Quit Smoking Forever Guide

Many people actually fear quitting cigarettes! It sounds illogical but most smokers go through this thought process. Why do we need to know about this? Because if we understand our fear of success and see why it is so irrational then we can conquer it.

Think about it - each time that you have failed in your attempt to quit smoking, you have probably felt a little depressed but ultimately, you got to return to the comfort of your addiction. You still feared the long term harmful effects of cigarettes but at that moment in time, you probably feared more life without cigarettes. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First of all, it’s the addiction talking to you. You’ve heard this from me before but I must reinforce the point. It’s your addiction that is telling you that you are better off not quitting. It’s saying things to you like: how will you resist a cigarette?, don’t put yourself through the agony of willpower, it’s too stressful to try to quit right now, you have plenty of time in your life to quit, and more and more.

Secondly, it’s natural to shy away from a major change to your lifestyle. In many cases, expectation of a big change (rather than the change itself) can mean stress - changing career, moving house, etc. All these major lifestyle changes can give rise to stress because they can cause uncertainty. How will I cope with the change? What will life be like afterwards? Will life be OK, will it ever be normal again?

The difference with an addiction is that life can ONLY get better! Not just that but you are going BACK to normal. You have already experienced what life was like when you were a non-smoker. A non-smoker’s life is a normal life - it is how life was meant to be lived. There is nothing uncertain about it because you have lived it before and 80% of the population live this life with no desire to be an addicted smoker! Trust me, stopping smoking is like getting back to the normal life that you had before - that’s how it was for me and that’s how it will be for you! There is no uncertainty about a normal life!

So do not fear the success of smoking. In fact, I don’t like talking too much about fears. Fears were only designed as an automatic response to a threat - like an animal noticing a snake and moving well away from it using it’s “fight or flight” response. Otherwise, we should never focus on fear but focus instead on the positives. Don’t be reactionary in life but be proactive instead.

Fear not but instead dream and look forward to your success in stopping smoking. You have a wonderful life to look forward to.