Hello, and welcome back to the quit vaping podcast. As always, I'm your host and life coach, Andrew Cipriano. And today I just want to say, uh, my voice is a little bit hoarse. I live in Michigan. I live in like Metro Detroit, and there are. Uh, forest fires in Canada, I guess that are going to burn the whole summer and there have been like these literal literal like dense clouds of smoke that have been going in and out of Michigan and there's like days where we literally can't even open our blinds or not our blinds, our windows and when we do like everyone is coughing and dying and it's horrible.

So pardon my voice kind of sounds sexy compared to normal. At least I'm going to tell myself that. And um, anyways, I just got back from a trip with my grandpa. I just want to say if you have been thinking about taking a trip or whatever. Thank you. You know, spending time with a loved one or visiting someone, just do it.

Like I have a different podcast and I talk about my life coaching skills. And I just want to say that readiness is a choice you make in a moment. It is not something that happens to you. Readiness is a choice. It's a decision. So I just decided last month, I just talked to my grandpa and I'm like, what are you doing this summer?

And he's like, well, I'm really not doing anything, Andrew. I'm 95. I'm like, what if you want. to go on a trip. Where would you go if you wanted to go? And he said, I'd love to see the Appalachian Trail or the Smoky Mountains. I'm like, cool, let's do it. Smoky Mountains. So I just decided in an instant, it took me one instant to plan out the trip.

I bought a hotel, um, me, my two brothers, my mom, and my grandpa just went on a four day trip to the Smoky Mountains from Michigan. It's about a nine hour drive and it was just beautiful. We stayed in Gatlinburg, very touristy, cool trip. Um, and I'm going to be very, very happy. I did that for the rest of my life.

So make the decision. Readiness does not happen to you. It's something you choose actively. So make the choice, spend the time with your loved ones. That's why we're doing this, right? That's why we want to quit vaping and build a better life because we want to spend more time with our loved ones and build memories.

So pardon my hoarse voice, um, spend time with your loved ones. And also if you have not looked into it. It's my last little plug before I get into the content today. Um, check out my quit vaping course. It is 25. I upped it 10 bucks, uh, because I want to start making more passive income. To be completely honest with you guys, it is absolutely a hundred thousand percent worth 25.

It's an amazing course. It pretty much teaches you how to apply the tools that I teach in this podcast. It's two and a half hours of videos. You literally just have to sit back, grab some popcorn. Watch the videos and your life will improve, I promise you. So check it out. If you haven't, that would be really mean a lot to me and I appreciate your support on this podcast.

So let's get with the episode. So today is a skill that we're going to learn and it's called sitting with your urges and you know, I teach that urges and emotions are the same thing. And the reason is because an emotion is just a vibration in your body caused by a thought. And an urge is the exact same thing whenever you have an urge to eat or to vape or to whatever, fill in the blank, to smoke weed or to drink or to go and walk outside.

The reason you have the urge, the vibration in your body is because you had a thought that preceded it. You might not be aware of it. Now, when you are addicted to nicotine, it's a little more, I would say it's a little more complicated, but it's not. The addiction itself is a circumstance, right? That's something you actually can't control.

Outside of your body. It's like, if you're addicted to nicotine right now in the second, you can't control that. Like you were addicted to nicotine, right? So. It's going to have an effect on your thoughts, but remember that you get to monitor your thoughts and you get to decide what you want to think in any given moment.

But with that said, just be mindful that when you're actually addicted to nicotine, you're going to have more thoughts that are going to create urges to use nicotine. Doesn't that make sense, right? It's very logical. If my body's addicted to something, my brain's going to consistently come up with thoughts, sentences in my mind.

Like you should hit your vape. I need to vape. Doesn't that sound really good? And obviously thoughts like that are going to create the emotional urge, right? Remember an urge and emotion, same thing, just a vibration in your body. Now the skill that we're going to learn today is learning how to sit with urges and it's a really important skill.

And the reason is I'm going to really sell it to you because if you can learn to sit with your urges and your emotions, either one, but in this case urges. What it's going to do is going to give you control over how you act. So many people resist urges. And what that means is you'll have a thought that creates an urge in your body, which looks like this.

