As always, I'm your host and life coach, Andrew Cipriano. And I'm here today to give you episode 20, which is going to be fantastic. It'll be quick. It'll be awesome. It's going to be right to the point as normal. And y'all are going to love it. So as of like right this very second, I'm opening up my quitting vaping app because I want to update you guys.

So as of today, it's been one year, 218 days, 14 hours, 12 minutes, and 39 seconds since I had put on my last vape. That is $5, 050 and 21 cents I've saved. And the reason why I quit, this was over a year ago, obviously almost two years ago is I've said sore, tight lungs, disempowered lifestyle. Ooh. So today's episode, I wanted to lead in with that little intro.

Um, if you guys want, it's literally called the Quit Vaping App. Like you can just get any one of them and they'll tell you and it's, it's been really nice for me to have that. It's been a, just a really good mental benchmark of the progress I've made. So I'd recommend if you're quitting vaping, just to check out that as an idea.

There's free apps, like there literally is no downside to getting one. So I'd recommend it. Today, we're talking about what you're gaining. I think so often in life, and this isn't just with vaping, it's with so many things that we look at, like what we're giving up and yes, everything in life has consequences and benefits and trade offs.

So yeah, you're giving some stuff up when you quit vaping, right? Like you're giving up just being able to numb out your emotion and feel a quick dopamine hit. But I really want you to just make the switch and you don't have to do this forever, but just give me like humor me for a couple minutes today.

That you might actually be getting way more than you're giving up if you quit vaping. And I'm going to tell you about all my personal gains I've had in life because I quit vaping and we're just going to go over those. And I want you just to kind of sit in that and think about your life without vaping at the end of the episode and all the things that you're going to gain from quitting.

So the first thing I want to say, and this is the most important, and again, I've talked about this in other episodes, but it's confidence. Now that I know that I can go into any situation and not hit a vape, my confidence has gone really, really high up. Well, I should say self confidence too. You know, there's two different kinds of confidence in the coaching world.

There's confidence that comes from doing things in the past and knowing that you can do them because you have experience. So like, for example, I can walk, I know that I can walk across my room. I've done it a million times. I'm very confident. I can get up, go get a glass of water, come sit back down without falling.

Most likely that's confidence. And then there's self confidence. And I would say that actually my self confidence is the one that's improved drastically. Since I quit vaping now, self confidence in the coaching world, it's pretty much that you can put yourself in any situation and know that you're going to be able to manage your emotions and act in a way that you want that serves you.

That's self confidence. And I will say that my self confidence has skyrocketed sky rocketed since I've quit vaping and I'm a life coach. I own a business and my life is just on an upward trajectory in so many different ways and quitting vaping truly was the first milestone that I completed in order to start, start me on the self confidence journey.

And the reason that it's gone up is because when you're vaping, you know, there's a couple things going on. For one, you're, you're often lying to yourself because you're saying you're going to quit. You know, that's not good for you. You have this cognitive dissonance where like your actions don't agree with your belief system.

So like, you know that it's bad. You don't want to do it anymore, but you just can't seem to get rid of it. So that's like a huge thing on your self confidence. People might not see it that way, but it is enormous. So that's why. I think a really good place to start getting your life together is by quitting the things that you're addicted to that are not serving you.

Uh, again, that's why I'm a life coach at House of Vaping, because I'm not anti nicotine, but I'm pro the best version of yourself. So my confidence has gone up so well. And I just want to offer like I was with my friends last night. We went out fun time. Everyone's still vaping. It's actually funny because since I've quit, more people have jumped on the vaping wagon and we're almost in our thirties now.

So you would think that people would like. You know, if you're going to start vaping, you'd probably do it when you're like 16, 18, whatever the age is. And then by 30, you'd start to fall off. But I actually see it's the opposite's true. And I have a friend group of about 20 people and like an alarming amount of them are vaping, which is shocking to me.

And I don't push my philosophy on them, right? It's not my place to judge or say what's right or wrong for their life. So if they come to me and they want help, I'll help them. But, you know, I just observe kind of neutrally in the group and it's interesting to me to see that as they get older, it's actually more of a problem because you would think it'd be the other way around because people see, you know, historically people have seen cigarettes and nicotine is something that young people do.

