Packing – Your Habits

Maybe you smoke. Maybe you eat when you’re stressed. Maybe you fidget. Maybe you zone out at the end of the day with an hour or so of TV. None of these things are going to go away just because you move somewhere else.

It can be easier to start or stop a particular habit in a different place, somewhere that the pressure isn’t as intense or the triggers that bring on the urge aren’t present, but it might be harder, too. Before you pack up your life to move somewhere else to start over, take a good long look at what you’re packing. If you don’t want to smoke in the new chapter of your life, quit now. Don’t say that you’re getting in the last bit of pleasure or that it’s too much to make the change and quit smoking at the same time. Quit now, because you don’t know how tenacious your urge to smoke will be in the new place. If you’re doing a very thorough job of making a new start, part of your brain will tell you that smoking is familiar, and in all this newness and strangeness, something familiar would be nice. So you should smoke, or eat, or watch TV, or do whatever else it is that you don’t want to do. Quit now, say goodbye now. You’ll have plenty of goodbyes to say later.