Like I said in my last post I have been applying the small goal system to my own life and have gotten wonderful results. Starting the very first week of this quarter I decided that I was going to try out this system. Knowing what I wanted the end result to be, to quit smoking, it seemed like I was just making another long term goal. So I decided scratch quitting smoking I’m going to make one goal at a time based on the last small goal completed. So I set out to make my first goal. I knew that if I really wanted to end solution to be me not smoking I had to tackle every part of this addiction. The oral fixation, daily routine, smoker’s logic and so on…. but I had to start somewhere. I still had a full pack of cigarettes and a few left in my cigarette case and I wasn’t about to throw them away or give them away. So I decided my first goal would be to smoke the rest of my cigarettes. Once I completed that goal I had to make the second based on the first one. So the first goal left me cigarette-less so what would I normally do when I am out of cigarettes? Buy more!!! But not this time! With the end result in mind my next goal would be to not buy cigarettes and to make that really easy for myself. I only used to buy cigarettes on my way to or from school from my house and always at the same gas station. So I started driving a different way home and made a rule for myself that I couldn’t buy cigarettes anywhere else but there but I wasn’t allowed to drive past that store on the way home. There for leaving me unable to buy cigarettes. So after I accomplished those small goals I was smoking significantly less because I was only buying individual cigarettes from friends for quarters or bumming them from my friends. After about a week of that I started to feel bad for bumming all the time so I set my next goal of not bumming cigarettes. This only left me able to share others cigarettes with them, this left me smoking barely at all. Then I set my hardest small goal only smoke once every three days or less!!! Then after the first three days I forgot about smoking and my goal changed into being once a week and now, after ten long weeks I make little to no exceptions to smoke and I have not smoked at all in over a week. Small goals with a larger goal in mind. I set a lot more goal along the way those were just the major small goals that aided me in quitting smoking.
Through this whole process of quitting smoking I didn’t allow myself to look at any of the quitting smoking information until I actually did it because I wanted it to feel that much better and be that much prouder of myself for doing it for my own reasons. As well as the fact that I wanted to feel the difference in my health because I felt it not because I had read something that put ideas in my mind how I was supposed to be feeling.
So here is the information I have been waiting all quarter to read myself!!! Courtesy of this wonderful website listed below:
http://whyquit.com/whyquit/a_benefits_time_table.html
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Within …
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• 20 minutes
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Your blood pressure, pulse rate and the temperature of your hands and feet have returned to normal. |
• 8 hours
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Remaining nicotine in your bloodstream will have fallen to 6.25% of normal peak daily levels, a 93.75% reduction. |
• 12 hours
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Your blood oxygen level will have increased to normal and carbon monoxide levels will have dropped to normal. |
• 24 hours
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Anxieties have peaked in intensity and within two weeks should return to near pre-cessation levels. |
• 48 hours
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Damaged nerve endings have started to regrow and your sense of smell and taste are beginning to return to normal. Cessation anger and irritability will have peaked. |
• 72 hours
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Your entire body will test 100% nicotine-free and over 90% of all nicotine metabolites (the chemicals it breaks down into) will now have passed from your body via your urine. Symptoms of chemical withdrawal have peaked in intensity, including restlessness. The number of cue induced crave episodes experienced during any quitting day will peak for the “average” ex-user. Lung bronchial tubes leading to air sacs (alveoli) are beginning to relax in recovering smokers. Breathing is becoming easier and the lung’s functional abilities are starting to increase. |
• 5 – 8 days
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The “average” ex-smoker will encounter an “average” of three cue induced crave episodes per day. Although we may not be “average” and although serious cessation time distortion can make minutes feel like hours, it is unlikely that any single episode will last longer than 3 minutes. Keep a clock handy and time them. |
• 10 days
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10 days – The “average” ex-user is down to encountering less than two crave episodes per day, each less than 3 minutes. |
• 10 days to 2 weeks
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Recovery has likely progressed to the point where your addiction is no longer doing the talking. Blood circulation in your gums and teeth are now similar to that of a non-user. |
• 2 to 4 weeks
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Cessation related anger, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, impatience, insomnia, restlessness and depression have ended. If still experiencing any of these symptoms get seen and evaluated by your physician. |
• 21 days
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Brain acetylcholine receptor counts that were up-regulated in response to nicotine’s presence have now down-regulated and receptor binding has returned to levels seen in the brains of non-smokers. |
• 2 weeks to 3 months
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Your heart attack risk has started to drop. Your lung function is beginning to improve. |
• 3 weeks to 3 months
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Your circulation has substantially improved. Walking has become easier. Your chronic cough, if any, has likely disappeared. If not, get seen by a doctor, and sooner if at all concerned, as a chronic cough can be a sign of lung cancer. |
My logic with sharing how this process helped me is that all quarter I have been thinking to myself that if this works for me( solving the problem one step at a time from the sources not just putting Band-Aids over problems) then how could others, specifically homeless members of society, use this system to help themselves. How can I mold what I have applied to my life to fit it to other problems as well as others? How can I help people learn to do this effectively so that they are better to help themselves into more desirable situations? I would choose to create more resources that treat how and why people are becoming homeless as well as spread awareness. This could help reduce the amount of people who are becoming homeless so that the limited resourced that there are able to make a bigger impact.
This quarter what I have found to be true it that being Homelessness and not having a traditional domestic space means you don’t fit into the “normal” standard of living we think of in the united states. This in turn leads to not being able to get the things you need and going without. What I want to work towards is learning how to make better resources more available to people who don’t fit the standard, to help the people who slip through the crack for whatever reason.