But I think with the accessibility and potency of the vapes now, I actually think we're going to see an opposite trend. Coming and also because they've been told, you know, I think the biggest reason why people quit vaping and smoking cigarettes, I should say not vaping is because you know, like as you smoke cigarettes and you get older, you see the effects pretty drastically, but I think that it's more subtle with vaping.

It's kind of a more subtle evil. So I don't think that the health scares that comes with. Like approaching the age of 30 is the same for vapes and cigarettes. Uh, so I think that we are going to see a trend where you see a lot of a very high number of papers in their thirties and forties and probably up to their fifties.

And so they really start seeing health effects. Uh, but this podcast is not about health effects. So I'm not trying to scare you with things like that. I really am just trying to show you that without nicotine in your life, your life's going to be much better. Um, so that's one thing is my self confidence has skyrocketed.

I can put myself in a situation where I'm surrounded by people vaping and I have genuinely no desire to vape. Remember, because I've changed my belief systems and manage my emotions. So that's one. And that's like a huge one. I can't stress that enough, you guys. Like, if you are not where you want to be in life, or you have confidence issues, and you're addicted to things, I don't think you understand, a lot of people wouldn't understand, unless you have a psych background and a coaching background, the effect that that has on your overall life and your mental health.

So just be mindful of that. If your life isn't how you want it to be, I would say the easiest place to start to improve it is to eliminate the things you know that you're doing that are hurting you. So, that's one, self confidence. Alright, so the next one on here I'm just going to throw on casually is money.

So as you guys have seen, I've saved like over 5, 000 in almost two years of not vaping. I was a pretty heavy user, um, quote unquote heavy. Like I would buy a vape every two or three days, like one of the 20 to 25 ones. So yeah, I'd go through about 50 bucks of vaping a week. So that's a lot of money. Just want to offer.

That's a lot of money. That's a car payment. That is actually more than my car payment was. Monthly. Um, so, you know, but most people don't really care about the money. Like we can justify it and we kind of just spend money. So it's not a huge reason for me, but I will say the 5, 000 that I've saved vaping, I'm going to Europe in three weeks.

I'm going at the end of May. Uh, and I am spending about 4, 500 bucks on the entire week. That's with airfare, with hotel, with everything I want to do is about 4, 500. So in a year and a half, a little, a little bit less than two years, I'm able to go to Europe. Because I quit vaping, which is the money I would have spent.

So again, I'm not huge and I'm like, I'm really not that influenced by money. So it's not a huge reason for me, but that's a lot of money. Like five grand is a lot of money. So keep that in mind. All right. The next thing I want to say on here is one of the benefits for my life from no longer vaping is the amount of energy I have.

And I'm not just talking about like physical energy, I'm talking about mental energy, but both. So as a life coach, I dig mental energy more than physical energy because I think that mental energy creates physical energy. So like what I mean by that is I'm not at a war with myself all the time. So like, yes, my self confidence is great because I can trust myself now, but I'm also not wasting any energy thinking about nicotine when I'm gonna get my next hit.

Freaking out about when I can hit it. Not being able to take breaks at work was a problem. It used to be a big problem for me. I think that there's probably like anywhere from a thousand to 1500 thoughts a day that revolve around my vape back in the day. And there was so much of it that was unconscious.

And so much of it that was very conscious where I was just constantly at a war with myself, telling myself I was going to quit doing the whole guilt and the shame and all the emotional energy that went with vaping. It was huge. And it's funny because so many people, their excuse for wanting to keep vaping is that it helps you with your negative emotions.

And if you understand addiction, if you actually understand the psychology of addiction, you will know with certainty that that is completely the opposite from the truth. Addiction does not help you with any emotion. What addiction does is covers up some uncomfortable, some mildly uncomfortable emotions you're trying to avoid.

And then what ends up happening when you try to avoid negative emotions is you create so much more of them in your life because when you try to avoid negative emotions in your life without feeling them, you end up doing things like vaping, over drinking, overeating. And then what happens is you end up guilting yourself, shaming yourself, beating yourself up, having low self confidence and all the negative emotion that comes from trying to avoid negative emotion in our lives.

Actually is so much bigger than just feeling the emotion without addiction. So one of the biggest things has come from my life. It's like I have so much time and energy now freed up that it's shocking. I don't even think about vaping for probably two weeks now or like whenever I'm around my friends and I see it.

I'm like, oh yeah, that still exists, but I used to constantly like my whole work day. You guys, my entire work vape.

