Hi, welcome to the You Can Quit Smoking podcast, where we go over stories of success with overcoming smoking addiction. Many people have moved through this radical transformation and use smoking as an opportunity for inner growth, with deeper self-awareness and a greater capacity for compassion. So many have done it and you can quit smoking, too. I'm your host, Jessi Hartnett, founder of Honor Your Heart.


Jessi:

Hi everyone. I'm here today with Leks. Leks, can you introduce yourself?


Leks:

Sure. Hey, I'm Leks Vucko. I am a nervous system and somatic healing coach for women who feel like life is passing them by, but they can't really put into words why. Yeah. I'm here to share my story because the journey of quitting smoking actually led me to this journey.


Jessi:

Oh wow, I can't wait to hear it. Jump in and tell us what smoking was like for you, and how you came into it, and what helped you quit.


Leks:

So, I'm originally from Europe, which is where the majority of people smoke. I started smoking out of peer pressure, low self-esteem, somewhere in my teen years, very early on. And it was consistent because all my friends were smoking. It was really rare to have a friend–that was in the ‘90s–who didn't smoke. It wasn't even on and off to be honest. It was always smoking.

I moved to the United States in ‘99, I believe it was. I continued smoking, but I noticed that the majority of people don't smoke. And that kind of made it easier to quit. But it wasn't really until one of my best friend’s dad died from lung cancer–and he was a heavy smoker. That was the day I decided to quit, and I quit, and I never looked back.


Jessi:

Yeah, that's so hard when you have to face that reality of what could happen if you continue to smoke. Were you trying to quit before then or was that just the first time you tried? How did that work? Was it something that you struggled with or you just made that decision and were able to let it go?


Leks:

Well, I would say that I did try, but I was really never serious about it. That's one of the reasons why I don't use the word ‘try’ with people I work with, because I tell them, “You either do it or you don't.” And so, whenever I would say, “I'm trying to quit,” when we say the word try, we're already giving ourselves a way out, right? I'm going to try, but if it doesn't work, I'm okay with that.

But when you make a decision, especially when you have an emotion behind it like I did, the decision is so much easier, because it's like, “Well, there's no going back. This is the decision that I made. I'm changing my identity with this new decision.” Where before it was like, “Yeah, I'll quit.” And never really serious about it.


Jessi:

So that identity piece, what were some of the things you experienced with that? Was it difficult to change your habit? Did you see yourself differently when you were quitting?


Leks:

When you have a strong, emotionally charged decision–again, emotion is the key here–so behind me was a serious emotion. Like, I heard his story–my friend's dad–he started coughing. He started coughing blood. He went to the hospital. He lost like a hundred pounds within like three months. It was horrible. So even though I couldn't see him, you're just hearing this, you can visualize it, right? So that's how it was for me. I was in the US, he was in Europe, but I heard these things and then finally he died and I went, "This is it."

I remember actually buying nicotine patches, and I remember thinking, “I'm going to need them.” I really didn't understand the power of my decision that day, because the next day I put the nicotine patch on and I was sick from it. So I took it off and I said, "All right, I think I just wasted money on this. I don't think I need this." And then a few days later, I remember standing in line in Walgreens to pay, and the gentleman in front of me still smelled like smoke. I couldn't even breathe it. It was so bothersome to me. It was, again, that strong of a decision.

It's very rare in life that we can make that strong of a decision, but I have done it a few times. And that's that conviction that you have to make that decision with. I was so serious about it that it quite literally overrode my identity of who I thought I was. I was a non-smoker from that point on. Then, I started looking into fitness and working out and a healthier lifestyle. And of course, that supported fully my decision. But when I look back, it was the shift in the identity that led me then to go to the gym, to go to work out, to start eating healthier, to really start looking into health.


Jessi:

Wow, that's amazing. That sounds like an on/off switch almost. So, you didn't really struggle with cravings, huh?


Leks:

No. I mean, again, it's that conviction that I had. And again, I didn't realize the power of it until I realized the smoke bothers me–the smell of it, the scent of it. The nicotine patch made me feel so sick, as if I was a non-smoker putting a nicotine patch on. Looking back, I know what happened. It was truly an identity switch. And that's why it was easier to never look back.


