Hello and welcome back to the Quit Vaping Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Andrew Cipriano. And today we're going to talk about a topic that's really important, whether or not you vape or smoke weed or drink alcohol or watch porn or you have a goal or you want to start a business or you want to go after your dream or go ask the girl or the guy or whoever out on a date.

This is a really important thing to understand is having your own back. Sorry, I thought somebody was outside my apartment, but we're okay. So what does it mean to have your own back? It means that whatever happens, you're not going to allow yourself to beat up on yourself. Ever. I know that's like a tall order, right?

But we try to mitigate the beating up on ourselves as much as we can. Like I do this work every day, all day long. I eat, breathe everything this work. And occasionally I still find myself kind of beating myself up and that's not good because when we beat ourselves up, we actually don't treat ourselves with love.

And when we don't treat ourselves with love, guess what happens? We take more of the actions that we don't want to be taking because if we don't love ourselves, well, we might as well kind of self sabotage, right? And that's a lot of us. So if you want to quit vaping, great. You're going to have all the tools you need in this podcast.

I promise you, if you learn how to feel your emotions and question what you believe about nicotine, you will have everything you need to quit. But that doesn't mean that you're not a human being because you are a human being. And what that means is that you might mess up. You might find yourself in a moment of weakness where maybe like you're just caught off guard.

You weren't expecting an emotion, or you weren't expecting like a friend to bring a vape or you're drunk. And you're like, I'm going to hit that fricking vape. And the biggest thing I can help you with is like. If you take action that you don't want to take or that you are regretful about taking, do not beat yourself up afterwards.

I always say, with this work, with the work that comes with learning about your psychology, understanding your emotions, understanding your thoughts, understanding how your brain works, you have to start with awareness and then immediately follow it up with compassion. If you judge yourself or shame yourself or beat yourself up, you actually close yourself off from learning.

And from adjusting and from taking a more informed action next time. And I want you to imagine this example. So this is very common with overeaters and you can think of nicotine is the exact same thing, but I think the overeating example is a little bit more clear. So let's say I'm on a diet, right? I'm like, okay, Andrew, I got this.

I'm not going to eat donut cake. You guys, let me tell you really fast. There's this place by my house. It's called DK donuts. Like D as in dog, K as in. I don't know, Columbus, that's a C, K as in kangaroo, DK donuts. And they make this thing called a donut cake. And it's literally like they have this giant fryer and they just make a giant donut.

That's a huge, it's like the size of a normal cake. It's like three times, you know, it's like 30 donuts in one or something ridiculous like that. they make it, they deep fry the whole thing and then they just coat it in really thick frosting. And it's like the best thing in the whole world because the whole thing is like really, really fresh and don't I eat.

And it's amazing. And anyways, long story short, let's say, cause this just happened. I saw myself, Andrew, I'm not going to eat any sugar this weekend. Right. And then at Sunday night, and I find myself in this moment of weakness where somebody says, Hey, Andrew, uh, my girlfriend's sister, while she had this DK donut cake and they only wanted half of it.

So we brought the other half over, you know, so I had the moment of weakness. I had the donut and this is what happens, right? Most of us, what we're going to do is after we eat the donut, we're going to beat ourselves up. We're going to shame ourselves. And as a coach, one of my main jobs now is to help you not do that anymore.

Because if I beat myself up, let's imagine like today I woke up, it's Monday morning. I woke up at 5 45 to go to the gym. Obviously this happened. I woke up somewhere along the line of me coming back into consciousness. I remember that I had that donut last night and this is the difference from me being a coach versus me not being a coach is I did not beat myself up for it.

I said, Andrew, it's okay. You had the donut last night. Not a big deal. You enjoyed it. All right, we're just going to go to the gym. And you know what? After the gym today, if you want to, if it's something you're feeling, you can go rollerblade and just burn off the calories. No big deal. And because I did that, I started my day with compassion towards myself, having my own back.

I did not exasperate the situation. Now let's look at it, how it could have gone and how it's gone a lot in my life before I was a coach that had these tools is I would say, I'm not gonna eat the donut cake. I would resist the urge. I would fight it the whole time. I would eventually end up collapsing because remember when you resist an urge, you end up responding to the urge.

Which I actually didn't do last night at all, I just decided I was gonna eat it and I ate it. So I'd resist an urge before I had this work. I would eat the donut, I would feel all this shame and guilt, and then what would happen is I would go to sleep shameful and guilty, and then I would wake up and immediately beat myself up for being such a pathetic, weak piece of garbage that can't, uh, You know, ignore a piece of doughnut cake at 8 p.

m. on a Sunday night. And what would happen then is I would feel shame and guilt all day. And you know what's so funny is when I feel shame and guilt over an action I've taken, and I'm the one creating the shame and guilt is I end up doing a shitty workout because my thought is, well, I ate the doughnut cake, so what's the point anyways?

And then I go home and I eat breakfast at like nine in the morning, even though normally I wait, I do a fast until like 12, but that wouldn't have happened if I was beating myself up this morning. And then I would have gone all day long resisting. More urges, hating myself for the entire experience, and then most likely I would have eaten kind of crappy throughout the day as well, and then beat myself up for that.

