In my opinion, the meter is there for one purpose and one purpose only... to help each INDIVIDUAL stay smoke free. However we choose to use the meter in order to achieve that goal is up to each one of us alone. I have slipped 3 times and did all possible options - not reset the first time, the second time, set my meter back a day for each slip and then reset to zero.
When I reset my meter to zero, my meter had 132 days on it. Now granted, only 130 of those were smoke free, but still... that's a lot of days! It ate me up inside and was VERY hard for me to stay smoke free after that because I felt like I lost all credibility on this site, I was ashamed and humiliated and almost gave up all together.
But I never could feel right about my new quit date. Every 17th of the month, I would get sad because I would know that I WOULD have been quit such and such months... but wasn't. I had decided that when I hit one year with my reset date, I would set my meter back to June 17th, 2005 - the day I originally quit smoking. Well, I didn't do it that day, but when I hit 500 days with my reset meter, I did put it back to the day I originally quit - June 17th.
The reason I put it back was because I like to track ALL of my stats... number of cigarettes not smoked, money saved, life gained, etc... Those numbers were not right with the reset meter. Also, June 17th is the day I quit SMOKING... October 28th is the day I quit SLIPPING. There's a difference. I will always hold October 28, 2005 as a special day because I have not smoked AT ALL since then, but June 17th is my true quit date. It's the day I decided to end my smoking life. Yes, I had a few slips, but they don't take away from the decision I made on that day.
However, having said all of that, if I hadn't reset my meter and left it there for 500 days, would I have slipped again? I can't say for sure, but if I had to guess, I would say probably. Therefore, [b]I do encourage people to reset their meters,[/b] but I also know how hard that is, especially if you had more than 100 days on it when you slipped. I NEVER felt right about the reset meter. I was ALWAYS ashamed of myself. It was a CONSTANT reminder of my failure. To me, that's not motivating. [b]We all deserve forgiveness - from others
