From Smoke to Clarity Unveiling a Journey of Change (Reflecting on 2023 Goals)

Have you ever faced the sting of unmet goals or the rollercoaster ride of quitting a stubborn habit? Walk with me through the highs and lows of my personal quest this past year, from the weight loss ambitions that didn't quite pan out to the smoke-filled battlefields I've finally conquered. This episode isn't just a confession booth—it's a raw and honest exploration of the challenges we all face when trying to change our lives. We'll unravel the complexities of setting too many goals, the potential pitfalls of overambition, and the power of pivoting to a more incremental, sustainable approach to personal transformation.

As the smoke clears on my year-long endeavor to quit smoking, I lay bare the gritty details of this journey, including the false starts with vaping and the inspirational 'Stoptober' challenge that ultimately led to my victory over nicotine. It's a story of persistence, of finding what works through trial and error, and of the unanticipated allies and strategies that emerge along the way. I'm reaching out a hand to anyone grappling with their own hurdles, offering a message of solidarity and a reminder that your support network is just a tweet or DM away. Tune in for an episode brimming with vulnerability, triumph, and a roadmap for tackling your own goals in the year ahead.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Hello and welcome to another episode of Talk Mode. Well, normally around this time of the year, we sit here, we set some goals. You've seen me do some episodes on this. Before I talk about how to set new years resolutions, how to set goals, I thought I'd do a little bit of a different type of episode here, and instead today we're going to reflect on some of the goals that I set for myself In 2023, see how I did, if I achieved some, if I didn't achieve them, how far I got, what let me down, where I fell over, etc. Etc. So, yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Okay, so let's start off with some of the goals that I did not achieve in this past year through various different reasons, like lack of discipline, lack of commitment, got distracted with other things that became more important, or you know, you know when you struggle a bit. Sometimes you know when you go too hard on yourself and maybe I took the wrong steps at the wrong time to achieve some of these. So let's start off with goal number one was to simply lose some weight. I had a target weight in mind. I was floating around a certain way and I had a target weight in mind, started a year off really positively, trying to make a gym session a regular part of my week. So I was trying to go gym between three and five times a week and I did. I had various points in the year where I managed to stick to that, but I think overall I didn't change my eating habits and all I didn't stick to not diets I don't necessarily believe in diets but like just eating better and being more healthy and being more active, and I didn't stick to it enough and wasn't consistent enough or disciplined enough to keep it going throughout the year. And in fact I want to say that I've put on a couple of kilos instead of losing the amount of weight I want to lose. So that's a full, full fledged failure on that particular goal in terms of the target weight I was aiming for. The one positive I can take from it is I've figured out what not to do in the next coming year, Because it's still going to be a goal that I'm going to carry over and I still want to achieve that. But I figured out by going through this year, doing the things I tried and trying all these different techniques to lose the weight or even just be committed to a routine. I figured out what not to do in that time also, so I can use that information to help me go ahead and push for achieving that goal next year.

Speaker 1: 4:05

The other part that we need to take into account when failing a goal is sometimes the failure lies not in what you do, but how much you do, and I think that possibly I walked into it trying to do too much too quickly and too much at once. Like go for a half a day, go gym five days a week, you know, stop bad habits, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and trying to do all of that in one shot becomes overwhelming and you stick to it for a couple of weeks and then you just fail. A lot of people fail their New Year resolutions within the first couple of months, and that's the reason because we're trying to do too many things at the same time, all in one go, and our body or mind or whatever it is, just can't take it. It's just too much change in one shot. So I know now to make more incremental steps, take small steps, for example, in terms of this particular goal coming.

Speaker 1: 5:15

I want to carry this goal over. I still want to lose weight this year and improve my physical health. So I'm going to start off by making sure I just go for a short walk in the morning. That's it. No, don't worry about no diet no, feel like that. No intense exercise in the gym. Let's just start off by making activity the first thing I do in the day. So when I wake up, get ready, go out for a little walk 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is and that'll be what I try to do to now achieve this goal next year. Right, let's, let's not get into that. We're going to do a full episode on on my next year's goals and how we're going to go about achieving them. Let's go back to reflecting on the goals that I didn't achieve in this past year. So I didn't lose the weight I wanted to lose. We talked about that already.

