The work we have to do starts with some things I've had to reluctantly and grumblingly ACCEPT, and so do you:
It won't be exactly the same, in every single way, as smoking our tobacco cigarettes.
It's a different thing, so there will be some - hello! differences.
There will be a learning curve, and there will be an adjustment period.
It is we who will have to do the learning, the curving, and the adjusting.
As if that weren't enough, we also have to DO THE WORK
Smoking tobacco cigarettes requires so little effort that we don't even have to think about it.
Even if we choose the simplest kind, like the KR808d-1s I use, where you just screw one cylinder onto another, plug it into the wall and puff it, it's still harder than smoking a tobacco cigarette.
There's no Get Out Of Learning Curve Free card, no getting around things like the weight of our e-cigarette, which will be a bigger challenge for some than others, but it'll be an adjustment for everybody.
The good news: Rewards are almost immediate!
SELF-DISCOVERY and SELF-KNOWLEDGE
As soon as our foot hits the ground in our first step up that learning curve, the first benefit begins trickling in. That benefit is self-discovery, which rapidly grows into its own big sister, self-knowledge.
In my case, the first thing I discovered is that I smoke a lot more tobacco cigarettes than I realized, and that a great many of those are smoked without my conscious knowledge.
In other words, the process of pulling a cigarette out and smoking it has become so deeply ingrained into my muscle memory that I can sit here and smoke a whole handful of the things without realizing I've so much as touched the pack.
Another thing I've learned is especially valuable: I didn't think I could make one of those lists of smoking "triggers," or occasions when I wanted a cigarette more than others. In an earlier blogrant here, I even sneered that my "trigger" is being alive and breathing.
That's not entirely untrue, but it is a little more nuanced than I knew when I wrote that.
I'll be able to make that list - but first I have to become conscious of all that unconscious smoking!
CHOICES AND AWARENESS
I lumped those together for a reason. If we're not aware that we have a choice, then for all practical purposes, we don't.
As long as I'm sitting here smoking cigarettes without being aware that I'm even smoking them, how can I say I'm really making a choice to smoke at all?
CLAIM CONTROL
Once we've been made aware that choices exist, all ownership rights and all powers pertaining thereto are automatically conferred upon us. Then we have the choice to claim those powers, and claim control over those previously-unseen options - and choose one!
SMOKE WHEN YOU WANT TO
This is some of the wisest advice I've received from people here.
Whenever you want to, go ahead and smoke a tobacco cigarette - while you're sitting there looking at something that gives you the same to better sensations, smells better, costs less, is better for you, and tastes way better than any tobacco cigarette could ever hope to.
That's making a conscious choice. It is, by anybody's definition, a bad choice. It's also a choice that most of us who are on this particular path will make multiple times every day for a while.
SELF-SABOTAGE IS A SEDUCTIVE ....
Self-sabotage wants you. It wants all of us, and we are all, independent of our culture, faith tradition or gender preference, susceptible to it in varying degrees.
When we make that bad choice, and smoke a tobacco cigarette, the act of smoking it immediately confers upon us another choice. We can let ourselves be seduced by self-sabotage and beat ourselves up about it, or we can pick up our e-cigarette, start puffing, and go on doing whatever it was we were doing.
Every choice has consequences. Some of the consequences of lecturing and reprimanding ourselves, for example, are defeatism and discouragement, from which spring excuses.
If we choose to judge the act of smoking the cigarette, and by extension, judge ourselves, by characterizing it as a terrible thing that we've done, only the lowliest dregs of humanity would be capable of even considering such a reprehensible act, and we actually did it, therefore we don't even deserve a chance to upgrade - and poof! We're defeated before we even got started!
Even if we're far too fond of ourselves to do a convincing job of self-abdegnation, we're still not immune to defeatism. We'll just put the onus onto the cigarettes themselves, make them the bad guy. That even has the advantage of a basis in truth. But when we tell ourselves that smoking the cigarette is proof that they are so powerful that we can't possibly upgrade, the consequences include not only defeatism and the resulting ready-made excuse, but the bestowing of imaginary powers upon our tobacco cigarettes!
The things are already addictive and very bad for us, do they really deserve the big promotion and corner office that come with supernatural force status too?
If we simply must anthropomorphize something, let's do it to self-sabotage.
She's the one standing in the doorway, drooling and quivering with the mad desire to make us believe warm piles of ish!
Compare all that nonsense to to the consequences of the other choice we have - picking up our e-cigarette and puffing it as we go on about our day, without deigning to give smoking a cigarette so much as standing room in a designated area out by the dumpster along the sidelines of our neural pathways.
If we choose that door, Oh, look! We're notsmoking our e-cigarette, which is, after all, what we set out to do - and here we are, doing just that! Aha! Affirmation! YaY us!
As we pat ourselves on the back, and congratulate ourselves for making such a good choice, self-sabotage slinks away, seething and whimpering with impotent rage.
