To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.
I've been thinking a lot about decisions lately.
“I’m going to stop smoking”. “I’m going on a diet”. Taking the big decision is easy. The hard part is to take all the little decisions that make it happen, time after time, day after day. The decision not to go out and buy some cigarettes, the decision to not eat that bar of chocolate, to walk for 20 minutes instead of taking the car, to weigh your pasta, to drink some water, to not eat the instant you feel 'hungry' – dozens of tiny decisions to be taken again and again.
Making the changes, consciously making all those decisions every day, gets tiring and draining and feels like it’s grinding you down sometimes. It makes living your life feel such an effort some days.
But. After a while, if you keep taking those conscious decisions, they become your new habits. I no longer have to constantly decide not to smoke. Not smoking is now just what I do, it’s who I am. There are still moments when I have to decide not to smoke, but they are few and far between and the decision is no longer a hard one to make.
So. I am guessing, hoping, that it’s like that with changing my eating habits. Right now, some days, it feels like too much trouble. One more thing I have to deal with and work on, one more thing I have to do. But if I keep on doing it, it will become part of me, and I will perhaps even reach the mythical state of Thinking Like A Slim Person.
A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, but it continues with the decision to keep on putting foot in front of foot, taken over and over again.
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