★★★★★
So I quit "trying" to make myself quit. Then I noticed that I was saving up reasons to quit, like collecting shells or rocks. There were too many to keep track of mentally, so I began to write them down. I had NO plans to use them as leverage. I just wanted to see how many I could find. When I had found 144 reasons to quit, something must have clicked for me. One morning I looked in the mirror and said aloud, "I'm not going to smoke anymore." It was an all- of -me- decision. I wasn't dragging the reluctant side of myself into it.
Each time I thought of smoking over the next couple of weeks, I told myself I could smoke if I wanted to, but the days, hours and minutes I had amassed as a non-smoker were mounting up and would be a shame to waste, since I had wanted to quit for a long time.
This reasoning process helped me through the temptation times, along with a deep breathing pattern that just "came to me". When I took THREE DEEP BREATHS, holding one after the other as long as I could stand the pain in my lungs before gasping for air, it took the urge to smoke away, (because I felt sick and dizzy, probably.)
After a few short weeks I didn't want to smoke anymore. That was such a long time ago, it seems like I never smoked.