It won't be exactly the same, in every single way, as smoking our tobacco cigarettes.
It's a different thing, so there will be some - hello! differences.
There will be a learning curve, and there will be an adjustment period.
It is we who will have to do the learning, the curving, and the adjusting.
As if that weren't enough, we also have to DO THE WORK
Smoking tobacco cigarettes requires so little effort that we don't even have to think about it.
Even if we choose the simplest kind, like the KR808d-1s I use, where you just screw one cylinder onto another, plug it into the wall and puff it, it's still harder than smoking a tobacco cigarette.
There's no Get Out Of Learning Curve Free card, no getting around things like the weight of our e-cigarette, which will be a bigger challenge for some than others, but it'll be an adjustment for everybody.
The good news: Rewards are almost immediate!
SELF-DISCOVERY and SELF-KNOWLEDGE
As soon as our foot hits the ground in our first step up that learning curve, the first benefit begins trickling in. That benefit is self-discovery, which rapidly grows into its own big sister, self-knowledge.
In my case, the first thing I discovered is that I smoke a lot more tobacco cigarettes than I realized, and that a great many of those are smoked without my conscious knowledge.
In other words, the process of pulling a cigarette out and smoking it has become so deeply ingrained into my muscle memory that I can sit here and smoke a whole handful of the things without realizing I've so much as touched the pack.
Another thing I've learned is especially valuable: I didn't think I could make one of those lists of smoking "triggers," or occasions when I wanted a cigarette more than others. In an earlier blogrant here, I even sneered that my "trigger" is being alive and breathing.
That's not entirely untrue, but it is a little more nuanced than I knew when I wrote that.
I'll be able to make that list - but first I have to become conscious of all that unconscious smoking!
CHOICES AND AWARENESS
I lumped those together for a reason. If we're not aware that we have a choice, then for all practical purposes, we don't.
As long as I'm sitting here smoking cigarettes without being aware that I'm even smoking them, how can I say I'm really making a choice to smoke at all?
CLAIM CONTROL
Once we've been made aware that choices exist, all ownership rights and all powers pertaining thereto are automatically conferred upon us. Then we have the choice to claim those powers, and claim control over those previously-unseen options - and choose one!
SMOKE WHEN YOU WANT TO
This is some of the wisest advice I've received from people here.
Whenever you want to, go ahead and smoke a tobacco cigarette - while you're sitting there looking at something that gives you the same to better sensations, smells better, costs less, is better for you, and tastes way better than any tobacco cigarette could ever hope to.
That's making a conscious choice. It is, by anybody's definition, a bad choice. It's also a choice that most of us who are on this particular path will make multiple times every day for a while.
SELF-SABOTAGE IS A SEDUCTIVE ....
Self-sabotage wants you. It wants all of us, and we are all, independent of our culture, faith tradition or gender preference, susceptible to it in varying degrees.
When we make that bad choice, and smoke a tobacco cigarette, the act of smoking it immediately confers upon us another choice. We can let ourselves be seduced by self-sabotage and beat ourselves up about it, or we can pick up our e-cigarette, start puffing, and go on doing whatever it was we were doing.
Every choice has consequences. Some of the consequences of lecturing and reprimanding ourselves, for example, are defeatism and discouragement, from which spring excuses.
If we choose to judge the act of smoking the cigarette, and by extension, judge ourselves, by characterizing it as a terrible thing that we've done, only the lowliest dregs of humanity would be capable of even considering such a reprehensible act, and we actually did it, therefore we don't even deserve a chance to upgrade - and poof! We're defeated before we even got started!
Even if we're far too fond of ourselves to do a convincing job of self-abdegnation, we're still not immune to defeatism. We'll just put the onus onto the cigarettes themselves, make them the bad guy. That even has the advantage of a basis in truth. But when we tell ourselves that smoking the cigarette is proof that they are so powerful that we can't possibly upgrade, the consequences include not only defeatism and the resulting ready-made excuse, but the bestowing of imaginary powers upon our tobacco cigarettes!
The things are already addictive and very bad for us, do they really deserve the big promotion and corner office that come with supernatural force status too?
If we simply must anthropomorphize something, let's do it to self-sabotage.
She's the one standing in the doorway, drooling and quivering with the mad desire to make us believe warm piles of ish!
Compare all that nonsense to to the consequences of the other choice we have - picking up our e-cigarette and puffing it as we go on about our day, without deigning to give smoking a cigarette so much as standing room in a designated area out by the dumpster along the sidelines of our neural pathways.
If we choose that door, Oh, look! We're notsmoking our e-cigarette, which is, after all, what we set out to do - and here we are, doing just that! Aha! Affirmation! YaY us!
As we pat ourselves on the back, and congratulate ourselves for making such a good choice, self-sabotage slinks away, seething and whimpering with impotent rage.
