Posts Tagged ‘quitting smoking’
Your Last Attempt to Quit Smoking Starts Now
June 8th, 2009
There certainly comes a point in life when everyone doubts his or her ability. This is not something unusual. This is often what a smoker trying to quit feels when he or she is under wraps of the stressful situation. Coming up with a good decision on how to handle the process of quitting smoking is very critical. If you devote time to carefully lay down a strong plan, then you have better chances of success. Envisioning yourself to succeed in your plan is very important in your venture, but being unable to picture yourself as accomplishing your goal will often result to an ineffective pattern of trying to quit.
What differentiates smokers who successfully quit from those who remain struggling in their habit is the former’s strong desire to quit and the determination to make it to the end. There are those who seem to be interested and played with the idea but only for a short period of time. Their interest might lead them to read a book, talk to a doctor but still remain unsuccessful because they have not done the necessary changes in their lifestyles. In contrast, those who are determined to quit, do the same and even broadcast their desire to quit and they take everything to heart. They ask for help from friends and family and act on their advice. In addition, they actively seek information to know the best options and aids that are suitable to their own lifestyle and in how to improve more their health.
This difference spells success or failure, why others completely break the chains of smoking while others remain to be caught in a vicious cycle of trying. You really have to decide firmly that you would stop, and you have to sell that idea to yourself. If you just thought of the possibility of succeeding, you are really going to have difficulty in making it to the end. But if you program your mind to succeed, the question will only be how soon you are going to realize your goal.
We people get bombarded by subliminal messages. Others make subliminal suggestions to us, but most of these messages are what we tell to ourselves. In out attempt to quit smoking, it is then important to train ourselves to only think of positive and constructive messages. If you are suggesting to your inner self that you are confident and you can succeed, you are building your will power which will not easily falter when temptation to smoke arise. Unlike when you constantly think that you are weak, most definitely, you would get weakened when temptations stare you at your face.
It is a known fact that quitting smoking is not easy. Acknowledging that quitting is difficult is not the same as seeing yourself failing in the process already. The difference between the two is that in the former, you know exactly what challenges are going to be and you are bracing yourself for them. It is difficult of course when you already have the mindset of the latter, expecting to fail before you even begin. Feeling weak and less confident can undermine your success and will surely bring you to failure.
Grooming yourself for success means that you have admitted that quitting will certainly take a lot of effort but you are willing to take the challenge and that you would stay committed until you accomplished your goals no matter what comes your way. Spotting the problem as they emerge and immediately looking for their remedies are important to finally overcoming the habit. You will find out that slowly reaching your goal is better than quitting for a weekend. While it might be a less difficult thing to do to just quit for the weekend and see how everything goes, you will soon discover that such kind of approach will just let you easily slip back to the habit again. The approach to quit will be more effective if you start thinking that you are really going to quit for good.
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Stop Smoking Without Using Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT)
June 3rd, 2009
Making use of dangerous drugs such as Prozac or Zyban are not really the way to go about stopping your addiction to nicotine. In a way it is just like replacing one dangerous drug with another. So to is using NRT, so there has to be another way to stop smoking without using nicotine replacement, and there is. In fact there is a wealth of information available in the form of self help, but it is hard to stop smoking and even harder when you are on your own in this quest.
And we do not all have the willpower of General De Gaulle who was a heavy smoker. He just realized one day that the cigarettes were controlling him, and not the other way around, so he just stopped! But we are not all made of the same stuff. Physical, psychological and emotional addictions are very difficult to control and changing the way we do things is also not easy, particularly if we still want to be around others who smoke. You can’t all of a sudden stop being friends with smokers because they smoke and you don’t want to.
What seems to be working very well is the free telephone counseling some states in the US have started. Counseling is a far better alternative to nicotine replacement therapy and has actually proven to be working. Findings have shown that with this kind of support, smokers are twice as likely to stop.
As nicotine is such a difficult drug to give up, in order to be successful it is not only about the smoker. It is about the kind of support and encouragement they receive from others. This includes counselors, friends, family and the people they work with, all of these people play a role in the support team of someone trying to quit smoking. We often hear ex-smokers say that they would never have been able to quit if it was not for the support they were given.
Information for the smoker who wants to stop is available from many resources. Health insurance companies, your local gym, hospitals, support groups and even your employer. However these just make some of the resources available, and the most efficient assistance does come from a trained counselor.
You can receive both group and individual counseling or as we said before, simply over the telephone. A counselor will assist the smoker to recognize the emotional and psychological issues that arise when they first stop smoking and withdraw from nicotine. It is not an easy task as the addiction to nicotine is one of the strongest there is.
The thing to remember is that once you stop smoking, the nicotine remains in the body for as long as three to four days and it is when this period is over that the withdrawal symptoms begin to manifest. These are liable to last just a couple of days or in some instances even weeks. It is this time when the support is needed most so that the smoker has someone to turn to rather than back to the cigarettes.
The beauty of using counseling to get over the urge to smoke is that you don’t have to use NRT, and you also don’t have to use any dangerous drugs. Clinical studies have shown that when a smoker received the correct counseling or attends a specialist clinic, they are four times likelier to succeed in their attempts to stop smoking. Trying to do this completely alone has been found to be the least successful strategy of all.
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Dependency on Nicotine
January 7th, 2009
It is very important to check your dependency on nicotine in order to determine when is the best time to quit and how to quit smoking.
To determine your dependency on nicotine, you will have to ask a few questions to YOURSELF:
1. How soon after you wake up do you smoke your first cigarette?
2. Do you find it difficult not to smoke in places where you shouldn’t, such as in church, on the bus, in school, or at the library?
3. Which cigarette would you most hate to give up?
4. How many cigarettes do you smoke each day?
5. Do you smoke more frequently during the first hours after waking up than during the rest of the day?
6. Do you still smoke if you are so sick that you are in bed most of the day?
To get the full report on your test, click here.
Once you have known about your condition, you should find yourself the best method to quit smoking.
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If you have problem quitting, you should discover the facts about smoking that will make you quit.
Quit smoking is really important and you should pay close attention to it.
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