​All right. Hello and welcome. So very quick before I get into this today, if you have not listened to the first two episodes, I would recommend you do it. My name is Andrew. I am a life coach. I call myself the quit vaping coach. And the first two episodes of this podcast. Are one, my story. So you can avoid that if you want to, but I'd recommend you listen to it.

Just to get to know me and figure out why I'm doing this. And then two. Is the framework I use to help you quit vaping. So if you haven't listened to episode two, I really recommend you listen to that first to understand the background of what I teach. So again, I'm a life coach. I teach people how to understand their thoughts and emotions so they can stop doing things they don't want to do and actually take action towards the things they do want to do.

Super simple, right? So in this podcast, um, what I'm going to do today is start a series. And this is going to be episode one on different belief systems. So remember that your thoughts create your emotions, which drive your actions and creates your results. That means that if you are currently nicotine user, the reason why the main big scary monster is because you have belief systems or thoughts that you're either conscious or unconscious of that are leading you to vaping.

That's it, right? If you want to quit being a vapor, there's a couple of things you have to do. Very simple. One, you have to eliminate the thoughts that vaping is helping you in your life or that it's beneficial, which you don't have to bring your, Brainwash yourself to do quite honestly. If you're believing that vaping is helping you or improving your life, you're already brainwashed to be completely honest.

And then two is just learn how to process your urges and your emotions. That's it. If we can get rid of the thoughts, you'll have way less urges and emotions. And then we can teach you how to deal with your anxiety. Then there's no reason to vape at all. All right. So today we're going to do the first belief on my little list and vaping.

I enjoy vaping, whatever you want to put in the blank there. I like it. I enjoy it. It's something that I enjoy, whatever. And what we're going to do in this series is we're going to take apart belief systems that people have, and I'm going to show you how they're actually not true at all and how, if you think that we're going to find evidence against it.

So you don't have to think that anymore. So I want to remind you, I vaped for seven years. I used to live on this belief system that I enjoyed vaping and when I started learning about life coaching, analyzing my thoughts, learning how to feel my emotions, I started paying attention and once you actually start paying attention on the beliefs that you have that are holding you to nicotine.

They fall apart like a house with a really rocky foundation. Like this actually does happen. And again, I'm not asking you to lie to yourself. If you're currently telling yourself you're enjoying nicotine, you already are aligned to yourself. So with an open mind and a big heart, we can get to the bottom of these issues.

All right. So today's belief is I like vaping. And now this sounds like something that's very believable to a lot of people. They hit their vape. They feel good. Yeah, they like it, but let's, let's look deeper, right? This is what we do in this podcast. We get to the truth. We don't like to brainwash ourselves, so let's do it.

So. Let's picture something you like. And my example that I like to use is rollerblading. Because it's um, it's something I genuinely enjoy that I like intrinsically just want to do. So I love rollerblading. I always have. I used to rollerblade with my brothers. We called ourselves the Blade Brigade. And I do this all the time.

For my birthday, I am 27 for my birthday this year in April or last year. I rented out this place called the Rolladium in Michigan and we literally had an entire roller rink to ourselves to play music. We put together a playlist. We had a giant like Donut cake and pizza and like just had a freaking blast rollerblading at 27 years old with all my friends.

So fun. Um, I, I do like the whole show, right? I get the long socks. I put on the shorts, I put on music. I like listen to ABBA, all of it, right? Like I love rollerblading and I know I talked about this example in the last podcast episode, so this is just going to be the first example and we're going to do some more with this belief.

So just hold with me. So rollerblading is a whole thing I get all dressed up for. I feel better after I do it. I enjoy it while I'm doing it. I listen to music. I like just have a good time all around. Just a positive experience for me, even though I'm exercising. It's the weirdest thing. Like I enjoy it. I all positive emotion, even when I'm like doing something that's difficult because it's something that I know is going to pay off in the end and I'll be healthier for it.

