working in your world. You might need oxygen to get through a day. That doesn't work. There's a better world.
But it needs overhauled. Like an engine in a car that's broken. The parts and pieces just wore out. They're outdated and they're old and they're useless.
Your reward is not the cigarette and that's outdated and it's useless in your new world. It's hard work. It's something only you can do. You can't hire a team of experts to do it for you. And you are going to change a whole lot!
I remember distinctly thinking this: "Ok, I want to quit smoking but I don't want to work at it. And I don't want to change anything else, just that one little part. And I want to do it painlessly and easily. I want very little emotional turmoil. I want nothing to rock my boat."
And then the real quit happened. And it was not like that. But I lived. I lived and am better for it. It isn't easy but it's worth it. I wish I could give you the hope. I wish I could paint a picture of how beautiful you are when you work hard. I wish I could breathe inspiration into your lungs and fill you with desire. But I can't. Because each one of us has our own agenda. You just have to follow your own. Good luck and keep the quit!
