How to Quit Smoking Naturally Part V: The Time to Quit is Now!

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“Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow” - Horace.

So now you have your list of reasons why you want to lead a smoke free life. You have a log of the all the times when you smoke and a plan for dealing with each of those situations in a smoke free way. You have registered with a quit smoking group and have a list of strategies for quitting smoking. You are ready to quit smoking.

Make the Commitment

The first thing I would advise you to do is to make the commitment to quit. This involves picking a date to quit and telling everyone. Tell your friends, your family, your co-workers and your new buddies on the quit smoking forum. This forms part of your commitment as explained in the article on Achieving Your Goals Part III: Make a Commitment . The more people you have told the more committed you are because your pride and sense of self-accomplishment will be at stake. If you fail all these people will know about it. How will you ever live that down? So this will be one more piece of motivation to keep you smoke-free.

Also the more people you have monitoring you the better. Trust me, I know how devious an addict can be in pretending to have quit but still hitting that fix at work or in the car or when you think no one can see you. The more people you have monitoring your quit, the less opportunity there is for any sneakiness.

Throw out smoking paraphernalia

The night before your quit date, throw out all your smoking paraphernalia â€“ cigarettes, ashtrays, lighters. Just throw it all away. If you have a really valuable lighter that you do not want to throw away then give it to a friend. But just do not keep it in your home. Empty out the ashtray in your car, clean it nicely and replace it, so hopefully you wont be tempted to dirty it with ash.

Ban smoking around you

Ban smoking in your home or around you. Let your friends and family know that you will not be engaging in conversation with anyone who is smoking. If there are other smokers in you home, inform them that they must go outside to smoke. Do not allow smoking in your home, your car or your office.

Refrain from visiting bars or pool halls or anywhere else there is likely to be an environment that might tempt you to smoke. This may seem drastic but if you really want to succeed you must take every advantage you can. And it is just for a while. Once you are stronger in your smoke-free life you will feel less tempted by such environments and you can revert to visiting such places if you really want to. But for now, ban them from your list of destinations.

Pick up a new activity

This is not mandatory but I suggest that at the same time you quit smoking you add some new positive activity to your life. The reason for this is that it will help distract your focus onto something positive rather than having all your time focused on your temporary feelings of deprivation from quitting smoking.Â

The thing you need to do is have a new positive goal. It may be to learn to play tennis, or become an expert at some new video game or volunteer or learn a new language or take a cooking class. Anything that will be a positive addition to your life and that has some structure to it â€“ such as a class or different levels of achievement that you can monitor. I suggest you read the series on Achieving Your Goals to help you with this.

This new activity will help dilute your focus from the activity you are being deprived of (smoking) to the activity that you are now additionally enjoying.Â

Be persistent

The importance of persistence can never be overstated. Never give up. If for some reason you give in and smoke one cigarette, do not consider that you have failed and then give in and smoke the whole pack. Get right back onto your quit. Immediately. Do not wait. Keep trying. Success is inevitable if you keep trying.

Be firm in your determination to lead a smoke-free life. Use positive terminology. Believe in yourself. Fill your life and your readings with positive support. You might also want to read the article on The Power of Realistic Positive Thinking .

As long as you keep trying you are assured of success. Be persistent. Be determined.
So go throw out those cigs and those ashtrays and quit today. I would love to hear about your experience quitting smoking, so please feel free to write me. I look forward to helping you succeed.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 11:53 am and is filed under A New Start, Choices, Goals, Self Discipline . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.