Quit Smoking : Quit Smoking Inside Your Head

Quit Smoking Inside Your Head

According to the last census in 2004, there were 44.5 million smokers in the US, of which 70 percent wanted to quit smoking. 31 million people, who light up every day, want to kick the habit, but just can’t seem to get over the hump.

This, despite the serious proliferation of patches, gum and pills that are supposed to help you quit smoking with relative ease by slowly cutting back the amount of daily nicotine intake. Unfortunately, for most to quit smoking it takes more than just a systematic system of dosage reduction. What is required is reprogramming of the way your mind and emotions work.

Smoking for many people is a tension reliever. If, on a daily or even hourly basis, you fire up a smoke and tell yourself it’s good because you’re blowing off steam, coping or keeping yourself from going on a destructive rampage, then you give the cigarette all the power it needs to control your life.

Forget about the physical addiction to nicotine. Caffeine is probably a mightier beast to tame. Forget about all the extra preservatives and chemicals the major brands slip into the cigs to make them burn faster and taste better. Yes, those too are addictive and require willpower to disentangle from, but the hardest part about kicking the habit is all the emotional baggage tied up with taking your cigarette break.

In your mind, you’ve created a mini vacation out of taking a puff. Cigarettes are saving you.

In the self-help and addiction world there are things called affirmations. If you do anything on a daily basis, it becomes a habit - exercise, writing in your journal, flossing your teeth. Habits can be very potent because there is an inherent power in doing something repeatedly and making it part of a daily ritual. The cumulative effect of habit.

Habits take even stronger holds in your mind. The way you say things and think about things and work things out in your mind is very, very important. In fact, research has shown this very process to be the primary shaper of your life. If you’re negative and say negative words, think negative thoughts and expect the worst, well, in all likelihood that’s what you are experiencing and what you will continue to experience. Conversely, positive affirmations are tools to improve your life and get things back on a fulfilling path.

Anyway, you have a habit of smoking. The physical act of pulling out a cigarette and lighting it and sucking it down is enough over time to make it so. If you attach to the physical act of smoking, a ton of “positive” associations like, “It’s a break, a relief, a stress reduction,” you have a very powerful affirmation telling your mind, body and emotions that you should continue to smoke.

Telling yourself, “I can’t cope if I don’t smoke,” is stronger than any of the physical addictive traits that smoking comes packed with. So, that is where you need to do your work, if you, like 31+ million people in the US have admitted, wish to quit smoking. You can do it, but for it to stick and be effective over the long haul, you have to work the mental and emotional aspect of it.

Step one – Detach the next time you’re craving a cigarette and while you are smoking observe what’s going through your mind. See how you position smoking as a sort of safety net or even a lifeboat. Even all those aholics anonymous groups realize the first step is admitting a problem or issue exists. And, if you can step back and observe yourself as you go through the ritual of smoking, you will start to see and understand the intricate inner workings that keep you smoking.

Step two – Find a program that clearly shows you on a mental, emotional and spiritual level, why you are addicted and helps you resolve the issues that trigger the “I need a cigarette” response. Of course, working on those issues is often a lifelong process, so replacing cigarettes with a positive action like exercise is often a good stopgap.

Step three – Forget the patches, pills and gums. They don’t work long term. You simply need a really good program that uses such tools as affirmations, Nuero Linguistic Programming and/or hypnosis.

You can Quit Smoking today.