Speaker 1: 6:10

Another goal I had which is funny because I'm recording this is I wanted to put out a episode a week. Now, I didn't mean an episode, I had to come out every week, although I would have liked that, but I want to put out around 52 episodes in the last year and that obviously there happened. You can. Anyone looking through this feed right now can see that I am inconsistent on this and it's not because I don't want to make or I don't want to record, and in fact I don't even mind editing too much on these podcasts Not that I do a lot editing anyway, as you can see, there have been mistakes in it, like that one. But I don't know, man, I did a run out of subjects, ran out of things to talk about, seems unlikely, got distracted by other things I was doing at the time, probably likely, and just I just lack consistency and you know what. Yeah, I don't do this for the, for the follows or the likes or the. You know, the like, you know say, oh, how many downloads have you had? And all of that crap. I'm not really doing it for that month.

Speaker 1: 7:24

For me, it's a two part thing to this. One is it gives me a chance to let all the things I'm thinking about out, and sometimes I don't want to actually talk to someone about them, I just want to talk All out and this feels like I'm talking to someone without actually talking to someone. And I'm talking to you guys and you know you guys can contact me and and stuff, and you know all the links in the description below to do that. This is more of a just an outlet for me, right? So I like doing it for that reason. Yeah, man, so, yeah, so it's not even like the likes and stuff matter, but maybe that is part of the thing where I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh, not many people actually listen to this and you know, maybe that's part of it running out of ideas and things to talk about, like it's only so many times I can talk about goal setting and and like discipline and motivation and stuff, even though that's what mainly goes through my head and those are the kind of things I want to discuss that last year I tried to do the book reviews and you know what?

Speaker 1: 8:33

I was enjoying that, but I fell off the reading and as soon as I fell off the reading, well then there was nothing for me to, no reviews for me to record. Now, say, now I've probably got about four or five books that I have read and I've written out little notes as a review that I just never recorded. But you know, I stopped being interested in the books. I go through my phases of where I read and where I don't. So if I stop being interested in the books, that means I stop creating content or creating podcast episodes regarding reviewing the books.

Speaker 1: 9:07

There's a. It's a weird thing. Right Point is I failed. Now, I don't think that an episode a week was too much to ask, because some episodes are like five minutes, some episodes are 30 minutes. So there's a variation there and some will be really quick to record, some will take longer to record, and I can batch record. I can record the next five weeks podcast and one sitting really. So really there's no excuse for me to not achieve that goal.

Speaker 1: 9:37

But ultimately I didn't, and I don't know why. I don't know why. The only thing I can think of is it's a lack of discipline. That's simply it. And I feel I had a few other little goals, with nothing of no really the main. The main two were losing weight and doing the podcast thing. Add one more goal and this one actually achieved. I'm actually quite proud of it.

Speaker 1: 10:06

So I've been smoking since I was about 20. I'm around I'm in my 30s now, basically, so I've been smoking for over 10 years. Yeah, and you know what I genuinely love smoking. I enjoy it. It's a. It's a moment for me to take on my own. I like the whole feeling I used to roll up, so, rolling up tobacco, just going outside, standing in the cold, putting a light in front of your face, clicking it and just smoking, man, and I just enjoyed it. And you, the taste, the feel, the, the sense of calm that came over me. Now I know a lot.

Speaker 1: 10:48

This is just chemical and part of it's um, what do you call it, man, when you're just thinking it but it's not actually happening? Shit, I've lost a word. But you know, it's all in your head, basically right, and some of it is chemical. It is proven. Nicotine does make you focus, but the problem is my, you know, that means most of the time when I'm not smoking, I'm a lower level than normal person, and when I am smoking, then I go up to a higher level. I'm only much enough to someone who doesn't smoke At that point. So I'll ask how someone explained it to me. Um, well, I'm glad to say that today I am a smoker who chooses not to smoke. Again, that's something someone else said to me once, but it really makes sense. I am a smoker who chooses not to smoke. So when I walk past, people are smoking or whatever.

Speaker 1: 11:42

I love the smell, I miss it, but I am making a conscious decision that I don't want to smoke. I don't want to smoke right now, and there's loads of different reasons why this was a goal. There's health benefits. That's probably the main reason. Saving money, um, and you know I yeah, man, I don't. You know you feel better, you're not relying on something. I don't have to go out, you know, in the cold, to have a cigarette. You know I enjoy that, but I don't have to. You know, and that's the difference, right, I don't have to do any of those things, which is a big change in my life, you know, because I've been doing it for over 10 years, so it's something that's just changed. Um, but let's talk about how I achieve that goal.

