Give Up Smoking

Give up smoking to maintain a healthy lifestyle

Suddenly you do want to give up smoking! After years of the habit something has made you decide to quit. I hope it wasn’t because your wife told you she wants you to quit, or that your children tell you they want you to stop. It won’t work if you do it for those reasons. The only reason you need to successfully give up smoking is that YOU want to quit. You can’t do it for anyone else, just yourself.

To give up smoking, know why you smoke

So let us examine why you like to smoke. It’s this “why” that you need to examine to find out what to do about it. I’m not talking about the fact that you wanted to look cool to the other kids when you were in high school. That isn’t the reason you smoke now and will not help in your quest to give up smoking. To find out why, you need to understand “when” you resort to smoking.

How about the first thing in the morning when you get up, what do you do? You make your first pot of coffee and while waiting on that coffee to brew, you light up a cigarette. You do it without even thinking about it. You may wish to give up smoking, but it’s a habit. When you get into your car to drive to work, the first thing you do after starting the engine is take out a cigarette and light it for your drive to work. Right after you’ve eaten your breakfast, lunch or dinner, the first thing you want to do is light up a cigarette. Certain things cause the trigger to light up when you don’t even think about it. To give up smoking, you need to recognize these activators.

So you smoke as a way to finish up or start up something every day. You need to realize that these things will become more obvious right before your eyes as you set out to give up smoking. You’ll catch yourself reaching for your pocket to get out your cigarettes every time you commence one of these activities.

To give up smoking successfully requires physical and psychological effort

Physical hurdle to give up smoking

The craving for cigarettes is partially physical and partially psychological. The nicotine in cigarettes changes your brain chemistry, and eventually your brain tells you that you need it. When you stop taking in the nicotine, your brain starts sending messages to your body and to other parts of your brain, and tells you that you need that nicotine and urges you NOT to give up smoking. That’s the physical part.

Psychological hurdle to give up smoking

As you try to give up smoking, you will notice the times you have the habit of lighting one up, as you get up in the morning, as you finish eating, as you are ready to go to bed. What do you do when your brain says you need a cigarette? You need to substitute one action for another. The way to do that is to have something in your hand that you use for your mouth. That action of bringing something up to your mouth has become habitual. Instead of a cigarette, you need something else. How about a bottle of water? Not only will the action of bringing a bottle up to your mouth satisfy the habit, but the water will help your body while it’s going through the withdrawal phase that is inevitable as you set out to give up smoking.

Go ‘cold turkey’ to give up smoking quickly

The most direct way to give up smoking is to simply quit and go ‘cold turkey’. However this requires your body and mind having to deal with that lack of satisfaction from performing the habit of your hand raising something to your mouth, at the same time as dealing with the lack of nicotine. Fighting on these two fronts at the same time is not easy while going through the re-training of your mind. Train yourself to do something different, and most of all, keep your mind busy while you’re going through this.

The secret is to keep at it

Keep active to help give up smoking. Don’t sit around watching TV. How many TV programs have people smoking, and you know that makes your subconscious mind say, “I want a cigarette”. Go outside and take some good, brisk walks. Find some activities that keep you busy and active. You’ll find that you don’t think as much about smoking while you are busy. Remember, once you succeed, you will have quit the habit and will wonder why it had seemed so difficult in the past, when you had first set out to give up smoking.

To help your efforts to give up smoking, why not connect with me on Twitter (@ KennethLinker)?

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