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How to Quit Smoking
Copyright (c) 2007-2012 Liz Labrum
Have you been trying to quit without success? Do you feel it's almost impossible to quit because it seems such a part of you? Then there's a fact that you need to remember. No one was born a smoker. Smoking is a habit, a behaviour you have learned and practised to the point where it's an unconscious function.
Even though you may have choked on your first cigarette, you have since hard-wired your brain to believe that smoking makes you feel good. To be without would be like chopping off your right arm.
Smoking on Autopilot
There's the cigarette with your morning tea or coffee, the cigarette in the car on the way to work. That last smoke before you go into the office. The one after a meal, the one you light up as you pick up the phone for a chat and so on. These cigarettes are seemingly invisible and yet mark out life's daily rituals for the smoker.
Another major reason the smoker finds it hard is because there is no instant reward on offer at the moment of quitting. It's not surprising that many smokers are doomed to try up to six or more times before they finally quit.
No amount of guilt-provoking advertising by the government, or hikes in prices, or pleadings from loved ones will prise the long term smoker away from the habit. That is until one of two life changing events occur.
Wake Up Call
The first is a traumatic shock usually health related where the smoker finally and unequivocally equates their habit with the quality of their health and prospects of longevity. The second is where the smoker at a deep level of their psyche determines that life is better and more attractive without their smoking habit.
If the first of the above two options hasn't happened to you yet, then you may want to know how to go about the second option.
It all starts by working out what you use smoking for. For example when you think about it, are most of your cigarettes to give you a thinking break at work, or because you smoke with your friends?
Discover What's Really Going on
A very good step to take, if you're serious about quitting, is to start a simple diary of your smoking. Each time you smoke record when it was and what was it was for. Also include whether you enjoyed it or felt it was really needed.
You'll find that you become much more aware of your cigarette habit and why you think you have to smoke.
After a week of this find a quiet time and look at your diary. Notice whatever patterns there are, look at how many of these smokes you really enjoyed or needed. You may be surprised at how few you really 'enjoy'.
The Hard Facts
Next take some time to consider each of these moments against what each cigarette you've smoked really contains. Every puff delivers over 4,000 chemicals including tar (as in roads), nicotine, carbon monoxide (as in exhaust fumes), ammonia (floor cleaner), arsenic (rat poison), formaldehyde (preserving fluid) and butane (gas lighter) into your lungs and system.
Also consider the long term health effects smoking offers you: The carbon monoxide in each robs the brain, heart and muscles of oxygen. It thickens the blood and this can cause heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. Three out of four heart attacks are due to smoking. Smoking kills one in two of its users and half of those will die before their time, many in middle age and younger. Every year 80,000 UK men die from diseases caused by smoking.
Choosing to smoking doesn't add up to the most sensible pursuit for a long healthy life, does it? However, you've got to decide now how bad it has to get before you take action. Will you wait until you start to feel your heart beating faster as you climb stairs or run suddenly? Or will it be when you're a patient in hospital suffering from a heart or lung smoking-related disease?
Now realise that it is in this moment of contemplation that you can chose how your future turns out. Realise once and for all that each action that you take affects your future. This is so important for you to understand and is key to you making and committing to a change in your life. To save your life by quitting.
A Cunning Plan for Success
Like a lot of things worth doing spending some time planning and looking ahead to the outcomes, good and bad, will make success more likely. Below are some things to get in place so that you succeed and enjoy the task.
Step 1: Wake up to your habit and what's doing to you. Now that you understand what smoking really means find a way to remind yourself of the damage you are doing to yourself.
Step 2: Develop your motivation to quit – what will you get out of kicking that habit that really means something to you. Take some time to think this one through and list positive benefits that really mean something to you. Write them down, or find pictures that symbolise them and keep them near.
Step 3: Plan to succeed – most common pitfall – no plan, therefore you fall at first test as you've no coping strategies to fall back on. For example work out what other ways you can take a break or have a coffee without a cigarette.
Step 4: Quit day – make it a particular day and build up your strength and resolve by working out beforehand how to deal with common triggers.
Step 5: Quit – get the right kind of support from friends or/and or family. Explain to them what kind of help you want, be it positive encouragement or treats along the way.
Step 6: Fighting temptations – marking milestones. Work out how you're going to stick to your plan and what meaningful rewards you will give yourself or receive along the way.
Step 7: Staying the course – planning for the long haul. Realise at the outset that this is long term and think as far ahead as six month and a year.
Others have succeeded. You can too
Last year 120,000 smokers gave up in this country and the number of people who smoke in the UK is generally falling, so that from roughly half the population smoking in the 1970s to around a quarter now.
Giving up is an individual experience, talking to a number of ex-smokers will quickly reveal a range of different motivations and strategies that led to success. Rachel, a 32 year old professional nanny told me; "I knew I had to quit some day but exactly when felt vague and far off. Once I talked to you and realised I had to commit to a plan it all felt a lot more real. I actually enjoyed the experience."
There are many ways that you can become a non-smoker. Some of the popular ways are joining groups led by NHS advisors, buying nicotine replacement therapy or trying alternative therapy such as acupuncture, hypnosis or Neuro Linquistic Programming (NLP).
The important thing is to realise it's your choice. You can choose to carry on smoking with all its downsides or to take action to break free and save your life.
Liz Labrum
Master NLP Practitioner and Hypnotherapist Coaching the subconscious for conscious change. Want to drop stress, bad habits and fears? Visit http://www.lizlabrum.co.uk
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