I want to vape and then you'll have this emotional urge in your body. And everybody knows what an urge feels like, right? Like for me, my hands get a lot of energy. It's a vibration in my hands. It goes right to my chest. When I was vaping, it used to go kind of with my throat. It would be like a very compelling energy that like really pushed me to want to get out of it.

Because it was uncomfortable and use my vape to satisfy that urge. Now, when a lot of people have nicotine urges, what they do is they resist it. And I want you to, like, visualize in your head, this is what resisting an urge looks like. Imagine you walk up to a wall, and you're pushing on it with all your might.

That's resisting an urge. It's like, what's gonna happen if you do that for an hour? You're gonna be exhausted, right? Because that wall's not going anywhere. What that's going to do is it's going to make sure that you end up losing your willpower and then you're going to vape. And that's what most people do with urges.

It's very natural. We think, you know, it's kind of natural for us to just resist an urge. We think cognitively, it makes sense. If I push against it, it'll go away. But what actually happens is when you push an emotion. Or an urge. Remember that the same thing, it gets bigger. And the reason it gets bigger is because you're using your willpower against it.

And what you put your attention on gets bigger. That's just how it goes. It's kind of like the paradox of urges. When we push against them, they get stronger. And you'll know this is true because you've experienced it so many times in your life with nicotine, food, alcohol, anything fill in the blank. If you are giving your attention to something you don't want and you're pushing up against it, you're going to be actually making it bigger.

So, for example, a lot of people do this with food urges, right? We like try to restrict ourselves from a diet and we say, I'm not going to have that food. I'm not going to eat chocolate. I will not do it. And immediately you feel this sense of like, um, lack, right? You're like, Oh, and it's kind of restriction.

And when you're pushing up against something you want and saying, I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want it. What you're doing is actually making the urge for it bigger. That's just how emotions work. So, we know that resisting urges does not satisfy them, and this is actually what willpower method is.

So many people, they white knuckle their urges. This is how I quit. Well, I want to say this is how I tried quitting for the first five years of me trying to quit vaping and cigarettes. I was pushing up conservatives and I was beating myself up in the process. So on top of resisting the urge, I was saying, I shouldn't want that.

I don't want that. I was also saying things to myself like. And you're stupid forever getting into it, right? So so many of us were having an urge in our body from a thought because we're addicted to something or just because our body wants it because it releases dopamine. So we have this urge and then we push up against it and then we shame ourselves on top of it.

Now what happens when we push up against an urge and then we shame ourselves for pushing up against it? We use nicotine every time. Remember in the last couple episodes, I want you to listen to it because the one about having your own back when you are beating yourself up. You're way more likely to do something that reflects beating yourself up when you treat yourself like crap, you treat yourself like crap, right?

So it's never going to be helpful to add shame or guilt on top of urges and it's never going to help to resist them. So if we can't use willpower with an urge and we can't beat ourselves up, what's left? Oh, compassionately loving yourself enough to allow an urge. And you're going to say, Andrew, what does it look like to allow an urge?

I'm going to show you just like this. Well, you can't see, but I'm just sitting here in my chair and I'm just breathing. So when you have an urge or an emotion that's unpleasant, you can allow it just like a pleasant one. Now I want you to imagine yourself happy. It's easier to imagine with a good one than we'll flip to a bad one.

So imagine you're having a great day and you're just feeling great. What are you doing? You're just allowing yourself to feel great, right? You're sitting in your chair, you're like, God, I'm having a good day. Like, this vibration in my chest feels amazing. Like, I'm sitting straight in my chair. Like, I have a natural smile and grit on my face.

It just feels so good. I'm just loving this feeling. And guess what happens? Eventually, the happiness fades away. Why? Because we're not resisting it. Try resisting happiness. Like literally try it next time you're happy to be like, no, I don't want to be happy back. And like, try pushing it away, especially if you're already in a good mood.