Jessi:

That's really inspiring, because I know it's very difficult for a lot of people, but it doesn't necessarily need to be once you make that commitment. I'm all about that decision, because there's really no going back once you're once you're going ahead with it.

But I'm curious more about the emotional side. So a lot of people, including myself, you struggled maybe with some confidence as a teen, and we can get caught in these emotional patterns where we feel unwanted emotions and then we turn to smoking. So if we're lonely, we're depressed, we're angry, whatever it be, you kind of wire that in with the smoking. And I found that that's the hardest part of quitting for me…


Leks:

Yes.


Jessi:

…that I was able to get through the physical parts, no problem. I mean, a little uncomfortable, but it was the emotional stuff that always kept me going back for it. So, was there a difference with you? It sounds like you didn't have that craving when you had those emotions, but what was your emotional zone like before and after? Were you in a place of more confidence?


Leks:

Yeah, I think that is really the key question. I'm so glad you asked that, because knowing what I know now, I can explain it. If you asked me this question back then, I probably would have been like, “I have no idea.” But the thing is, everything comes back to our nervous system. Whether it's smoking, weed, alcohol, any drug of choice. People go shopping, scroll on the phone, right? Like, we all have some vice, as we call it, or some addiction.

The root cause of the addiction is inability to deal with emotions safely. So, most of us have never been taught how to deal with emotions. Most of us didn't fully have a safe place with our caregivers. When that happens, the emotions get overwhelming. And when that happens, we don't know how to handle them. So, we try to run away from them. This is why we grab a cigarette because nicotine helps us feel as if we soothed ourselves. So does alcohol. So does weed. So does whatever people use. They get a quick dopamine hit, which gives us a false sense of calmness, of what it would feel like if our nervous system was calm. But we didn't know that, right? So we went to this drug of choice, in this case, cigarettes. We felt better. We felt calmer. And then next time the emotions were too overwhelming to deal with, we thought we needed another fix, which then becomes the physical addiction, right? That's what you were referring to.

So when we realize that, at that point, usually people are already addicted to nicotine. So we do have to go through the physical withdrawal. Absolutely, once we make that decision. Unless in my case, I overrode every cell of my body with that decision, which again, can happen. It’s just, you have to have emotionally charged thoughts behind it–emotionally charged decision, I should say. But when we realize that, we can learn to deal with the emotions that we've been running away from. Whether it was low self-esteem, or trauma, or harassment, or abuse, or someone's negative comment that just never sat well with us, or never feeling safe with our parents, or whatever caregivers we had. Once we learn how to create safety in our body, we actually really don't need any of the cigarettes or alcohol or any of that. So the root cause is really emotional.


Jessi:

Thank you so much for sharing all that knowledge because that's definitely my lived experience, and I think it's so important to have those tools. But it can be hard. It was hard for me to learn how to regulate on my own. I never learned that as a kid so I had to learn as an adult. So, how did you gain that skill?


Leks:

Oh, that's my whole life journey. I was in a so-called dysregulated nervous system for over twenty years. I was in fight or flight, which made me go to boxing, kickboxing, bodybuilding after I quit smoking. Like I said, I went to the gym and then started my journey. But I still at that point didn't deal with my emotions. That's why I said I know how to explain it now. I still didn't know what was going on then. I didn't go on that journey for a really long time because now I made that switch from a smoker to a non-smoker. And now I went, “Okay, I'm going to the gym. Okay, I'm doing kickboxing. I'm doing boxing. I'm in bodybuilding. I feel so great. I want the world to know how great it feels. I want to share this with the world.” And I was doing all the things “right” on the outside, but I still didn't look within me. I still didn't look on the inside.

So, I lived in survival mode. For me, the fight was the main one, even though we all switch between all of them, but the fight, the high adrenaline was the one that I was stuck in for a really long time. And I just kept feeling like, “Why is it that I'm doing everything right, but I still have a thyroid issue? I'm still not feeling great.” And all of that led me to actually explore myself within, like, “Why am I feeling this way?” And work on safety from within, feeling safe from within.

And then that was a huge transformation for me, where I feel like I finally learned to regulate my emotions. I finally learned what it feels like to experience the emotions safely. It can be a journey. I mean, it can be done quickly for people who are ready, but it's generally a journey because our nervous system was living in survival mode for a really long time, generally, and now we're getting that we're again, literally changing the identity, which itself is very scary for the nervous system, because our nervous system just wants to keep us safe. This is why we–again, besides the physical addiction and besides not knowing how to deal with emotions–this is why we go back to cigarettes. Because it's our safety net. This is where we feel “normal,” like ourselves, like everything's okay.

