Mark Your Calendar
We recommend you set a goal date on which to quit smoking. Sundays and Mondays are great days to choose as your starting point, as they represent the beginning of the week.
You should set a date in the reasonably near future. The point of nailing down a specific day is to help you prepare; not to allow for procrastination.
So decide on an exact date, mark it on your calendar in bold print, and tell everyone you know that you are going to quit smoking on this date. The act of setting a start date and openly discussing it with the people around you will
help build your resolve; it will make your objective more concrete.
Set Yourself Up for Success
Once you have your start date marked, its time to make a few sound preparations. Taking the following steps will build your confidence and make things much easier for you when the time comes.
- Throw away every ash tray in your home except for one. You will use this single ash tray until the night before your start date.
- Buy yourself one or more No Smoking signs. When the time comes, you will place these in your living room, car, office, or wherever else you feel you might benefit from a visual re-enforcement of your decision.
- Keep projecting the image of yourself being smoke free, and keep talking to your friends and family about your start date. This will keep you motivated and encouraged.
- Begin to gradually reduce the amount you smoke each day. Even if you only cut one or two cigarettes from your daily intake, this will serve as another tangible exercise of your intention to quit for good.
Also, reducing the amount of nicotine you use prior to quitting completely can decrease the severity of your withdrawal symptoms. Stopping cold turkey from 2 packs a day will be a much bigger shock to your body than quitting cold from
half a pack a day. So if at all possible, you should begin to cut down on your daily intake right away and make small reductions every day until your start date.
Another very effective technique for beating a chemical dependency is to write yourself
personal note before your start date. Once you start to experience withdrawal, logical thinking will go right out the window. So its a great idea to put your desire to quit down on paper so you can reaffirm your objective when the going gets tough.
Addiction is a battle of the mind.
Sure the body gets involved once a chemical dependency is formed. But the real challenge goes beyond surviving the physical withdrawals; the hardest part of quitting is staying focused on your objective and not letting your subconscious mind lead you back to the habit that is killing you.
In addition to writing a quick, meaningful note for later reference, you might want to make a list of the biggest reasons you have for quitting in the first place. You could easily come up with 10, 25, 50, even 100 great reasons to drop the habit of smoking. Such a list would be another powerful
re-enforcement to your preparation, and could give you a much needed boost if you get discouraged after your start date.
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