Put a limit on it – avoiding “Forever”.

Posted on May 27, 2008

Some things are just too hard. You contemplate them, and something deep inside you rebels.

Me, I had this for years with smoking. On top of the physical addiction, there was a pile of self image and emotional content attached to smoking, and this was something that I clung to, for reasons I didn’t fully understand. I still don’t, to be honest – I’m still feeling around the edges of them, and it will take me some time to get to the centre

Suffice it to say that removing smoking from my life was one of the harder things I’ve done. One of the things that made it so hard was the concept of forever… the idea of never smoking again.

So, I got rid of that idea. I didn’t quit smoking forever, I quit for a month. I gave myself an escape clause – if I still really wanted to be smoking after a month, I could start again. This was just a deal with myself, I didn’t announce it to anyone, but it’s what I kept in mind – for the first couple of weeks.

After the first couple of weeks, the whole thing became easier. I’d broken the back of the habit, I was feeling some of the (obvious) health benefits

The same applies with any change you want to make – put a limit around it. For most things I think a month is about right. Forever is just too much to face, too much of a barrier for you to see yourself being able to get over.

If you’re trying to get fitter, and you’ve decided you need to hit the gym four times a week – go 4 times a week for a month. That’s long enough to see the results you’re trying to see, long enough to get into some good habits, into a good routine, but short enough that the end is in sight.

Getting started (see previous post) is one thing, and probably the most important thing. But for lasting change, you need to reset your attitudes. I find a month is long enough for the major reset – enough to get you out of the rut you were in, and to have started building a new rut.

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  Sometimes, less is more. I firmly believe that you can improve your quality of life by carefully limiting what's included in it.
  
  This site is about living without certain things, either permanently or as an experiment. It's based in part on my own experiences and experiments, and partly on the experiences of others that I read about.
  
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