But again, when we look within and we start feeling within, allowing ourselves to feel ourselves in our body–most people are actually disconnected from their bodies–and so when I learned to do that, for me, that really made a huge shift in my life. Everything started changing from there, and that's when I started learning about it, about the Vagus nerve and co-regulation and what you were sharing, too. We never learned to do that when we were little.

Co-regulation is something we're supposed to do with our parents. Our parents are supposed to be there to create a safe space for us, and to help us co-regulate. So, when we feel upset and we don't know how to handle our emotions, they're supposed to be there as an armor to help us regulate, to help show us how to breathe and how to return back to our bodies. But I honestly don't know anybody–maybe teenagers nowadays, I see some of the parents teaching them that–but it's very rare to find that, back in the day in parenting. And this is not to blame parents. Our parents did the best they could. It's about learning, “Oh, okay, this is what got me here. If I feel stuck and I want to quit smoking, or whatever it is that I want to quit, I need to learn to regulate myself. I need to learn to feel safe in my body. I need to learn what it feels like to process these emotions safely without cigarettes, without the drug of choice.”


Jessi:

That's so wonderfully said and that's something that I'm working on as a mother. It's helping me somehow; working with her emotions helps me understand mine better. And it's difficult to navigate though. I'm just trying to be patient with myself. I think that's a huge component, too, is just having patience, having forgiveness, allowing grace; because a lot of my smoking habit was negative self-talk and that was emotionally charged, and I kind of got addicted to that in a way, to being harsh to myself. I was used to that environment like you're talking about. It was a big shift for me to get out. It was uncomfortable. It was weird. But I took small little steps in different ways. I'm wondering if you have a practical tool for someone that was like me. Something you even use today that helps you connect to your internal world within yourself to take that time, because it's difficult in a loud, busy world sometimes to actually tune in to ourselves. So what's something that works for you or has worked for you in the past?


Leks:

There are many tools which–again, I don't want to go into them, not to confuse the listeners, because when we get too many things, we get overwhelmed. The simplest one is putting hands on the heart and saying, "I am safe. I'm feeling safe. It's okay." Now, for some people, taking deep breaths is really hard, because when we're in survival mode, our breath gets shallow. And again, if we've been there for a really long time, that's what the body's used to. And it is addicted to–you said it correctly–we do get addicted to our thoughts. We get addicted to our emotional state. This is why it's so hard to change, because it's quite literally a chemical and hormonal addiction in our body.

But once we start being aware of it, we can start changing it. So one of the tools is, again, putting
the hands on the heart, taking deep breaths slowly in through the nose, slowly exhale through the mouth, which is already signaling to the body you're safe. And just repeating that: “I feel safe. I am safe. It's okay to relax.” Something that has that soothing tone to it. Words like safe, calm, relax.

Now again, for people who have a hard time with deep breaths, even just putting hands on the heart, feeling the heartbeat, that's again connecting with the body because we've been running around in the busy world, feeling disconnected from our body. And going back to the addiction that you said, it's very important to talk about it because we carry the guilt and the shame and self-judgment over the thoughts we're having or the feelings we're having.

And we ‘should’’--as Tony Robbins says–we ‘should’ all over ourselves. We do. “I should. I should be feeling different. I should. Why am I feeling this way?” That's okay. Having that grace is key because we have to remove the guilt and shame. We have to understand we're learning this for the first time. So, we are going to feel like Bambi on ice, trying to talk positively to ourselves at first. But if you keep going, right?

Just like learning how to drive. The first time you sat to learn how to drive, it was really freaky, but it was the emotion behind it. “Hey, I know everybody does it, so I can. I know I can do it. And two, I want to be able to drive,” because it's like having legs in the United States, right?


Jessi:

Yeah.


Leks:

So, it was these emotions behind the desire to learn to drive that kept us going through the fear. Even though at that time the nervous system was like, "What are you doing? We don't know what we're doing. We can crash. This is dangerous." But we did it, even through cold sweat, many times. And we did it so many times that now it became second nature, right?