It's gonna be really hard to get rid of the happiness. You might even start to get giddy over it. So when we persist any emotion, good or bad, it actually persists, which is kind of fun because we don't, we don't resist good emotions naturally. We just feel them. So then they just pass like normal. So you can do the same exact thing with uncomfortable urge.

Next time you have an urge to hit your vape, do not beat yourself up. Don't get into your mind and start messing with your thoughts. Don't do any of that shit. Literally just talk to yourself either out loud or in your head. This is an urge. Wow. This is uncomfortable. It's in my chest. My chest is buzzing.

My hands are vibrating. There's a lot of energy in my hands. I know I want to hit my vape and it's okay. I'm not going to beat myself up for having an addiction. I'm not going to beat myself up for wanting it. Of course I want it. Like I, it releases dopamine. Of course my brain wants it. It thinks it's going to keep me alive.

And just so you know, once you understand the reason that your body is giving you all these urges is because your brain, especially after it's addicted to nicotine, it thinks it's going to keep you alive. You're addicted to it. It's like, no, you need that. So like, don't beat yourself up for having natural thoughts that your brain has desire over an addiction.

So it's just kind of interesting. Like, you know, if you actually sit back and take a step out of your brain and out of your life and look at yourself, like it's silly to beat yourself up. And it's silly to think you shouldn't have urges. Of course you have urges. So treat an urge like that. I've been like literally, Oh, and I do this in my mind.

I do this. Actually, I've done this out loud before with food or just, it's like, I opened up my arms. It's like, of course I want that vape. My brain wants it so bad. It releases dopamine. It feels good. Of course it wants that. I'm not going to beat myself up for it. I'm going to sit with that urge. I'm going to be very curious about that urge.

What if you were just curious about an urge instead of beating yourself up or resisting it? Like what does an urge actually feel like to you? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Um, Seriously, like next time you have one, grab a pen, grab a piece of paper and just like tell yourself, I'm going to write down exactly this feels like from a place of complete curiosity, not shame, not judgment, not beating myself up.

Like, what does this damn thing actually feel like and why am I so uncomfortable and why is it so powerful that I need to get out of it? You ever asked yourself that question, why do I need to get out of an urge? What's so bad about it? It's literally, it's a vibration in your body. It's the funniest thing with nicotine.

It's not going to kill you. Like nicotine withdrawal will not, I promise you it won't kill you. It's just a little bit uncomfortable in what's so beautiful about this skill. What's so beautiful about the skill is that if you can practice this with nicotine, you also are simultaneously practicing it with food and with alcohol and with procrastination and with motivation.

So when I can learn the skill of sitting through uncomfortable emotions, I'm building a skill that's going to allow me to create the life I want. Wow.

Let me say that again. I left that pause in there very intentionally. When I'm building the skill of sitting with my nicotine urges, I'm building the exact same skill that's going to allow me to create the life I want. What differentiates people that are successful from people who aren't, and I mean like wildly successful, is that they choose what they want to believe about life, and they do things in spite of feeling uncomfortable sometimes.

I would say a lot of times, actually, depending on how big of a life you want. So don't beat yourself up for having urges. Do not resist them. And it's subtle, right? Like you, you might say, Andrew, I don't really understand the difference between resisting and allowing. It's a subtle difference. It is. It's like it also, if you need help with that, buy the damn vape course, it'll help you.

Okay. It's 25 for God's sake. It's like the price of one vape, but It is subtle. It's a practice. Like I still find myself resisting urges and I'm like, I think I'm resisting it. And you'll know just from how your body feels like allowing an urge to me. I'm like literally allowing that vibration to be there without resistance.

I'm like, Oh, this is uncomfortable. Holy moly. It's uncomfortable. Wow. It's really making me want to get up and go eat something. Like I really want to go eat ice cream right now. And when you sit with an urge from a place of allowing it, it passes through you just like positive emotion that you allow as well.

It's the funniest thing. Like think of an urge. It's just an energy, right? I think like I don't know a ton about physics and science, but I know that energy cannot be created or destroyed Well, it's interesting right? It just has to be transferred That's all you need to know about energy to understand your emotions.