Speaker 1: 12:33

The first thing and the most important thing was I was never too hard on myself. It took me, it took me just under a year to achieve it, but I gave myself that time. A lot of people Want to go ahead and be like, yep, I'm quitting today and done, and you know what that works for some people cold turkey straight off of that. It wouldn't have worked for me. I needed to want to quit and I needed to build up to it. So, first thing I did January 1st 2023 no more tobacco, just knocked the tobacco completely on his head and went to vapes.

Speaker 1: 13:12

Now I say, say something else. I'll be a little bit controversial. A vape For me was worse than the cigarette, and the reason that is is because with the vape it was constant, but I didn't have to go outside that I was smoking maybe Five, ten cigarettes a day or roll-ups a day, whereas when I went on the vape, the vape was constant. I'd get through one of those disposable vapes in the day and hour. Now I think, on part I'm probably smoking a lot more, even though it might be less nicotine, but it's still a useful tool. So you know, I did the vaping and I was going alright, but it just seemed like I'd replaced one crutch with another crutch and now I'm stuck on the vapes and, to be honest, the sweetness of them sometimes make you feel a bit sick. So I thought, oh, maybe you know the thickly part of it will make me want to quit.

Speaker 1: 14:10

It didn't happen. What happened? What instead happened is I got to summer and Started to remember how nice it felt I was a cigarette and Ended up buying cigarettes. So now I was on a vape that I was constantly having and then I was having cigarettes, which I was having like three or four a day. So I was on both, which is pretty bad, to be honest, because I'd doubled my problem when it was before. It was just. It was just one problem that I've got to. Anyway, that went on for a little while, got through the summer and it was just alright. Listen man, the cigarettes thing I Can't be doing, that I was, I'd slow, I slowed it down again. The cigarettes were that I won every couple of days or whatever it was.

Speaker 1: 14:56

It got to October, october started coming around and Was reading all this stoptober stuff and I don't know something happened. Something just clicked and I was like no, I don't do this anymore. So I'm not the cigarettes and I'm not the vape on the head, and I went a Full week with nothing, absolutely nothing no vape, no cigarette, nothing. That's quite proud of myself, you know, because I got a whole week no nicotine. My body and I was like you know what? I'm alright, I'm not, I'm not struggling that much. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm missing the feeling and stuff, but I'm okay.

Speaker 1: 15:36

And then, as to stop myself from going back to the Cigarettes or the vape, I got myself a zero nicotine vape and that was is it's spoken, I'm still harmful, right, it's not great for you because you breathing in crap, whatever chemicals they're putting in there that we don't even know. So it ain't great, boy, yeah, but what it did for me was it took me off the nicotine completely and allowed me to kick, have the habit of still having a smoke. Now I tried all those those freaking metal tubes that you get, like the breathable necklace and stuff and you know what. It's something, but it's not great and I was rolling up pieces of paper and just blowing through that or just taking deep breaths and stuff like that. So all those different things were working and I found a zero nicotine vapes and I was smoking them for the last few months and Just literally like two or three days ago, my last one ran out and I had made the intention that I wouldn't buy another one Because I, when we start the new year, I don't want even the no nicotine vape to be around, or certainly don't want one with me all the time, even if I randomly smoke one here and there and so and that's none, I've kicked it on the head.

Speaker 1: 16:57

So now I have quit smoking. I am a smoker who decides not to smoke, and you know what? It's a great feeling because I'm not relying on something. I'm not. I don't have a crotch anymore Now. There's loads of other bad habits that I do have and I'm working on them. Slowly and surely I'll get rid of them, I hope, but that's where I am.

Speaker 1: 17:22

So I think I Think I've rumbled on a bit more than I was going to, but I think this is an important time of the year where you need to sit down and reflect on the goals that you set. Just reflect on them. Doesn't matter if you achieved them or you didn't achieve them, but think about oh, why did you achieve it? Why don't you achieve them? Can you apply that to the other thing that you want to achieve next year? You know we always sit down at this time of the year and set new year's resolutions. We also need to take this time to reflect on the year that's gone, and I think you should all take some time out and do that, and I think it'll help set the next year's goals.

Speaker 1: 18:08

Now I kind of go into talking about next year's goals already, but I think I'll do that as a separate episode. So thank you, guys, so much for listening. I hope Some of what I've talked about will help you in what you looking to achieve and if any of you are looking to quit smoking, man, don't be too hard on yourself. Take it in steps, you'll get there. You can do it. Thank you, guys, so much for listening. If anyone chapter me about anything, you contact me at my originals on Twitter and Instagram. Take care, goodbye you.