How To Quit Smoking
Learning how to quit smoking is all about making it easy on yourself. With a bit of thought, there should be no surprise about quitting smoking being either relatively quick or easy:
- The physical effects of tobacco addiction vacate the body within two or three weeks. That’s quick in comparison with a habit that is usually counted in years or decades, even if you add a couple of weeks to get properly prepared before making the break.
- The involuntary craving, or sense of ‘something missing’ (as it is often described) disappears in a few days – less time than it will take some readers to carefully read all the articles on this site.
- The psychological or habitual aspects of giving up smoking are no different to other habits and respond to simple changes in behavior.
It is therefore more a matter of:
- Sound information about the habit and giving it up.
- Self-knowledge regarding your attitudes and beliefs about smoking, including why you started and continue. It may help to keep a quit smoking diary, in which you record the specific circumstances that trigger a light-up, what helps you to go for long periods without a cigarette and so on.
- Learning techniques that help the preparation and quitting smoking process.
- Changing a few smoking-related habits and the beliefs that support them. In a future article I’ll explain how you can reprogram your mind to behave in new, non-smoking ways.
- Motivation, or the sincere desire to quit smoking once and for all. Unless triggered by a special event such as a bereavement, the desire to quit is usually a gradual, cumulative process. You acquire information, get to know yourself and realize that there are ways to give up that apply in your particular case.
You need to concentrate on these rather than extraneous facts and standard, product-type remedies. Motivation has proved to be the single most important factor in success, but even lack of motivation need not be a barrier. Your motivation will increase as you understand some simple facts and, most of all, start to imagine the benefits of success and their ripple effects in your life.
Like everything else concerning learning how to quit smoking, even motivation is within your control. In another article (Tips To Quit Smoking – Understanding Nicotine) I address the common questions that concern nicotine ‘addiction’ and smoking ‘habits’.