Being a father with a 4-year-old to chase after, I realised I had to give up smoking if I wanted to be around for a while to watch him grow up. The True quit program just made complete sense to me and with Michaels program and support I managed to quit smoking within 3 months.
Deborah: Welcome to clients through quick stories. And today I have with me, Greg, welcome, Greg, to a little chat.
Gregg: Yes, thank you. This is interesting.
Deborah: Yeah. I’m just interested to have a chat with you about your life before and during True Quit and after True Quit as well. And what I’d like to start with is I’d love to hear about your life, your actual smoking life, before you came to us at True Quit.
Gregg: Yeah, no problem. Basically, most of my working life has been involved in corporate management, moving amongst different companies, fixing problems, firing and firing, basically just getting them back on track. Again, we got to about 60 years of age and it seemed like uni students were better valued by most companies. So I kind of semi-retired at that point and went to do house renovations and stuff like that. Anyhow, I’ve been a smoker since I was 1564 years of age now, pretty much smoke continuously. About the longest, I’ve ever given up for was about a year in my mid-40s. And my mother passed away, unfortunately. And I found myself smoking the next day and spent the next 20 years doing the same thing over and over again. Basically, I had a four year I’ve got a four-year-old, my wife left me, she’s moved to the Way Northwest and I wasn’t happy with him growing up in that environment, so I’ve requested custody of him. I have him now. And he was probably the impetus for me to want to quit smoking, because I kind of looked at it and always known it’s not a great habit to have, but I looked at it and thought, Well, I need to maximise the number of years that I’m with him if I’m going to have care of him.
And being four years of age, I hardly wanted him to be without a father in his early days. So I went looking. I’ve tried dozens of different processes, try Willpower, tried champagne, tried pretty much everything that’s on the marketplace, none of which I had great success with. Saw Michael’s Advertising thought I’ll have a look at it, had a look at the preview and it made sense. Did not know how he was going to achieve what he claimed he was going to do for me, but the whole process just made logical sense for me and I thought, well, that’s a whole new deal in the world to quit smoking for me. So I decided to progress further with it. And as I got into it, it made more sense and I could see the logic behind what he was trying to achieve, so it was a good thing for me.
Deborah: And then how long did you stay in the programme with us?
Gregg: I was in about two and a half months, I think. Michael, I needed to get out because things had happened like I’ve been diagnosed with cancer and there was stuff that I needed to concentrate on. Michael was not happy about that, purely because he thought I was rushing it a little bit. And I suppose I was. I wanted to complete it, get smoke free, and then deal with the other issues that I had. But we chatted on the phone and he laid out all the pitfalls of rushing the process. But I’ve been trial quitting for a while and I fully intended to go through with the Acupuncture at the end of it and do that process. So although I was trying to move away from the programme, it was more I understood that I invested time and money and stuff like that and I wanted to work. I didn’t want to just escape and then be another ex-smoker that started smoking again. And it worked for me. It did work. And for that, I’m eternally grateful.
Deborah: What kind of programme did you find the most useful for you?
Gregg: The brain training. As I say, everything that Michael kind of came up with, I subconsciously knew, but always, even to the day that I signed up for Tree quit, I had always said, when my head is in the right space, I’m going to have another attempt at giving up as an ex-smoker. I know, and most smokers know that you rarely get your head in the right space or if it is there for about a day and then there’s other stuff happening in your world. So again, he addressed all those issues. He addressed the willpower thing and he addressed not needing to be in the head, being in the right space and stuff like that. And he kind of made it easy for me to just do what I needed to do and I moved ahead fairly quickly. But I was religious in doing the training that was required to do it properly. And genuinely, when I talked to him, I genuinely felt that I’d done enough of the trial quitting and stuff like that, that I was in the right headspace. Interestingly enough. Funny story. I think I must add about six cigarettes before I went to do the Acupuncture, but came out of that feeling great, no desire to smoke.
The process really worked. It was very good and they were my last six cigarettes and the pack went in the bin and that was it. And that was 14 months ago and I haven’t had a cigarette since.
Deborah: Wow! Yeah. And how do you feel now?
Gregg: Good. It prompted me to the quitting of smoking. I was actually already in the gym at that point. I’d gone back to doing gym work again. I started about 120 kilos. I was down to 90 kilos, feeling really good, but still smoking. And my gym instructor kind of said to me, have you ever thought about quitting smoking? And I said, Funny you should mention that I’m actually in the process of doing that at the moment, but I’m still considering myself to be a smoker. Yeah, so I finished the quit smoking thing about two weeks before I got to my goal. Weights and stuff like that at the gym. Yeah. Really felt good. And the beauty was much more energy and much more vitality, which is great when you got a four-year-old and you’re trying to keep him entertained. It was a real good deal. And, yeah, I could highly recommend it. I really, seriously think it’s one of the best programmes I’ve ever seen. And if it worked for me, honestly, I never believed that it was going to happen. I thought I’ll give it a try. It makes sense. We’ll see how we go.