So, it's the exact same thing with our thoughts. “Hey, I'm learning how to talk to myself.” So, at first, I'm aware. Now, here's the trick. I really want the listeners to hear this. We start being aware of our thoughts and behaviors. I've developed this path, per se, to help explain to people what they're going to go through. So, the first step is awareness. “Okay, now I'm aware. I talk really bad to myself. I go to cigarettes when I'm really stressed out and I don't know how to deal with that yet.”

Okay, the second part is, “Now I'm aware, but I'm still watching myself take the wrong action.” And this is an important step to note because people feel like they're failing in that, because it's so hard mentally, right? Like, “I'm now watching myself take the wrong action.” It's okay. It just means the nervous system is still too strong to actually make change. That's okay. That's a very normal part of the process. Then we keep going. We keep going. We see ourselves take the wrong action many times. And that's okay because nine times out of ten, the nervous system is still going to win. But that one time, I'm going to be able to overcome it. And we want to celebrate that, because now that's showing us evidence that we can do it.

Then we move over time to step three, which is now, more times than not, I'm actually winning over my nervous system; but it still sometimes gets me, and it still gets me into the old behavior. And that's okay. If we keep going, we're eventually going to get to the step where we're just doing it out of second nature. Like, it's no big deal to us.


Jessi:

I love that so much. You just described my whole path to quitting smoking in a nutshell. That is amazing because there's a phase where you see what you're doing, but you just feel compelled to, and it's very frustrating. You're like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?” So, I think that the shift in my self-talk really helped me get through that. Like you said, that gentleness, that patience. “I'm learning. I'm learning.” And affirmations really got me through, like, “This is where I'm going. This is where I'm heading.” And having that vision of getting to the other side was what kept me going, even when it felt like I wasn't making progress quick enough.

I think that's a huge component, too, is that we all want to shift overnight, and these things do take time, a lot of times. But, I don't know for you, your experience with quitting smoking, at least that component, it was an overnight thing. So it's hard to have expectations of ourselves. And I feel like being more open and more curious with it kind of helps us just take it as it comes and adjust to what's needed for us.


Leks:

Oh absolutely. You said it: the curiosity, right? So, we're taking the guilt and the shame and the self- judgment out of it and we're going curious, right? “Why did I take that cigarette? Why did I feel stressed? Oh, that person triggered me. Oh, okay. Hmm. Why did that trigger me?” Curiosity. “I want to know. I want to get to know myself on a deeper level,” rather than, “I just want to quit smoking.” That will happen as the result of me connecting with me, and me working on me, right? Curiosity is key. Having grace with yourself is key. And this is why I wanted to explain this, because that second step of you watching yourself take the wrong action, really is frustrating. And this is where, again, that's why most people think, "Oh my God, what is wrong with me?" There is nothing wrong with you. It's your nervous system trying to protect you, the only way it knows how.

Because the nervous system is very simple. It's, “Is this safe or is it not? Is it dangerous or is it not?” And it has no logic. So we're constantly trying to talk logic to it when the nervous system is like, “This sounds dangerous, because I don't know what it feels like.” If I was a smoker my whole life, I don't know what it feels like to identify as a non-smoker. It actually seems dangerous. And so we think we're failing, but actually the nervous system is just trying to keep us safe. This is why we put the hand on the heart, connect to the body, and say, "It's safe for me to feel this emotion without the cigarette. It's okay. I will be okay." Talking with ourselves through it. Absolutely. You nailed it.

The curiosity is key. The moment we feel guilt, shame, and judgment, we have to understand we're not on the right path. And one more way to bring that home is: the reason why we never learned to safely feel the emotions is because we didn't have that person that we needed, that was patient and kind to ourselves. And this is why we learned to talk negatively to ourselves. We picked up how others talk to themselves and we picked up how they talked to us. So we were shamed, we were guilted, right? Like, we were put in our place. We were punished. And this is how we learned, “I'm the bad one. I'm the bad person.” That's what a child learns. They don't have any logic, right?

So now as adults–for one, like you said, we're trying to change it overnight. For most people, that's not how it happens. In my case, it just happened to be that moment in the right moment, feeling the right emotion to say, "I'm done." Right? But for most people, it's a journey. And that's okay. Listeners shouldn't think, "Oh, well, it happened for her cold turkey. If it doesn't happen for me, then I'm not good enough." No, you are. Your journey is just different than mine. And that is okay. There's no right or wrong. You are on your own path.

