GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or even just thinking of quitting, please join us! We kindly ask that politics be left out.
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Fans of the author Anne Lamott will recognize the inspiration for my post tonight. For those who haven't had the pleasure, the title and theme are pulled from one of her best-known works, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Her title was inspired by this childhood memory:
"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write [It] was due the next day.
We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"
She has used that particularly wise fatherly advice to approach her writing career, and it also informs her experiences as a single mother (her book on motherhood,
Operating Instructions, is also a good one) and a person in recovery (she has 27 years of sobriety). Many others---myself included---have applied it to all kinds of situations, personal, professional, and practical.
It speaks to the overwhelmed feeling we all get when faced with something seemingly too great to take on, a task too large or difficult or emotionally complicated, especially when we arrive at that place feeling insufficiently prepared. I'm guessing we all recognize that feeling of being frozen, unable to figure out where to begin, certain we're doomed before we've even begun.
And it IS too hard if we try to do everything at once, to go from zero to perfect in the blink of an eye. If we break it down into manageable bits, however, it's suddenly not so bad. When you see the task ahead as a series of tiny little decisions ("I will do X right now.") and small actions ("I will have a stick of gum instead of that cigarette."), it's not as overwhelming as "I will never ever smoke again as long as I live, no matter what."
If you're letting the enormity of behavioral change stop you in your tracks (or stop you from taking another crack at it), try not to see it as this huge, hard-to-manage undertaking. Instead, think of it as a series of little, much-easier-to-tackle decisions and choices and actions.
The big stuff is going to happen eventually. You just have to take it bird by bird.
Who's Your Li'l Buddy?
1BQ, 3rdGenFeminist, A Man Called Gloom, Abra Crabcakeya, Actbriniel, addisnana, AfroPonix, aishmael, Alise, Alpha99, ambeeeant, American in Kathmandu, amk for obama, andsarahtoo, angry marmot, Anne933, anodnhajo, aoeu, AoT, aquarius2001, arcadesproject, Archie2227, arodb, Arthur Wolf (in memoriam), assyrian64, Aunt Acid, awkawk, b4uknowit, bamablue, BARAKABETH, barnowl, b barrie, bdizz, beatpanda, beefydaddy18, BFSkinner, bgblcklab1, BigAlinWashSt, Bike Crash, BirderWitch, BJKay, bleeding heart, blingbling65, blue husky, Blue Intrigue, bluedust, BluejayRN, BlueJessamine, Bluerall, bluestatedem84, BoiseBlue, boudi08, Brahman Colorado, breedlovinit, BrenP, BrianParker14, Bronxist, broths, BrowniesAreGood, bsmechanic, buddabelly, bumbi, BusyinCA, cactusgal, Carol in San Antonio, CathiefromCanada, CathodeRay, CDH in Brooklyn, cee4, Cen Den, ChocolateChris, ChurchofBruce, ciganka, cinnamondog, citizenx, ClapClapSnap, claude, Cleante, Code Monkey, codobus, Coldblue Steele, Colorado is the 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