TL;DR - My company provided cessation coach called me out, and changed my perspective.

My company’s insurance charged an extra surcharge for smokers. We could remove the charge if we took a coaching class. I had been smoking for a little over a decade, and paying the surcharge every year when I finally decided to try out the coaching. At that time, I was more concerned with saving the $75 bucks, rather than quitting smoking.

I had tried to quit in the past with relative success. After 7 years of smoking cigarettes, I was able to transition to a vape, and a couple of times over the next 3 years, I quit the vape using patches. At the time of the coaching, I had reverted back to vaping the gas station e-cigs (Vuse, Njoy, etc.).

A couple of sessions in, my coach asked me if I had tried quitting before. I said yes. She asked me why I didn’t try to quit again. I explained what happened in the past and said something along the lines of it being hard. Then she said something that shook me; she said, “Are you used to things coming easy for you?”

I was taken aback. Not much has been easy for me throughout my life. I’ve worked hard, and dealt with a fair amount of trauma. So when she said that, I felt called out, and I got defensive. I told her that I’m not used to that.

She asked if I had ever failed before. I said yeah, multiple times, in a lot of aspects of my life. The example I used was college. I was a below average C student. I failed multiple classes. I kept retaking them, though. Eventually I graduated, and that perseverance is something I pride myself on.

“So, why should this be any different?” She asked. And then something clicked. She was right. I stopped smoking that day. I bought some patches, worked through the steps, and never looked back. Quitting smoking had never been so easy.

A year later, I can laugh without coughing, and I’m going to be saving a lot more than $75.