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On the Desire to Live and Helpful Hints for Quitting Smoking
I will break into this week's helpful hints for quitting smoking by telling you about last week. Last week was one of my roughest weeks in that my father passed away quite unexpectedly. As I look back I can see the signs in that the last few years of his life were not very happy ones. He did not have much of a life, as all that he enjoyed had been taken away from him.
In the last years of his life, my father could not see to watch the movies he enjoyed. He was unable to sing, which had always been the joy of his life. He could not jump about and play with his grandchildren, or make them laugh- another joy gone. And in fact he could not do much except sit in his chair at the house- and later move from the chair to the bed in the hospital where he was sent for his diabetes.
Now it may seem odd to talk about this in a blog entitled "Helpful Hints for Quitting Smoking." So I will tell you that I consider this blog to be more along the lines of an inquiry- and I do not have all the answers.
I have some answers to some questions- questions like "How do addictions work?" and "Why do people in general do what they do, in the way that they do it?" And I can make a good stab at helping people one-on-one to shift their behavior. But in the final analysis it is you and no-one else who will or won't quit smoking.
So I mention this about my dad as an inquiry, and because I could see in those last days of his life that the heart and soul had gone out of him. There was nothing left for him to live for. And although he was clearly struggling about letting go of the people he loved, on some level I could see that he had a wish to go.
So I take this into the realm of our inquiry by saying that if you are struggling in your life for some reason, or if you have terminal and ongoing upsets and pain in your life- if you are in short unhappy- how much chance will there be that you will actually quit smoking? You will be living, like my dad, in the confusion, with conflicting desires. And one can hardly argue that smoking is one easy, socially acceptable way to fulfill on some hidden wish to die.
Now I would be the last one to say that all people who smoke are fulfilling death wishes. Smoking is an addiction and it is pretty hard to conquer the physical and emotional cravings. However I do say that it is probable that my blog on helpful hints for quitting smoking will not be useful to those who are actually living lives of misery. There would almost have to be some latent, or blatant, desire to stop the pain, somehow.
And one could argue that to conquer an addiction- any addiction- the drive to live must be strong, huge, and urgent. So as you do your Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or whatever method you use to begin to quit, do not miss the opportunity to take a good look at your life. And shift your life if necessary into a space of happiness. Now I could certainly do a hundred articles on how to do that. But a good place to start is by looking at my other blogs. My dad, by the way, was a terminally happy person, and not a bad example to follow when he was in good health and fully functioning.
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