Is time to start the next chapter of your life?

But how do you turn the page?

Photo by Andrus Lukas on Unsplash

“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.” – Michael McMillan

How do you start anew?

How do you turn a fresh page?

How do you let go of the things that hold you back?

How do you let go of toxic habits?

I know we’re supposed to be looking forward, not back but let’s just look back for a second.

How have you done it before?

Think about your most toxic habits that you used to do but don’t any more.

I used to smoke 30 cigarettes a day. I used to smoke in the office and spill my ash down the keyboard (I’m that old) , I smoked in the back of the plane to calm my nerves, lighting up when the seat belts lights did the same.

I would smoke in cars and flick my ash out of the window. I still have tiny scars on the tops of my legs where the ash would blow back in the summer and burn holes through my shorts. I would smoke in restaurants and blow smoke over my food and my friends.

I smoked in bed first thing, I smoked last thing at night because “It helped me sleep”.

I am surprised I didn’t burn the house down.

Smoking was a toxic habit, an addictive habit and it made my tongue and my fingers yellow. I stank of cigarettes for nearly ten years.

Ten years.

Whenever I think it’s time to let go, to start afresh, I think about my yellow fingers and that stink.

I tried to give up numerous times. I would put on nicotine patches but sneak a cigarette out the back of my flat in the East of London (before the East End was gentrified) as if to try and hide my weakness from myself.

I tried DIY colonic irrigation (I wish I was joking) , I tried hypnotherapy, tapping, mantras in the mirror, Allen Carr’s Stop Smoking programme.

They all might work for a while until I was sneaking out the back again for a crafty fag. I was a health editor on a national magazine. It wasn’t a good look, even in my twenties.

But with perseverance and experimentation and a bigger vision for my life (I wanted to have baby), I did eventually give up.

It wasn’t enough for me to just want to give up. I needed a more compelling vision for the future. I wanted to create a new life - literally.

Inside my body.

I wanted to create a beautiful environment for a child to thrive.

I couldn’t do what with yellow fingers in a flat that smelt like an ashtray.

My son is now 21 and 6 foot 5 and just finished university and started his first job.

When I think about giving up toxic habits and starting a new chapter, I look at him and think what’s possible when you create a bigger vision.

What toxic habits do you want to give up? (It can just be negative thinking where you constantly run yourself down)

What new vision do you want to create for yourself?

What new chapter do you want to write for yourself?

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