📙 Part 2: Describe a positive change that you made in your life

This episode's vocabulary

Solo (adj.) - alone; without other people.

To lessen (verb) - if something lessens or is lessened, it becomes less strong.

Necessity (noun) - the need for something.

To fall away (phrasal verb) - if parts of something fall away, they break off and drop to the ground.

Root cause (noun) - the fundamental reason for the occurrence of a problem.

To pin down (phrasal verb) - to discover exact details about something.

-

Questions and Answers

M: Now Rory is going to describe a positive change that he made in his life. How exciting is that? Rory is gonna say what the change is, why he did it, actually why he made it, he made a change, who he did it with, or like he did something with, and he's gonna explain how he feels about the change. Rory, are you all ready with positivity and changes and your life stories? Off you go. Tell us, tell us.

R: About three years ago I gave up smoking, which is quite a common bad habit around the world. And definitely, there's lots of people that smoke in my country. It's funny because I didn't do it for any specific reason, despite the fact that there are obvious health and social benefits. I just sort of completely lost interest in it. And I didn't feel any great sense of loss. Since it didn't give me any pleasure at all after a certain point. It was pretty much a solo thing since many of my friends still smoke. But in my case, I just found other things to do like reading or doing certain breathing exercises when I'm stressed. A lot of people smoke to calm down. So this explains it in my case as well. I also became more competent at the things I like doing and at my job. So the stress wasn't just, was also not as intense as it used to be. So that cut down on that aspect as well even further. And my work environment changed, which lessened this even more. So the whole necessity just sort of collapsed after a while even though no one really needs to smoke. A lot of people come out of quitting smoking, saying that they feel rather relieved, or they get stressed out by having to avoid it all the time. But in my case, I didn't really feel anything about it. I'm not an expert in addiction psychology or anything. But I think that's the key to the whole thing. You just find other things to do with your time and life to the extent that the problem just falls away, as well as taking steps to sort out the root cause. So in my case, it was like a lot of stress. I also don't get very upset if I lapse from time to time, sometimes I'll smoke socially, but it doesn't happen very frequently. And it's easy to forgive since I don't really feel the need to do it again. It's difficult to pin down exactly why that happened. Maybe I just burned out the neurons that I needed to have that particular addiction because I just did it too much. I'm not too sure. But anyway, I'm pleased that I stopped and it's definitely made a big difference in my life.

M: What about your friends? How do they feel about this change?

R: I don't think there bothers them so much. Mostly, they just focus on their things in the sense.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your story!

-