If you are reading this article, then you, like me, are sick of cigarettes. Do you want to quickly end this addiction that spoils your life? If the answer is yes, then I have a method for you that will solve the problem of cigarette addiction in a short time. I will tell you how to quit smoking quickly and easily, without harming your health and without buying all sorts of rubbish that makes it even worse. And not just quit, but fix the desired model and not break down in the future.
Smoker Story
In general, I got acquainted with cigarettes around the 7th grade - my brother and I climbed on construction sites and learned to smoke "in puff". Naturally, our parents forbade us to smoke, so we had to constantly come up with ways to hide cigarettes and get rid of the persistent smell of smoke.
Then came the companies in which everyone also smoked. There was a kind of fashion, they say, if you do not smoke, then not cool. It's all different now, but before the times were different. So, surrounded by smokers, the habit took root in me more and more. I smoked whenever possible, and the likelihood of being burned by adults only gave the process more drive.
But at the age of 16, I had a click in my head, and I decided to give up cigarettes. Just like that, abruptly, by willpower. To be honest, there was a positive moment from this, although not for long. After a couple of weeks, I changed my mind, said that I can smoke when I drink. That is, when I am sober, I don’t smoke, but at parties I can smoke. And as you probably already assume, I did not stop there. Although there is a positive effect - for 4 years I smoked quite a bit.
But there is also a huge disadvantage of this method. Since there was a strong association of smoking with alcohol in my brain, I was drawn to drink every time I just wanted to smoke.
But I didn't stop there either. In my third year of study at the university, I got a job in a taxi and there I already lit a full cigarette. I smoked almost a pack a day, and when I drank more. And this continued until the fall of 2017. That is, roughly speaking, my experience as a smoker was about 10 years.
How I Quit Smoking On My Own
Friends, in this chapter I will tell you how I went through the process of quitting smoking, and then - the very way to do it. Therefore, if you are too lazy to read, you can move on to reading the next chapter. It's just that many people ask me how I managed it, but it's inconvenient to be clever, because the method is quite simple.
So, in October 2017, I woke up in the morning after a hectic party and felt bad. I did not get enough sleep, I had a severe headache from the alcohol I had drunk the day before, the vestibular apparatus did not work correctly. I smoked a cigarette and got into the car. The car was stuffy and smelled unpleasantly of the herringbone fragrance. On top of that, I began to feel sick. In general, a full range of negative feelings.
At that moment I started to feel nauseous and the taste of a recently smoked cigarette was in my mouth. I looked out the window: it was gorgeous autumn weather outside, the sun was shining brightly, and leaves were falling from the trees. And then I was flooded with very pleasant childhood memories associated with this particular weather and a similar landscape. In me there was a pleasant association of the situation outside the window with that from childhood when I felt great, and not like now in the car. What did I do next?
My 3 Instant Steps
- I just connected intense suffering and negativity at this very moment in time with a smoked cigarette. And I felt with my whole body that it was from her that I felt so bad now. It was not difficult to do this, because there was an unpleasant taste of tobacco in the mouth. Plus added constant shortness of breath and cash costs.
- Next, I looked out the window again and completely connected the pleasant sensations with quitting smoking. Again, it was not difficult to do this, because in that situation from my childhood I did not smoke and I felt great. Plus, I added the pleasant feeling that without cigarettes I can safely climb the stairs and not suffocate. I also added monetary advantages: if I don't buy cigarettes, then I can buy myself a useful thing.
- At the peak of my emotional state, I made a clear, conscious decision to quit smoking for good.
All this took me about 10 seconds. The emotional swing was so strong that I immediately threw the pack into the trash bin.
But these steps will not be enough in the long run, so then I had to apply a few more steps, which also worked successfully. You will read about them a little below.
Now for the fun part. I managed to quit smoking quite by accident. I did not prepare for this decision, did not go to the doctors, did not buy smoking gum, plasters, sprays and other nonsense. A few months later, I started reading Tony Robbins's book on self-improvement and found these very methods that I unknowingly applied!
6 steps to get rid of the addiction
These principles are built on neuro-associative conditioning. Here they are:
- Make a clear, informed decision about why you want to quit smoking. It is you who want this, not your loved ones.
- Use Leverage: Link intense emotional pleasure with quitting smoking right now, and intense suffering if you don't do it right now. Do something like what I did, or think of a different way to do it. Most importantly, you need to feel strong emotions and associate them with smoking.
- We need to break the old behavior. For example, I used to go to the smoking room at work and discuss business with my colleagues, sipping smoke. After I quit smoking, I began to communicate with them in "non-smoking" places.
- Create a new alternative. But this step, friends, is the most important if you are focused on the long term. The fact is that just quitting smoking is not enough. You need to replace the pleasure that cigarettes have brought you with something else. Something that won't give you side effects. For example, instead of going to smoke with friends, I watched an interesting TV series or drank tea. You need to come up with a stimulating alternative to smoking for yourself by looking at the reasons why you smoked. Let's say you took out a cigarette when you started to worry. Exercise or achieving some short-term goal helps a lot from this feeling.
- You need to make the installation "forever" instead of "at least a week". And repeat the steps above until it becomes a habit. It took me about 3 weeks to do this.
- Come up with a reward system. This is a very important step. You should know that if you don't smoke today, you can afford to buy yourself some nice little thing; if a week, then the thing is larger; if a month, then a vacation abroad. I did just that - I constantly encouraged myself until the habit completely disappeared.
Conclusion
Friends, the problem of smoking is primarily a psychological addiction, rather than a physical one. There is a huge list of ways to quit smoking. Replace an ordinary cigarette with an electronic one, stick a patch, chew gum. If you open a search engine and ask how you can quit smoking on your own, you will see a bunch of drugs, services and ridiculous ways.
Name me at least one person who put on the plaster and got rid of the addiction. For example, I don’t know such people. The fact is that all these drugs only partially alleviate physical dependence. And she, believe me, is not so strong already. But this is a profitable business, because people buy. They buy and hope for a miracle method that will work in their case. This will not happen.
This rather easy way helped me to quit the addiction of smoking on my own. Therefore, I recommend it to you too.