So, going back to that, where we didn't have that person that was kind and patient with ourselves. And now as adults, we're trying to change it in the only way we know how to, which is shaming ourselves. So now we have to understand, “Okay, that doesn't work. This is what got me here. How do I do this differently? Well, how would I treat myself with kindness and patience? What would that look like?” Maybe I don't even know at first, but I'm just opening myself up to, “What would that look like? How would it be if I talk to myself kindly?” And let me practice that for like a month or two and see what happens. Because I can always go back to negative self-talk. I've done too much of that. I know how to go back to that very quickly.


Jessi:

Yeah.


Leks:

But what if I dedicate a month or two, maybe even three if I dare, ninety days of constantly talking to myself like my own best friend, like my biggest cheerleader, and let me see what happens. Because if I don't like it, I can always go back.


Jessi:

I love that. That helps calm the mind, because the mind can panic. And there's all these little tricks that just, “Okay, calm down. We can do that later.” Postponement is a really great tool. I used that in the early days a lot. It's like, “Okay, I'm not going to smoke right now. We'll see.” And then, you know, the craving passes. It's easier once I calmed myself, regulated myself, to make a choice that I wanted for myself, other than the habit, the pattern. That's really great.

I want to talk a little bit more about that because that's the crux of my work with Honor Your Heart. I hadn't thought of it in terms of the nervous system, but just that the smoking habit is not a rational thing. People don't start smoking, thinking like, "Oh, this is a good thing for me. This is going to add to my life." It's all emotionally based. And I feel like to get past the habit, we need to tap into our heart space and get out of our head, that's always busy planning, organizing, rationalizing, judging, and get to that place of the heart where there's creativity and intuition.

I mean, you've kind of mentioned it before, that you were able to connect to yourself, but I'm curious about the role of intuition in your journey, and if that's something that you use regularly to navigate life.


Leks:

The more I got in tune with myself, the more I started reconnecting with myself, the more intuition I started developing. I'm at a point right now, I'm starting to have some visions, which is so new to me and I don't even know what to do with it yet. So, I'm allowing the space for it, right? My nervous system is feeling okay with that. I just don't know where it's going yet.

But there is a great person to listen to, Dr. Gabor Maté. He's a Hungarian-Canadian doctor who is now talking about body-mind connection, and he talks about this very thing: that when we're little, when we're children, we have to feel safe. That is the primary thing of a child. We have to feel safe. If we don't feel safe with our caregivers, we are not going to develop intuition, because we start turning to safety. This is how we become people pleasers, because we try to figure out the person's emotions and how to keep peace going, before (sometimes) they even know what their emotions are. And then, if we feel safe, then we get to reconnect and develop intuition, which we need based on the human species. We need this for living in the wild, like we did for millions of years. When I heard him say that, I thought, "This makes so much sense."

And this is exactly how I've seen it happen with me, because I learned to feel safe. I had to learn to feel safe in my body. I had to set up my environment to feel safe. I had to talk with myself a certain way, situation by situation, to feel safe. And if I got dysregulated–which, again, the end goal is not to never get dysregulated, because we will. That's humans. It's how to quickly and safely bring myself back into my body, and not to just react out of emotions, but to actually respond with a choice of how I want to respond.

In my journey, now that I've been feeling safe for quite a while, it just naturally started coming to me. So, this tells me: we all have that within. It's just that when we feel out of touch, we can't develop intuition. We just go with what's in front of us. For most of us, we live in survival mode. Our nervous system is just looking for fight or flight. Or sometimes we see the freeze or the shutdown, even, of a person. And then there's the fawn, which is the people-pleasing part, which most of us have as well. So, all of these things go hand in hand. As we start working on feeling safer in our bodies, as we start working on ourselves, I feel like all of these things naturally come to us, because we start connecting with who we really are.


Jessi:

I can see it going that way, too. For myself, I feel like I've been more of an intuitive person. We all have access to it. Agree one hundred percent with that. But in my life, I've always had a really strong pull from intuition, and was kind of trained to ignore that. Like, “No, that's wrong. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that.” But I feel like I was in an unsafe situation and my intuition was trying to get me safe. So it can go both ways. I can see how being safe allows yourself to open it more. But I also think our intuition can get us, when we're not in a safe place, it can help guide us back to a place of safety.