Like if you can't create or destroy urges What do you do with them? You just allow them in your body or you numb over them But that's actually not getting rid of it. Remember when you actually use nicotine over an urge. You're not getting rid of the emotion You're just dropping dopamine over the uncomfortable vibration, which is different.

When you allow it to pass, it actually passes through, it goes away. When you do that a hundred times, five hundred times, over a month or two months, guess what just happened? You just became someone who learned how to sit with your urges. Boom. Vaping problem, pretty much gone. At that point, we just need to go through and make sure you don't have any damaging beliefs about nicotine that are going to keep you desiring it indefinitely.

And really the reason we do the belief work is so that you have no more desire to vape at all. There's no more urges to manage when you have no more desire, right? But I think actually the most important skill, I do believe that thought work is so important, like actually deciding what you want to believe about life.

It's going to allow you to create any life that you want. But when it comes to nicotine addiction, I personally believe the more important skill is learning how to manage your urges. Because if you can manage your urges, you're just not going to use nicotine, but you might still desire it. And if you want to have no desire for it and manager urges, well then we need to do the thought work and the emotional work.

Remember your urges are just vibrations in your body. They're not that scary. It's actually the fear of feeling an urge. That's what keeps you vaping, not the urge itself. Well, you know what's so funny about that? It's the fear of feeling fear that keeps people in lives that are really shitty and small.

So again. I use this whole platform is like kind of a, it's like a baby step into the tools I teach to create the life you want. So when you're quitting vaping, it's not about quitting vaping. It is, but it isn't. I don't care if you use nicotine, like I really don't care. I love you either way. You're so worthy either way, but it's about building the skills in a container that's going to let you create such a bigger life on the other side of it.

So if you can learn these skills now with nicotine, you're going to learn them for your life. You're going to learn how to literally create motivation when you want it. You're going to learn how to change your beliefs so you can desire whatever you want in life. You're going to learn how to sit with urges, the uncomfortable ones and the comfortable ones so you can be present in life and not be out of control of your actions.

You're going to literally be able to create anything with these tools. So think of these tools instead of like, Oh, I'm quitting vaping. That's it. That's like, I hate doing that. Like, don't think of it like that. Think of it like I'm learning a skill that I'm going to be able to transfer into anything that I want and literally become like the master of my destiny.

It's the coolest thing ever. You can literally think anything you want in a creation. But the skill you need to do that is learn how to question your beliefs, which is exactly what we're doing this podcast and learn how to sit with your uncomfortable feelings and do the work anyways. That's it. Like that is the two things that'll get you whatever you want.

Is it more complicated than that? No, not really. We can get it more complicated. I could teach these tools in a bajillion different ways, but in general, I'm teaching the same thing in every episode. And isn't that a beautiful thing? And I think that every single episode will bring you one step closer and eventually you'll just click and you'll be good.

So check out the course. Do me that favor. This podcast is freaking bomb. And I'm looking for ways to start making money with it. To be honest with you guys, I love you guys so much. Um, but I do want to disconnect myself from one on one coaching eventually, uh, because I do want to be able to live wherever I want and not worry about time zones and coaching hours and all that.

And I want to add value in so many different ways. So check it out. And I have a link also, like my link has so much other stuff. I have a newscast or a new. A newsletter that I do each week, which is like free little mini trainings. And I have another podcast called the making meaningful income podcast.

And I'm offering a group coaching program right now. That's going to help people figure out what they want to do moving forward with their careers and their life. So I have so much exciting stuff on the works. I'm so glad to have you here. Thank you very much for your time. Um, I hope you enjoyed this podcast.

You know, let me know what's going on. Reach out to me, hit me up on Instagram, find me on Tik TOK. Like I'd love to hear from you. And also I want to know what you want. Like if there's something you need help with specifically, hit me up. Don't be shy. I don't bite. Unless I feel threatened. I'm just kidding.

That's from a old TV show, the whitest kids, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it was funny. They did sketch comedy and it was the best. So check that show out. It's ridiculous. Have a fantastic day and I'll see you guys on the next episode.