How To Quit Smoking: Tips and Common Concerns

H ave you tried to quit smoking before, only to relapse later? Chances are, you’re not alone; according to a US government survey, up to 67% of adults who attempt to quit cigarettes relapse within the first year.

While there are a lot of guides out there on how to quit smoking, most have one subtle flaw; they will often prompt you to use your willpower.

In this guide, we’ll explore some alternative methods of quitting smoking to help you kick this nasty habit once and for all.

Do You Need the Willpower To Quit Smoking?

Willpower is often misunderstood when it comes to quitting smoking. You may have ingrained in your mind that quitting smoking requires immense willpower.

Turns out, this is not quite true. Think about it this way: it takes a lot of willpower to smoke. You need lots of determination to continue smoking those little cancer sticks, which taste and smell horrible!

It requires great resolve to continue with something that destroys your health, wealth, and relationships.

Once this realization sets in, you’ll be relieved knowing that there are easier ways to quit smoking than brute-forcing through willpower alone.

Does Quitting Cold Turkey Work?

Raise your hands if this scenario sounds familiar: You finally decide that enough is enough; you’ll quit cigarettes now and for good. You then decide to rip the band-aid off all at once rather than do it slowly and decide to go cold Turkey.

It seems to be going great until you pick up cigarettes again. What gives?

Turns out that quitting smoking is not that difficult as long as you know why you’re doing it. If you just throw away your cigarettes without doing any self-reflection, you will probably just pick them back up again.

While you are quitting it’s best to continue on as normal, a concept Alan Carr deals with at great length in his book: The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.

Think About What Exactly Makes You Smoke

So, if willpower isn’t effective, what is? The answer lies in what drives you to smoke in the first place. Once you realize why you smoke in the first place, you’ll have a much easier time quitting.

As it turns out, your brain is just coming up with excuses to smoke which may not necessarily hold up.

When you smoke your next cigarette, you get a refill of nicotine in your system. Nicotine is the main psychoactive chemical in cigarettes and is what makes them so addictive in the first place. The feelings of relaxation you associate with smoking produced by the nicotine are what drive people to cigarette addiction in the first place.

Rethinking Your Relationship With Smoking

When quitting smoking, it helps to realize that you are not quitting something you love doing, but freeing yourself from the shackles of a crippling addiction.

You are freeing yourself from bad odor, shortness of breath, wasting time and money, the stress in your relationships, and probably cancer down the line.

A Test to Show that Your Body Hates Smoking

While you may not think that your body hates to smoke, this simple test may prove otherwise. Before you conduct this test, try and vividly remember the following details:

• The first time that you picked up a cigarette; reconstruct how you felt physically when you were lighting it up.
• How the smell lit up your nose as you drew the cigarette closer to your mouth.
• The first puff, the bitter taste, and the coughing fit that probably followed.

Once you have familiarized yourself with these feelings once more, follow the steps below:

1. Light up a cigarette, and take a deep drought. That probably felt good, didn’t it?
2. Now, do light another cigarette again; once it runs out, smoke another cigarette without taking a break.
3. After maybe five puffs, you will probably throw a coughing fit. You may feel a strong urge to throw the cigarette away.

The purpose of this test was to show you just exactly how repulsive cigarettes actually are. Once you realize how much your body hates smoking, you’ll be well on your way to quitting for good.

At the end of the day, quitting a cigarette isn’t as much a test of willpower as it is learning your unconscious desires and slowly freeing yourself from them. Once you approach the challenge of how to quit smoking this way, you’re likely to progress much more.

In the end, if you finally accept that you are ready to quit smoking, don’t throw the cigarettes away just yet. Instead, first, follow the tips on how to quit smoking that we’ve highlighted above first; you might find it easier to break free from this destructive habit once you do.

Also check out the health benefits of quitting alcohol.