Leks:

Yes.


Jessi:

And luckily, I was able to finally listen to that voice, and life has only gotten better from there. And that's amazing with visions coming to you. I love this idea of just going deeper. I think a lot of people, including myself, want to get to the end. We want to be finished. Like, “Okay, check. Done on self-improvement. Knowing myself, check.” And that's not really what it's been like at all. I just keep going deeper. I think I have a thing down, and then I get tested again with a way to go deeper with that idea. So, I think that's amazing that you're on that same kind of journey of going deeper, of navigating new skills, new ideas. I just think that's an amazing point that it's actually fun and interesting, like you said, especially coming from that place of curiosity, like, "Oh, wow. What's this? This is new.” (Laughs.)


Leks:

Yeah.


Jessi:

You know, it would be boring if we were just perfect.


Leks:

Absolutely. And you’ll learn to fall in love with their journey. I mean, the journey never ends, right? You do get from healing to thriving, right? From surviving to actually start thriving. But you're always going up these stairs, right? You're always going to the next level. And you fall in love with the journey, and through that journey, you start falling in love with yourself. Not only yourself now, you start to love the past versions of you, and you start to look forward to the future versions of you. And then you get to create the future that you want.

But you're so right. You have to go with curiosity. And I love that you listen to intuition. I believe it is in everyone. It's just that if our nervous system learned that it's not safe to do anything but look at the danger, potential danger, ahead, it doesn't connect us to it. I love that you actually had the thread of that, and that you were able to maintain it and listen to it. And I do believe that you fall in love with the journey. You fall in love with yourself. And for people who are afraid to even think that way, thinking that they're going to think they're too much, I want to tell you that, first of all, you're not just going to become a narcissistic person. That's a whole another subject for another time. You fall in love with yourself in the healthiest, most beautiful way, and in such a way that you start loving others on a deeper level. And I always feel like this allowed me to love myself, and to love everybody even more.

And by uplifting myself, I get to uplift others and show them what's possible when they start treating themselves with kindness. Because I've learned to treat myself with love and kindness. Therefore, I treat others with love and kindness. And for some people, that's a foreign concept. So, some people reject it, which is okay. They're not ready. Some people receive it and they're really surprised by how good it feels. And then they start observing and going, "Well, if she can do it, I can do it, too." Absolutely, absolutely.


Jessi:

Yeah. Those changes ripple out. I think that's so important because we can get so disconnected in modern culture, where it feels like we're all on our own path doing our own thing, and the successes aren't necessarily shared, that we're actually competing against each other, and it's comparison and things like that. But I believe that when someone comes into themselves, into self-love, into self- knowing and lets their gift shine through, that's how we change the world, that it actually impacts everyone around them. And it's very, very powerful to see that: that people can rise out of the nervous system dysregulation or addiction or whatever problem has been holding them back and really come into their own.

And I think it's an important part of the journey. It's not a flaw, like you said, like, “What's wrong with me.” It's just part of the human experience. You have to get wounded and go through the trial to actually become who you are again.


Leks:

Yeah.


Jessi:

It's mysterious, but I see that in you and I think it's absolutely amazing.


Leks:

Thank you. Yeah. I think so too. I think it's an amazing journey for everyone who dares to step onto it. The work is not necessarily easy, but it is the most rewarding work that we can do in our lives.


Jessi:

Yeah, it's really living. It's more than just paying bills, guys.


Leks:

Yeah.


Jessi:

I was wondering if you have any final words for maybe some people that are on the fence about quitting. They don't feel like they can do it or they feel stuck. What would you say to them, with your experience?


Leks:

My experience is that we live our stories. So, if my belief–a.k.a. my story–is, “I can't quit, it's hard for me.” And if I keep saying that to myself, that's exactly going to be what shows up in my reality. This is not to guilt, shame, or judge anyone, because that's what we've all done, until we learn differently. Right? When you understand the power of your words, the power of your thoughts, the power of your emotions, you can start navigating your life to what you want it to be. Your brain and your nervous system, at first, can't comprehend that. Right?