Trying to find a way to sneak away to get my vape like I cannot tell you how much energy That probably 50 percent of the time that I was working my mind was focused on my addiction and now that it's gone It's like I can't believe how much time and energy I was actually using on that addiction So your energy is gonna go so much up and you're gonna have so much more desire by the way To go after the things you want.

Excuse me. Oh, okay. Sorry about that I'm not even gonna erase that verb so you're getting it but you're gonna have so much more desire because if you guys understand how your I think if your desire is having a tank, so you have like a desire tank, right? So let's say you have a hundred units of desire and when you are using anything a lot that releases dopamine, like vaping, overeating, like unhealthy foods, um, any kind of like alcohol, if you'd like watch porn a lot.

There's so much of your desire that's going to go towards wanting those things. Now, when you remove those things from your life, not only are you going to get so much of your desire units back to spend on other things, but you're also the things that you want that aren't artificially concentrated, like nicotine, which is totally not concentrated like it is in vapes naturally, you're going to get all that desire back.

So what happens is when you take vaping out of your life, The things that you want that are actually exciting for your life, like big goals, going and starting a business, asking out a guy or a girl, um, you know, getting a raise at work, like anything that is actually going to be good for your longterm wellbeing becomes way more interesting because if you understand how nicotine works, it's very highly concentrated in vapes and cigarettes so that you get a really, really disproportionately large dopamine response or happiness chemical release when you use a vape.

So when you're constantly using a nicotine, your brain's like, Ooh, I want that. It's very, very important. And the things that are actually good for you, like exercise, getting proper sleep, um, going on like lovely dates, uh, working and creating something that's important to you at work. Those don't seem as important.

And then what happens when people are using nicotine or alcohol or these things all the time is they think their brain starts to think that these artificially concentrated substances are much more important than things that are actually good for their overall wellbeing. So that's a huge cost of aping that people have no idea is going on.

It's like, Oh no, I vape because I want to help my stress. It's like, no, no. You don't understand. When you vape, it actually reduces your desire for things that are going to be good for you. It's not about you trying to cover up your stress, which by the way doesn't work with nicotine because if you understand how Emotions work when you cover them up with nicotine.

You're not actually processing the emotion You're just numbing over it to be dealt with later and that does compound Like you are creating emotional debt that will have to be dealt with at some point. And that's why people who have addictions typically become more and more and more addicted because as they learn to get away from their emotions in order to maintain, they have to keep getting more and more addicted to avoid their emotions.

Like everything about addiction is just a downward spiral. And I want to offer, it's interesting. Addictions are positive feedback loops. So that means the more that you use, the more that you have to use to maintain the level of addiction you were at. And the level of effect that it has on your body. So this is called a positive feedback loop.

If you imagine, um, Have you ever put a speaker right next to the microphone and then it, like, echoes? And then as it echoes out of the speaker, the microphone picks it up and then it echoes louder and louder and louder until you literally, it's screeching? That's exactly what addiction's all about. So when you are using nicotine, it's actually creating a positive feedback loop so that you can't just maintain the level you're at.

In order to numb your emotions, You have to always numb more and more numbing always leads to more numbing. So that's why people say, you know, there's such things as gateway drugs and all that. It's like all addictions and emotional problem. The reason why people get more addicted to things and heavier things is because the same substance that once covered up their emotions is not strong enough to keep covering up your emotions.

So it's just like you're feeding a bottomless pit of addiction. That's never going to end. It's only going to get worse and I think that that's really important to understand because people think. Especially people who are vaping, they think, well, it'll just be easy to quit one day. I'll just make the decision.

It'll be easier. It's never going to be easier. So that is a thought error. That is a thinking fallacy. It's a logic error that will never serve you. So I just want you to know it's going to be harder and harder as you get more and more addicted. As your beliefs solidify in your head about nicotine serving you and they get stronger, it'll be harder and harder to quit.

Um, I found out my dad, I guess if you guys been listening to this podcast for a while, you, you'll know that my dad had to quit. Smoking cigarettes to get surgery, and now he's smoking again. And the reason he's smoking again is because he has not changed his beliefs about nicotine. And my dad, for like two weeks, was telling everyone around him, Hey, my son Andrew helped me quit vaping, er, quit cigarettes.