But not knowing the brain training side of the whole thing that Michael does, it was hard to see. There was a definitive end. But by the time I got into it and realised how effective it was through the various stages of getting to a point where it becomes automatic, I even laugh. These days. I walk down the street and I walk past them. You’re smoking. I smell the smoke and think, oh, that smells so fantastic. I wonder what it would be like to have a cigarette. And then by the time I walk past them, it’s all over, out of my brain, it’s just disappeared. And that’s kind of amazing. I never would have thought that I could be that automatic about it and just cancel it out, have a single thought and then cancel it and move on and not think about it for months. It’s interesting.
Deborah: That sounds really fantastic! It’s great. 14 months. Let’s feel good.
Gregg: Yeah. Anniversary is the 22 November year before last was when I did my final quit and I tracked it all the way through the year. That’s the beauty of having an iPhone. You can track everything in the world. So I tracked it on a month by month basis, did that for about three months and then thought, now do it in three-month blocks because it was starting to get easy. And, yeah, when I got to the anniversary, it was a quiet anniversary. I sort of didn’t say too much to anybody. Everybody who knew me knew that I quit smoking but didn’t talk about it too much. Didn’t want to really put the mocker on it too early. That twelve month anniversary was pretty amazing. It was like, wouldn’t have thought it happened to me. But there you go. And as I say, it’s past now. I don’t even think about it, but, yeah, pretty much every month I get to the 22nd. I think it’s pretty good. I’m happy that this is continuing on and honestly, I don’t believe I’ll ever go back. I may have a thought every now and then but just cannot see it.
It’s so easy to not be a smoker now. There you go.
Deborah: Yeah. It’s good to hear. And are there any parts of the programme that you’re applying to, any other parts of your life if you find it to any other areas of your life?
Gregg: Yeah. With the cancer thing, I kind of went through radiotherapy and stuff like that and pretty well knocked me around a bit, lost my appetite. And then when it came back, it came at gangbusters and the 90 kilos I got to I blew out, which I was a bit disappointed about. But I’ve now been back on the fitness deal again, and I’m applying pretty much the same process to overeating and stuff like that. It was one of the things that Michael mentioned that the process could be used for a number of things in your world if you’re prepared to do it. I had a really good diet programme when I was at the gym, achieving what I was achieving, that kind of stuck with me. And because I had the basis of a really good diet that I could use and still have enough energy to walk and work out. Like I’m doing ten K a day and stuff like that, just walking every time I feel like I want to up a portion or I want to have a snack or something like that, I just use the process and it stops the feeling and it makes it very much easier to stick to my diet.
It’s true. It is very usable in other parts of your world.
Deborah: Fantastic. I’m so pleased to hear that you’re doing so well.
Gregg: Yeah, well, so far I’m doing really well. I’m free of well, I’m just waiting for my next specialist appointment, but everything seems to be coming together, so not a bad deal. And my four year old hates me, but that’s typical four-year-olds who do that stuff because I’m his dad and I’m strict with him. But it’s been a real wake up call for me. I wouldn’t have thought that at my age that I’d be in this situation, but it is what it is, and we have a lot of fun together. He’s certainly a different part of my world because my daughter is 35, 36 years of age. She was a bit nonplussed about the fact that I was having a child at this late stage in my life, but, yeah, she’s pretty amazed at the whole process as well. And the fact that I’m probably more of a father to him than I was to her because I was in the middle of my corporate days in those days, and work was all I knew how to do. But we’re very close now to we spent a lot of time as a family together. That’s good. That’s awesome.
Deborah: Yeah. It sounds like you’ve got it all together and so well for you, I’m really pleased and I’m sure Michael will be really pleased to hear as well.
Gregg: Yeah, well, very happy. And as I say, Michael is a great guy and he was very helpful to me in pointing out pitfalls and stuff like that. Yeah. I wish him nothing but success. And as I say, I didn’t ever think it would be successful for me but he proved me wrong.
Deborah: Fantastic. Thank you so much for giving us your time and it was really lovely chatting with you.
Gregg: You too, Deborah.
Deborah: I wish you all the best and look forward to hearing about your two year anniversary.
Gregg: Yeah, I reckon the two-year-old just slip by and I won’t even know about it. It’s that far down the track but yeah, even when I was doing the programme I always consider myself a smoker and probably up until about six months I was always worried that I could backslide but I kind of got that six month period and I thought I just don’t see it happening. I really don’t see it happening. So I now consider myself to be an ex-smoker, which is a big step and people have asked me, do you consider yourself to be a non-smoker? And I go, yeah, I don’t smoke anymore. And before as an ex-smoker I was like I could smoke anytime I wanted to. Just a bad habit. So yeah, it’s good.
Deborah: Great. Well, that’s really good to hear and yeah, thank you again. Really appreciate you taking the time today to have a chat with me.
Gregg: No worries. Thanks, Deborah. Thank you. You too.
Deborah: Thank you. Bye.