Now, when I looked at vaping and I looked at that exact same belief system, I like vaping, just like I told myself that I like rollerblading. Well, it's a completely different circumstance, right? What would happen with vaping be very shameful about it. Well, there was no shame. around rollerblading. So that's one point, right?

And then also I noticed I was hiding. I was lying to people. I would do it in secrecy. Um, when I did do it, I felt this mixture in my gut of like, Oh, thank God there's nicotine in my body. Cause I needed that. But also like, um, I hate myself because I'm still using it. So literally with the nicotine, it was completely different experience.

And once I started to actually be honest with myself and look into the whole belief system that I liked. Nicotine. Well, I'm like, holy crap, maybe I don't. Maybe the best feeling about vaping is relief that comes from being addicted to nicotine. So like, in my opinion, if I could go rollerblading and get enjoyment over the entire process and feel better after, or I could go hide my vaping, feel guilty during it and feel like crap after, which one do I actually like?

Which one do I enjoy? And now I want you to come up with an example for your life. Something else I enjoy doing is baking and I want to put an example of here is something that necessarily isn't going to make me healthier because you're going to probably have some kind of like an excuse, right? Well, he enjoys bodybuilding, that's exercising.

Of course, he likes to feel better after that and vaping wasn't so whatever, but baking, right? I like to bake things. I love baking. I bake when I'm stressed. Why? Because it alleviates my stress. It makes me feel good. Um, I bake to give things to people. I like making things. I like. The whole entire process of measuring and I listen to music and during that too.

And I just like creating like I get to at the end, there's an end product. Even if it's not necessarily a healthy product, there's something that I've created that I can enjoy with people around me with vaping. There's not any of that, right? Actually, if you think about it, drug addiction is the most selfish thing you can ever do ever.

And it really is because drug addiction is all about getting your own instant gratification in the moment. That's it. Nobody else benefits. Nobody else learns anything. You don't have a product at the end. All you have is relief from being addicted to drugs and a whole bunch of excuses to go along with it.

Does that sound like enjoyment to you? And if it does, that's great, but I want you to really sit down, like, take a minute to sit down today and just define what enjoyment is to you and then start noticing the patterns of how you vape compared to how you do other things that you actually genuinely enjoy.

I like going to the gym. I enjoy it. Yes, it's difficult. It's the same thing as rollerblading, right? I like going, I like seeing people there. I like putting on nice clothes that fit nice. And I like to go and show off that I'm at the gym. I like to be with my friends. I like listening to music there too.

Music is a big theme of enjoyment, apparently, for me. And when I vape, it's completely the opposite experience. I was hiding. I was shameful. I didn't want anyone to know I've aped when I went into the convenience store to buy vapes. I had to do a really quick, like shameful. I didn't even use to bring cash because I didn't want to be in there any more seconds than I had to.

I wanted to get in, buy it, get the heck out. And then I didn't want to have to think about it anymore. And when I hit it again, the best thing that happens to me with vaping is relief, which I don't know about you, but I don't really consider relief a positive emotion because in order for relief to exist, something negative had to proceed it.

Right? Like nicotine addiction. And we're going to get into other beliefs later about anxiety and everything, but I just want to touch on this. When you are addicted to drugs, your body develops an anxiety for it. That's the entire drug addiction. When your body does not have the drug, it creates anxiety.

One of people's biggest belief systems for maintaining their addiction is that it helps with anxiety, which it does, but you have to look at the bigger picture. It's only helping with the anxiety that the drug addiction creates. And I have people argue with me all the time on this. They say, Andrew, it helps with anxiety.

I said, no, it doesn't because you don't understand what helps me. You don't understand the difference between relief and actually curing. If you want to help yourself with anxiety, you sit down with the anxiety, with compassion, without using drugs. If you want to numb the anxiety, you use external substances, right?

Like weed, alcohol, nicotine. And I promise you that numbing is not the same as dealing with. And anybody who's ever been to the dentist can tell you that if you numb a tooth and you don't deal with the infection, well, guess what? You're still going to die from the infection going to your head. You can numb it all you want.