And I'm like, you know what dad, don't tell people that. Because I didn't help you quit cigarettes. And the way that you quit isn't right. It's gonna be meaning that you're always feeling deprived. And I don't want you to tell people that I helped you quit cigarettes. Because it makes me look bad. And now he's back to smoking again.

So it's like, thank goodness I said that. You don't have to quit using willpower. And when you do, you're hard headed and you don't understand how to quit properly, which I teach you, listen to episode two, you're always gonna go back to nicotine and you've never fully quit. I have a belief that my dad never quit smoking, even though he wasn't physically or chemically addicted for about a month, his mind was still attached to nicotine.

That is the problem. It's not the chemical addiction that gets people hooked. It's the mental addiction. It means that you have beliefs in your head that somewhere in your life, it's serving you. That's why it's so important to, instead of seeing what you're giving up, you start to see what you're gaining.

I have self confidence now I have money. I have a business, I have health. I can go on a run and not literally wheeze. I no longer have a sharp pain in my throat. I can go into a party and actually respect myself without any shame or guilt that I'm addicted to something and try to hide it, which my friends do.

Like, you can tell that they're guilty when they're hitting their vape. They openly expressed that to me. Which, um, it's the funniest thing, because I'm not judging them. Like, it really is, okay, I'm not judging anyone who vapes. That's not my messaging, at all. But they're judging themselves. And because they're in the presence of someone who no longer vapes, they're using their own belief systems to hurt themselves, which again, not a good thing, not a good look, never going to serve you.

So stop thinking about what you're giving up when it comes to quitting vaping because you're not giving up anything. Vaping isn't even enjoyable. If you actually sit down, I want you guys to do this. If you're not sure if you want to quit or not, that's okay. It's whatever. It's your choice. But if you actually sit down.

Next time, like put your vape in front of you, set a timer for five minutes, and I want you to just watch yourself for that whole five minutes. And then I want you to hit the vape at the end. And I want you to be able to analyze that entire process with awareness, because once you build awareness into the process of how you're using nicotine and how you're vaping, you're going to see in your life that you actually don't like it.

There's nothing about it that's enjoyable. Sitting down, having to set a timer, and not being able to manage yourself, and having all this anxiety and all this addiction feelings come up while you're also beating yourself up, shaming yourself, and then using a substance that's making you sick, there's nothing actually enjoyable about that, you're not gaining anything from your addiction, it's only ever taking things away, the reason you think you're gaining is because you've been believing thoughts that other people have told you to believe about nicotine so that they can sell you things that hurt you in order to make money.

You get to decide what you believe about nicotine and I recommend that you do that consciously because so many of us don't and when You learn this skill for vaping you can carry the skill in other areas of your life And that is why I coach on vaping because this is the gateway to mental health and so funny because people call vaping and everything Like a gateway drug.

Well, no, it's the opposite It's the gateway that's gonna teach you how to process your emotions so that you can watch your brain think and then create the life That you want the only thing that you're giving up When you quit vaping is all the belief systems that are hurting you. You're giving up the part of you that you no longer want to be.

So thank you for listening. This is a good one. I will talk to you guys next week. Have a fantastic day and yeah. Do that. Oh, I forgot. Please do that exercise. You know, if you actually want to quit and you want to build awareness, five minutes, set a timer, put your vape right in front of you, sit there, do nothing but sit with you and your vape, and at the very end of it, hit it.

And I want you to build awareness of that entire process. Do you actually enjoy that five minutes without your vape? Once you hit your vape, is that actual enjoyment? Or is it relief? Because you'll see that if you actually build awareness around your addiction, that you're not actually getting enjoyment out of it, you're getting relief.

And I promise you that relief is not enjoyment. Do not make the mistake of thinking those are the same things. Enjoyment for me is rollerblading. It's hanging out with my friends. It's like cooking a healthy meal. I love doing stuff like that. I like thrifting. I'll go thrift shopping. All of that is really fun.

I genuinely enjoy it. It's a lightness in my chest. Now, relief is not a lightness. Relief is like there's a tightness in my chest, and now there's a lightness because of that. That is not the same as enjoyment, which is only ever light. So, as we keep doing this podcast, um, I really do hope this is the last episode you've had to listen to.

If not, that's okay. No shame in this game. Um, we're just here to build awareness, spread some love and show you that you can become the person you want to become on the other side of addiction. Have a fantastic day. I'll see you guys later.