watch tHe skies

The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

Interesting statement. I wonder if it’s true… at what point in your life do you think you will have tread the same paths enough time for the ruts to form that dictate the rest of your existence?

“Life begins at 40″ some say, I wonder if they mean that by that time you’ve learnt all you need to learn and hence have more time to mess about?

If you could start your life over tomorrow, what would you do differently?

Why not start doing that differently today? The past is just a memory, and memories are just imaginations that you think are true, so you can imagine it happened however suits you best. So you can do things differently today. Start over right now and imagine now how you’ll be different tomorrow.

So at the weekend I spoke to my first smoke-free “victim”, who I helped about a month or so ago to stop smoking.  She’s still going strong and is finding it easier every day. It seems that at the session we pretty much killed her smoking habit and her challenge has been to find new things left by the void previously occupied by the habit.

Her big challenge is in dealing with new situations “smoke free”. That is, when she thinks about something that she is going to do, she wonders whether it will be as much fun without a cigarette. Sounds daft to many and to her it is reality. I did point out that she could indeed wonder how much more fun she will have in those new situations with more money and not having to stand outside every fifteen minutes… after all it is only her internal map of the world that suggests that she needs to think about it at all.

She also noted that it’s had a knock-on effect on some of her friends. One of her friends seems to have cut back or quit completely, whilst another smoked considerably less when he was with her. This makes her feel even better about herself, which is great by me. (more…)