How To Quit Smoking For Good
How To Quit Smoking For Good – Getting Free, Staying Free
Learning quit smoking for good is all about getting your “head in the right place” and realizing that you believing have a choice. Let me explain what I mean, and how you can use this technique to quit smoking for good.
Freedom is a basic requirement of all living creatures. It is more important to you than almost anything else, certainly more important than quitting smoking. If, after you have stopped, you don’t feel genuinely free to smoke, you will feel deprived until you get free.
If you are having difficulty grasping a real sense of choice, and in need of help quit smoking, it will help you to discover what it is that makes you think you can’t smoke. Some of the beliefs that give rise to feelings of deprivation are covered in other articles, and you might identify with one or more of these. Or you may have your own, unique circumstance that leaves you feeling convinced that you don’t have a real choice about this. If it is particularly difficult for you to overcome this issue, here is an exercise you can use to identify the thinking that supports your false belief and turn it around.
How To Quit Smoking For Good – Written Exercise To Develop A Good Sense Of Free Choice
Please note: make sure you complete both Step One and Step Two.
Help Quit Smoking – Step One
If you are currently still smoking, write down: ‘I have to stop smoking because…’ and complete the sentence with as many different endings as you can think of. For example:’… if I don’t, I’II die.’ Or:’… otherwise I will hate myself.’
Leave one line blank in between each sentence ending.
If you have already stopped smoking and are feeling deprived or don’t believe you have quit smoking for good, write down:
‘I can’t go back to smoking because…’ and finish that sentence in as many different ways as you can. For example: ‘…if I do, I will have failed.’ Or: ‘…if I do I’m afraid I’ll never stop again.’
Leave one tine blank in between each sentence ending.
Be creative and find as many endings as possible, even those that seem outrageous or absurd.
Help Quit Smoking – Step Two
This is the crucial step to help you quit smoking for good, because it liberates you from your false belief. Go over your sentences, examine every line, and remind yourself that you are still free to smoke anyway. The reasons you have listed are the consequences that you get, or might get, from choosing the option of smoking; they do not mean the option of smoking does not still exist. Write this in on the lines you have left blank.
For example:’ If I don’t stop, smoking might kill me, but I still could go on smoking.’ Or: ‘If I go back to smoking, I will have failed in my attempt to stop, but I’m still free to do that.’
The very act of writing it down will be highly effective in reinforcing this new thinking. Repeat this exercise as often as you need.
Smoking is not an advisable choice; it’s a disastrous option for you to take and quite possibly one that you desperately hope you don’t take. But that never means it’s not an option that is always available to you.
Whenever you pause to consider your options you access a particular area of your brain, a special part of your prefrontal cortex. This is why acknowledging free choice makes such a profound difference to the whole process of stopping smoking. It’s good to consider your options any time at all, but especially helpful when you feel your desire to smoke.
Consider what it would be like to return to smoking and remind yourself that this is up to you to choose how you want to live your life. Soon you’ll begin to trust yourself to make choices that you really do want to live with, and this will bring you a lot closer to quit smoking for good.
Focus on choosing only for the present time. Consider that most of the resistance to getting in touch with your freedom to smoke is your fear that if you really can smoke, then you will! This is especially helpful during the withdrawal phase. The more you make choices only for now, the less deprived you will feel, because then you are keeping your options wide open.
The simple key to quit smoking for good is to remember you are totally free to smoke – and you don’t have to do it to prove it!