After smoking for about 21 years, I quit in 1988. This was back in the days when you could smoke in the workplace. I kept a bag of cashews and a bag of butterscotch candies in my desk at work and did the same at home. As 2 things that I REALLY liked, they were my substitutes. As quitting is a fairly long process, I had a lot of time to think about what was going on.
What prompted this was that my kids had seen this film at school about the dangers of smoking. They showed these images of autopsied lungs of people who had smoked and died of a smoking related illness. Anyway, it freaked them out and they just KNEW I was going to die.
So, originally I decided to quit for them. Not a bad reason, but that was my original perspective. However, as the process moved along, what I realized is that the only way for things to work in the long run is that I had to quit for ME and not for THEM. When you do something like this at the behest of someone else, if it fails it isn't your fault. It is theirs. Likewise, if it works, it isn't because you did it, it's because they told you to do it. In one sense, it can take away responsibility for one's actions. On the other, we don't get to enjoy our successes.
How this ties in:
If you're doing something in response, make sure you are doing it because you have internalized it and believe it is the correct thing to do at the time. It's never good to be coerced into doing something. It only serves to make us resentful.