So, you don't want to start big. You don't want to go, "Oh, okay. Well, I'm a non-smoker now." And you don't have that emotional charge that I had. You just go, "Okay, can I go the rest of the day without a cigarette?" Right? “Let me let me do that.” Right? If somebody's a heavy smoker, “Let me do just one hour,” right? Like, “let's see.” And then going for one whole day or, “Hey, okay, it's a Monday. Let me do Monday, Tuesday, non-smoking days,” right? Create a little game with yourself. Again, careful not to guilt, shame, or judge ourselves, but to allow it to be what is, and then go from a place of curiosity. “Oh, Monday almost flew by and I did light a cigarette at 4:00. What happened at four o’clock?” Right? Curiosity, again. Going from a place of curiosity.

So, my advice is: we've tried guilting and shaming ourselves into things. It doesn't work. It got us here. Let's try love and kindness and grace. And let's try curiosity. Let's go from a place of, “Let me see what happens if I do this.” And then, if someone wants to go even a step further, I highly recommend journaling, where we ask ourselves questions such as, “Who would I be without cigarettes?” Because that's just an opening question to the nervous system of, “Hey, we're not there yet! We're not freaking you out nervous system! We're not changing anything, we're just asking what would happen.”

Because I had a client who came to me for weight loss, and through conversation it came to, she was overweight her whole life. And she said she became the funny one. She became the straight-A student. She started excelling in everything because she felt like she had to make up, because she was overweight. And I said, "Well, do you see how freaky it is for your nervous system? Because now, who are you without your weight?” And she goes, "Oh my goodness." And so she realized at that moment the power of that, right? The nervous system is just like, "I don't know who we are without the weight. This is how we've been our whole life." And she had the identity shift. She's been working on journaling and things like that. And now she's like, “I take a different action.” That's that inspired action.

This is why I said: you want to go with the curiosity of, “Hmm… Why did I get stressed out? Or, “What emotion did I feel when I went to cigarettes?” Or, “Who would I be without cigarettes?” Starting from these perspectives, because the end result will naturally lead to quitting the cigarettes, once we take care of the root cause of, “What emotions are the ones that I'm not dealing with? What am I trying to avoid?” Because for as long as we keep trying to avoid it, it's still running our lives. It's still dormant in our body somewhere and it's making us take the action that we don't want to take. And on those days, on step two, when we are observing ourselves and we still feel like we failed. Just remember: you didn't fail. That's a part of the journey. You are rewiring your central nervous system. That's all.


Jessi:

Thank you so much. There's so much wisdom there. Really appreciate your words and your experience. How can listeners get in touch with you and your work?


Leks:

Thank you for those kind words; it's a pleasure to be here. My website is probably my best bet: Leks.pro. I'm also all over social media. So, as long as you put in Google my name, Leks Vucko, you'll find me there.


Jessi:

And do you want to talk a little bit more about the services you provide? Like, what could people expect from working with you?


Leks:

Yeah, currently I am offering a free workshop where people can learn more about the nervous system. If you've never heard about it, if this is new to you, if you've heard about it, but you don't know what to do with it, this is probably one of the safest ways to access it. It's free. It's a webinar. You go through some meditations. You get to some journaling. You really get to start the work of deep diving into yourself. And there's no better work than getting to know yourself, because who else is going to know me better than me? And then I'm building…I have my coaching programs, I have my memberships, I have my course, and that's for people who want to go on a deeper dive into the nervous system, into rewiring the nervous system and changing their identity.


Jessi:

I really appreciate that work. It's something I've had to kind of stumble through myself. I could probably learn more about it, I'm sure, because it's been pretty much a 180, and I know that I can go deeper with it. So, I really appreciate you sharing that knowledge with people. It can change lives. Absolutely.


Leks:

Thanks. Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's always my pleasure to share this information, whether people end up working with me or not. It's beside the point really. My whole goal is to make people aware of the nervous system work, because if I knew this twenty years ago, my life would have been completely different. And wherever we are now, we can really shift our life if we start paying attention to: how we feel, do we feel safe, and how safe are we feeling to experience the emotions that we've been avoiding.


Jessi:

Yes, one hundred percent. That's the journey I'm still on. So, thank you so much for sharing your story, and being here today, and having so much heart, and your words, and your advice. I really, thank you. Thank you.


Leks:

Thank you.


Jessi:

Okay, I'll see you guys next Tuesday. Take care, everyone.