You won't feel it. It's still gonna kill you. So, when people use the argument that nicotine is helping with anxiety, it's like, yeah, it is. It's helping with the anxiety it creates, and the only other thing that it's doing that it feels like it's helping with anxiety is that it's numbing over the existing anxiety.

Numbing is not curing. Drug addiction creates anxiety. So we're going to drill home that and a whole different episode too, because we can talk about it all day, right? Like it's completely an erroneous belief. And the only reason people benefit from holding onto it is they get to be addicted to drugs and not feel guilty.

And my whole thing is like, if you want to use nicotine, that's completely fine, but don't lie to yourself in order to maintain drug addiction, because that has consequences. When you have to lie to yourself to maintain drug addiction, you have no self respect. You might think you do, but you don't. And when you lie to yourself in one place, you end up doing it in other places.

How you do one thing is how you do everything. Now when you start living in integrity, even if you're going to remain using your vape and being addicted to nicotine, you do it honestly with yourself. Now it's a much different experience being a honest drug user versus one who's lying to themselves.

Remember, how you do one thing is how you do everything. If you allow yourself to make up stories about how nicotine is good for you and it's good to be a drug addict, you're going to allow yourself to make up stories in other areas of your life. And that's how we start on this downward spiral, right?

It's a feedback loop. Now, if we start being honest about our vaping, we're going to live in integrity. We're going to be honest. This isn't good for me. There's no helping with anxiety. It feels good because I'm addicted to drugs and it feels like that's helping with the anxiety, but it's really just numbing over anxiety and creating more of it overall.

We'll see. That's a different kind of addiction now, right? Now you're like, okay. I know what this is. I'm being honest with myself and then you can move forward in your life in other areas and not lie to yourself, which is really important because I promise you that a life that's extraordinary that you actually want to be a part of, well, it starts with honesty and it starts with awareness and nicotine addicts, myself included for nine years are fantastic at willful blindness.

But I promise you that willful blindness is not a skill you want to practice. It's something you want to do the complete opposite of because when it comes to building a life you actually want, that's desirable, that's not filled with unnecessary suffering, you have to start with honesty. Nicotine is not enjoyable.

There's nothing about it that's enjoyable. And if you actually sit down and ask for the truth, capital T truth. You're going to find out that you probably aren't enjoying nicotine. And the best thing that comes out of being an addict is the relief from having used the drug that's created the additional unnecessary suffering to begin with.

It's like as if your friend stole all of your clothes and then you were out in the winter, literally shivering with no clothes on. He's like, Oh, here, here's a t shirt. Well, he's wearing your thousand dollar jacket. And you're like, thank you so much. Oh my God. Thank you for the t shirt. I didn't know what I was going to do.

You're a good friend. Right? He stole everything from you, but he's giving you a small fraction of it back and you're thanking him for it. And even worse, because you're brainwashed into believing it's good for you, you're defending him to other people. Everyone else is like, Hey buddy, he stole all your clothes.

You're like, no, no, no. He gave me this t shirt. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds in this situation? Well, put that cognitive leap over to vaping. It's the exact same thing. So this is part one. Of the series of attacking beliefs that people have been brainwashed to believe with nicotine. And remember, the only reason that you believe these things is because you have not actually looked for truth of them underneath the surface.

You get to do whatever you want in your life. I'm not telling you it's right or wrong for you to use nicotine, but when I see people punching themselves in the face and they have to, in order to do that, they have to be lying to themselves. My job as a coach to show you the truth and to help you gain more awareness in your life.

And I promise you that when it comes to nicotine or any drug dependency, when you gain awareness, you can see that most likely all the stories you have about nicotine are coming from the addiction. Do not let other people's belief systems become your own without first. Interrogating them. All right. So next week, we're going to look at a different belief system.

Um, keep me posted. Let me know what you guys think of the comments. And then also check out my link in my bio. It has a ton of free resources. All right. Thank you guys. Have a fantastic day. I'll see you next week.