Patience allows us to navigate anxieties when confronted by challenges. Our goal is simple, to move beyond challenges until challenge subsides; until our addiction's daily chatter goes silent.
We cannot build a wall with a single brick, receive a new baby after only one month of pregnancy, get a college degree after just one class, or cook a delicious holiday dinner in a few short minutes? Imagine getting half of the meal cooked and then fleeing the kitchen, or building half a wall and then walking away.
Going the distance in life, completing each challenge, and accomplishing our goal is normal and expected. Swimming halfway across the river and then stopping is not.
So how do we navigate the up to 72 hours needed to move beyond peak withdrawal? Just one hour and challenge (if any) at a time.
Managing impatience can be as simple as turning lemons to lemonade in making each task smaller and tasting each victory sooner.
Whether confronting a physical withdrawal symptom, struggling with a recovery emotion, encountering an un-extinguished subconscious crave trigger, or fixating on conscious thoughts about using, the goal is the same, to summons the patience needed to experience victory here and now. But how?
The first step is the biggest, mustering the courage to initially say "no" to the wanting building within. There's beauty in the rational thinking mind (your prefrontal cortex) discovering that it has the power to say "no" to begging flowing from the primitive impulsive mind (the limbic or lizard brain).
Those of us addicted to inhaled nicotine conditioned ourselves to expect to sense the satisfaction of nicotine urges and craves within 8-10 seconds of inhaling a puff. Is it any wonder that it may take a few victories before growing confident and skilled at saying "no" to the impulse to use?
Strive to embrace recovery, not fight it. For example, crave episodes are good, not bad. There is a prize at the end of each, breaking and silencing another use cue, and return of another aspect of a nicotine-free life.
When we take recovery just one challenge at a time, it isn't long before so many aspects of life get reclaimed that we have no choice but to accept a simple truth. Everything done while nicotine's slave can be done as well or better without it.
As Joel notes, we're forced to realize that our thoughts of what life would be like as an ex-user were all wrong, that there is life afterwards and that "it is a cleaner, calmer, fuller and most importantly, a healthier life."
Challenge may involve an internal debate. If so, you'll need to muster the patience needed to allow time for honesty and reason to prevail. Chapter 11 is loaded with coping techniques for handling subconscious crave episodes. And Chapter 12 shares tips associated with navigating periods of conscious thought fixation.
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