So this is what happens. So many of us, we don't have our own backs. We're human beings. Sometimes a donut cake or a vape enters the chat when we're not expecting it and we decide to eat it and it's okay and it's not like the higher self decision. And this is the difference. If you can just stop yourself from shaming and beating yourself up for an action you've taken, you've won half the battle because I promise you, if you're trying to quit vaping, And you know that even if you have a vape, you're not going to shame and guilt and hate on yourself.

You're much less likely to have the vape. And if you do have the vape, you're much less likely to do it again in the future. That is what having your own back looks like. And it's the most, it's genuinely one of the most important things I teach people because I don't even care. Even if you say you're going to quit vaping a thousand times over and you never really do it.

If I can teach you to not beat yourself up on top of the vaping, I have won the like golden coach award of the year because I promise your life's gonna get so much better. Without ever having to quit vaping if you can just stop hating on yourself for vaping or stop hating on yourself for overeating or Stop hating on yourself for over drinking or stop hating on yourself for not taking the courageous step and asking the girl with the guy Or whatever it is not going after your dreams, right?

This is the foundational work you do to become the person you want to become I don't even care if you quit vaping if you can have your own back Because I promise you once you have your own back guess what's gonna happen if you want to quit vaping joke with vaping And this is some of the work too that helped me not only quit vaping, but also with the overeating.

I used to hate myself so much. There's a line in Mean Girls. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Mean Girls, but it's obviously a like gay cult classic. You got to watch it. Um, on a side note, my friend, Hannah and I, uh, we're going to do the Mean Girls, the purple tuxedos for Halloween this year. I think I'm not a hundred percent sold on that, but if we do that, you best believe it's going to be all over my Instagram.

But like the hair slick back, the full purple tuxedos, like I'm so my costume budget for Halloween. It's always off the wall. That's like my main dream. Me and my older brother Jimmy are like, our main dream is to have the costume budget. It's just like, there's, there's just endless zeros for that costume budget.

Love dressing up. It's like the most fun thing ever. Sorry, on, off the record. I'm bouncing all over today, but I'm having a great time. So, there's a line in that movie. And one of the girls in the wheelchair, she's like talking to the overweight girl. And she says, I don't hate you cause you're fat. You're fat because I hate you.

And it's like the most true line ever. Like it's the truest thing ever said in the whole world. And I think the same thing goes with like all of our bad habits towards ourselves. Like before I ever have anybody lose weight. In my coaching practice, I teach them to feel their emotions and to love themselves enough to be able to feel them without judgment and to just have the space to choose consciously thoughts about themselves that are loving.

Because before you ever put down a donut or put on your last vape, It's a really good idea to learn how to love yourself beforehand because it's in the process of learning how to love yourself that makes it so much easier to stop the things we don't want to be doing anymore. The bad habits, right? If you love yourself and you want to quit, you're going to quit vaping like someone who loves himself.

You're going to be able to feel your emotions because that's a huge act of self love to feel your emotions and make space for all of them, even the scary ones. You're going to say nice things about yourself. You're going to be very conscious about what you think, about what you say internally. You're going to make sure that if you mess up, you're not going to beat yourself up afterwards for it.

And that process of learning to love yourself is what makes quitting so easy ultimately. So many of us, we try to, we try to white knuckle our way into a life that we think will be better. But what we don't realize is it's. The whole reason that we want to quit vaping or want to whatever quit eating or whatever it is that we want to quit doing or start doing.

The reason we want to do it is because we think we're going to feel good about ourselves afterwards. We think that our life will be better afterwards, but what if you can make your life better right now? What if instead of losing weight to love yourself, you love yourself. And that's why you lose weight.

What if instead of quitting vaping so you can feel good about yourself and feel good about your life. You learn how to love yourself and then quitting vaping is just something that naturally comes from loving yourself and not wanting to be addicted to anything that makes you feel kind of weak sometimes.

And I don't think this is the only way to quit, but I do think that it's the best way to quit because it's literally like the best of both worlds experience. Like you get to be Hannah Montana, you get to love yourself and then you get to quit vaping. You get to love yourself and then you get to have the body that you want because if you hate yourself to a thinner body or you hate yourself to stop vaping, what ends up happening is we're just as miserable on the other side.

Because it's not a skinny body that makes us love ourselves or be happy. And it's not an, a addiction free body that makes us love ourselves or be happy. It's that we choose to do right now. And we practice that skillset and that's why we have a body we love. It's such a different process and it's so backwards, right?

We always think like I always tell people, if you're trying to lose weight or you're trying to quit vaping, In order to withhold loving yourself until you have that result, then I recommend you don't do it. Keep vaping. Because then at least you get to hate yourself and you get to numb over it. But what I want you to do is learn how to love yourself so much that you actually are willing to be with yourself without nicotine involved.

That's a huge act of self love. And that's why I don't vape anymore. Because I don't need nicotine to be around myself. I don't need nicotine to deal with my life. I can have my own back throughout everything that comes to good and the bad. And I don't need any drug to be present in my body to deal with it.

And it makes life so much sweeter. Love yourself. Have your own fucking back. Because you deserve it and nobody else will if you don't. And here's a fun thing too. When you have your own back, you don't need anybody else to have it for you. The coolest thing ever. You want freedom in your life? Start here.

It's the best way to live. Thank you guys so much for being here. Have a fantastic week and I will see you next time. Okay, bye bye.