Please Don’t Give Up Cigarettes

I know… a strange thing to say, especially when I’m about to try and convince you of an easy method of quitting, but I really mean it. Don’t give it up., although please read on, there are a lot of misconceptions around regarding smoking and nicotine in general.

The vast majority of it revolves around the “habit” and, more generally, the “addiction”, after all, nicotine is a DRUG and therefore addictive. This is, of course, quite true.

If you’ve ever tried to kick the habit you’ll know what I mean. Within an hour you’ll probably be climbing the walls and within four hours you’ll most likely be back to smoking again, and, to make matters worse, your consumption of tobacco will increase – at least in the short term.

First, let me make a couple of bold statements and then I’ll try and explain:

1. Nicotine has hardly any addictive qualities.
2. Smoking is easy to stop.

The reason we think nicotine is very addictive is only because we are continually told that this is so. Our parents, friends, relatives all tell us this when they first discover that we do use cigarettes. “Chuck it while you still can!”, is not an uncommon response. This of course is just the beginning of our “brain washing”.

Everyone who ever manages to kick the habit tells us how hard it is. Everyone who fails an attempt to chuck it, tells us this. Everyone who still smokes tells us this. Even the warnings on cigarette packets reinforce this belief in us.

I don’t know if you have ever heard of “Positive Affirmation” or not, so here’s a brief lowdown on it. In the early 1900’s a French psychologist and pharmacist introduced a method of healing and self-improvement based on auto-suggestion. “Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better.”, I think was the term he got his patients to repeat several times a day.

The point being that our subconscious mind can’t differentiate between dreams, fantasy and reality. This means that we are all affected by suggestion. Advertisers, for example, depend on this trait. When we are constantly being bombarded with reinforcements that nicotine is hard to give up, that same suggestive process is making our subconscious believe that it’s the truth.

It doesn’t really matter anymore whether nicotine is very addictive or not, because now, we believe it is, especially our subconscious, so that when we do attempt to give it up, our subconscious makes sure that we really do find it difficult. We can get all kinds of withdrawal symptoms as our subconscious “behaves appropriately” for us.

Let me try and convince you further, I am certain that you have all been in a situation where you couldn’t have a cigarette for some time. Perhaps you had to visit hospital and wait in a queue for a couple of hours, or taken a journey in a plane where cigarettes are out of the question. How did you manage? I’ve found (and I know that I am not alone) that during these, and similar situations, the lack of cigarettes did not bother me one bit. Sure you think of them every now and then, but none of the real withdrawal symptoms rear their ugly heads. This is because we do not have the choice, so our subconscious, again, gives us the appropriate response. That is, until the very second that can have a cigarette, then it becomes a different story!

The response of our subconscious is to NOT make a big deal of it. As simple as that.

Each time we decide to give up smoking, that alone, makes a HUGE deal of it, and part of the psychological thing is our fear of living life without tobacco. Yup, it’s an actual fear. How can we cope. especially with boredom, unless we have recourse to “The Weed.”

I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. If we can somehow manage to stop in a “low key” kind of way, we won’t have any trouble (or not as much). The trick is never to chuck it. Never make the conscious decision to stop. Don’t make a big deal of it.

By using the same methods that made it difficult for us in the first place, we can reverse the effects of the brainwashing.

Don’t laugh… just try it.

“Every day, in every way, I enjoy my time without tobacco”, and believe it when you are saying it.

Do this three or four times (or more) every day and counteract the effects of years of misinformation.

Good Luck! I hope you succeed. Just, don’t give up!