Smoking is not more fun than me

I have quit smoking. I said I wanted to quit a while back but I didnt really mean it. Then I really wanted to quit and now I have. 

The reason I know that I have really quit is that I haven't told anyone. I have realized alone and accepted that smoking is not only bad for my health, it really doesn't suit me. I don't know why I have been ingesting something as disgusting as a cigarette all these years. It doesn't taste nice, it ages my organs and it makes me smell bad. My mother had breast cancer a few years ago and cannot stand the fact that I would deliberately increase my odds of contracting a disease similar and risk having to have the same chemotherapy treatment that she had.  

Sometimes personal rationale defies all logic and reason. I have a two ideas why I did smoke though which I will sheepishly admit; I smoke because it alleviates nervous tension and because its "cool" to smoke aka it makes me look like a "bad girl". I like the title of bad girl because it suggests I am elusive and dangerous which is synonymous with fun. This leads me to the conclusion that I am an insecure wreck in social situations which makes me need to smoke to project the opposite social caption. 

Did you ever do something inauthentic because you cared more about what other people thought than how much you valued yourself? I think smoking is on par with this. Why would a person lovingly ingest chemicals that are proven to kill you slowly unless they are happy to accept that their health is not as valuable to them? 

Now that I have cracked the code to my smoking habit I am pretty certain this issue needs to be addressed. And its probably going to be hard to change a bad habit when there's been no hard lesson to motivate a reason to let it go. There are a lot of things that I think are "bad habits" that bring temporal gratification but not lasting overall benefit. I guess the true key to breaking bad habits is thinking about the larger picture; where they fit into the overall. 

 

I am going to attempt to adopt a "smoking is not more fun than me" policy this year. Its pretty shameful that I would think that changing an external symbol would shape my personality. I know that you can divert others away from who you are with external cues from personal experience as a model and actress. I also know that regardless of how successful you are with this tactic, you cannot change who you are on the inside by focusing on the outside. If I'm insecure about looking boring and feel a pressure from peers to be "cool" its because there are no facts that exist to suggest otherwise. 

I have a fun list. I wrote it in an earlier blog. Every time I want a cigarette Im going to take action to knock off one of the checks on the list. The satisfaction from that will be much better in the long run than the gratification of a 5 minute cigarette can ever do for me.