Quit Smoking by Preparing Yourself

It is a well known fact that smoking is highly addictive, and many smokers have a very difficult time quitting. Besides the physical component of the addiction, there is also a psychological one: smoking is socially acceptable in many situations, and, of course, entirely legal. For these reasons it can be doubly difficult to quit smoking, especially if you have friends who smoke, or you regularly go to places that you associate with smoking. One of the first things you should so when attempting to quit smoking to adequately prepare yourself. Quitting doesn't begin with merely stopping one day - you should prepare yourself in advance in order to ensure success.

The psychological element of your smoking addiction has a lot to do with daily habits. The reason that smoking can become so difficult to quit is because the act entrenches itself into your daily life and routines, to the point where you give it little thought. Before they start to seriously think about quitting, most smokers will likely agree that smoking is simply something they do - it's not something they are particularly aware of on a day to day level.

So the first thing you should do to prepare yourself to quit smoking is to change your smoking habits: switch the brand of cigarettes you smoke, smoke at times of the day you don't normally, smoke with your other hand. All these things work towards making you more aware of what you are doing when you smoke, and making smoking integrate itself less seamlessly with your other activities.

Another good example of this is to make the following rule for yourself: when you smoke, you are not allowed to do anything else. So for example: no smoking while reading, no smoking while using the computer, etc. Force yourself to do nothing but sit and think about cigarettes when you smoke. This exercise will serve too functions: first of all, it will make you think about smoking much more, and ideally about how you're going to quit smoking; and second, depending on how much you smoke, it will make you aware of the time you waste doing it. For most people, the habit will seem much more severe - and thus there will be much more motivation to stop - when you add up all the minutes spent doing it.

To quit smoking is a serious undertaking, and you want to do everything in your power to ensure a high chance of success. Too many smokers simply try and quit cold turkey, and while this can be effective for some people, for most it doesn't work, and when you fail it will become harder to work up the morale to try again. By thinking of your plan to quit smoking as a long term one, you do yourself a lot of favors. So remember that the act of quitting smoking begins long before you stub out the final cigarette: you should adequately prepare yourself for weeks beforehand by making abrupt changes in your smoking habits.