Those who have successfully quit smoking were only able to succeed after many failed attempts.  Ironically, most “how to stop smoking” books sell you on how easy it is to quit.  Well…if it were easy to quit, no one would smoke.

I’m confident even the ones who claim to quit “cold turkey” weren’t able to do so the first go around…and if they did…God bless them.

Anything that is worthwhile to achieve takes time to master…and believe me, quitting smoking falls under this umbrella.  So don’t be discouraged if you fail at times along the way.  Just make sure you don’t give up.  Please understand, to quit smoking, both the mind and the body need to be conditioned to accept its new reality, so be diligent.

As a child learns to walk, he too has to condition his mind and body for his new reality…which is mobility. Believe me…as he begins his journey, there’s a lot of falling down going on…but, it’s the getting up which breeds his success.

There has never been, and never will be, a significant accomplishment without first a series of failures to learn from.

So the first step to quit smoking, or any other endeavor for that matter, is to get past the idea that a failure equals a defeat…because it DOESN’T! It’s just an opportunity to regroup, learn from your previous mistakes, and tune up your desire to prepare to get started again.

Each time you regroup, you do so with new knowledge gained from the previous journey, which will strengthen your resolve to figure this thing out…and believe me…you will figure it out as I did after my many failures…30 years ago.

Bill Peak
Subscribe to Dad’s Wisdoms by Email