Yuku free message boards

Hello Marty:

It's fine to talk about weight concerns, or how to face problems like jobs, families, illnesses, and even deaths of people close to you, or how to deal with happy events like reunions, vacations, weddings, births and the like. These events all can be eliciting smoking related feelings, especially when they are first time events for a person. Actually when people share specific examples of how they faced these situations with fear or trepidation but then overcome them, it often prepares others to face their own similar fears.

So events that on the surface have nothing to do with smoking do in fact sometimes have to do with smoking. When writing about the event on the board, it should talk about how smoking or thoughts of smoking are intertwined with the story. But if you go around to almost every other smoking board, you will see many examples of people writing about events that don't mention smoking and basically where the sole purpose of putting up the post is to serve as a diversion to keep people's minds off of smoking. They will say it in the post. You will see Oscar talks and movie reviews. If the movie review was on the Insider and how that made a person think about smoking issues, that is one thing. Even if it is on how watching someone smoking in the movie was reminding them of some smoking related issue, that would seem to be a legitimate topic helpful to write about. Or how when leaving the movie theatre for the first time you encountered a powerful urge to smoke. Then you realized that every time you left a movie in the past where you could not smoke for two and a half hours you would automatically light up so this was a first time trigger.

But to talk about an actresses clothes, or a lousy plot and never tie the reason of the post to smoking in any way, just for the sole purpose to show other things are going on in life, this is not necessary on a stop smoking board, at least not this stop smoking board.

Another more important example of such divers ional posts could happen around national elections, where issues coming up can be quite divisive and serve no particular purpose in smoking concerns. Although at the same time, I myself brought up quite a few issues about smoking during elections, as in the trigger of leaving a polling place, and the general tension felt while awaiting a decision of who the winner was. Our last American presidential election caused a lot of people to go on an emotional roller coaster, with one candidate declared a winner, then the other, then the other, and so on. This went on for weeks and there was a general sense of anxiety being experienced by the nation as a whole. Recent ex-smokers who were feeling this same anxiety could have been writing it off to a not smoking issue where in fact many ex-smokers, never smokers and current smokers were all having the same feelings due to the abnormal circumstances.

So basically I was trying to say in this post, when a person is considering bringing up personal opinions or events that really don't tie into smoking, to the point that smoking is not even mentioned as an aside, again for the sole purpose of showing that there are other things in life other than quitting smoking, they should know that this is a given--there is a whole spectrum of events in their lives that will have nothing to do with quitting smoking. Everyone should be spending time outside the board living these events.

The problem with strings starting that are not smoking related issues, it makes people feel they too should bring up such strings. Soon, many posts may come up at once that are fringe at best. A new person coming in the first time may go to read two or three posts to get a flavor of the content and usefulness of the board. If the person is a serious quitter, looking for practical advice and tips and a real understanding of addiction, and the top two or three posts are about movies, or birthdays, or sporting events, etc, they will not go any further, they will move on. We want everyone go be cognizant of this when writing, that we want any new person coming in at any time to get real education, understanding and support and to feel that Freedom is a serious board where the more they read the better prepared they are going to get to face their life. I should point out, we do believe that there are a lot more people reading here than participating here. We get many applications every single day from people who never post. They are likely the majority here. They are here to learn and we want to keep this board a place that they feel is worth their time, as well as all of our posting members.

We do have some strings that seem to contradict this letter. The where are you from string with a hundred and seventy some responses that often say nothing about smoking. But this one was different; it shows the diversity of this group. In a way, it shows the smoking issue in a worldwide view, how people want to quit on every continent and in every country and often have little support or understanding how to do it. While it is a little different than most of our posts, the responses were relatively short and to the point, and I think a lot of people spent time seeing where all our people were from. I personally think this was one valuable thread for just that reason and enjoy when I see it come up again with new people in it. So there are exceptions, but we don't want to let exceptions be a policy that opens up the floodgates to turn us into a social site where people come to kill time socializing. We don't want anyone here for the sole intent to kill time; we want people here because they are focusing on no longer slowly killing themselves.

So tie all your posts to smoking issues. Smoking issues can be just about anything. You will know if it is a smoking related post when it asks a question regarding cigarettes, or answers a question regarding smoking and addiction. One way to know for sure that your post is about smoking, is if it ends with a simple affirmation that you know to stay smoke free, which was your ultimate goal in joining and staying around now, that you still want to continue to strengthen your resolve and to always remember that you want to never take another puff!

Joel

I saw where yesterday where Ladyjen wrote the comment about how the managers would probably delete a post that was not about smoking.

First I would like to state that we very rarely delete posts here unless they are really against our common courtesies. Normally if someone posts something controversial we will come in and explain the problem with the post, unless the post is real inflammatory at which point we will delete the post quickly. But this is not a common occurrence.

We do ask that people think before they post if something is really offensive or of a nature that you would be improper for keeping our family ratings here. We do in fact have kids refer to this site for we do promote Whyquit and thus freedom at schools, so we do wish to keep the content of a proper decorum for such readers.

The post in question though was not of this nature and was actually about not smoking, or at least about the temptation to smoke because of specific circumstances triggering a desire. If anyone reads the third post in this string it addresses the difference between a totally diversional post and one that while on the surface may not be a smoking issue, when looked at it in its entirety we can see that it was truly a smoking related story.

In fact, next time someone here gets pulled over by the police for speeding, they may reflect back to this story and remember how the temporary annoyance was actually overcome and the person was able to remain smoke free. You may not remember when you read it, or even who it was about, but the lesson is learned.

So don't be afraid to let us know how certain situations made you think about a cigarette, but try to always bring the story full circle--how it created the thought, how you got through it and how you feel afterwards, when the smoke has cleared so to say. The lesson you have learned from the experience is then shared by all and you may have just helped other members in their continued commitment to never take another puff!

Joel

We want it to be clear to everyone that our sole intent at Freedom is to help everyone secure his or her quit. We try to accomplish this by keeping the board focused and thus keeping everyone here focused on one simple premise: everyone has the ability to stay smoke free and live the rest of their lives in their real outside world. We are trying to give everybody the knowledge to quit and stay quit so that they will have the strength and fortitude to live their lives to the fullest. We don't want anyone sacrificing any other areas of their lives, whether it is time with their families, jobs, or friends.

To try to keep the time people need to be at Freedom down to a minimum, so as not to take away time from their other life needs and goals, we try to keep the board on one topic and one topic only, the ability to stay smoke free. For people looking to establish life long friends and social networks, the Internet is loaded with such opportunities. But the general membership of Freedom is here to help secure their quits and help others secure their quits too. As management we promise to try to help keep this a realistic goal at all times.

So everyone please understand that we are all here to help and support each and every one of our members to quit smoking and have the basic understanding of addiction so they can stay off of smoking. We recognize that sometimes other areas of our lives threaten our quits and we try to address these issues when they arise. But please do not try to make us at Freedom more than we are.

Freedom is not a social network. We are a support group that offers focused care and support of one area of our lives. We understand that it is not the only area of our lives, but it is one that deserves its own special attention and priority because it truly is an area that more than any other lifestyle choice, this one can save our members health and lives. It is our reason for being, to help everyone understand that to stay smoke free everyone must always remember to never take another puff!

Joel