Quite Smoking

Are you ready to quit smoking? Let the habit of smoking go and join the reformed smokers club? Congratulations on your decision, you should be very proud of yourself. This is not an easy decision to make, nor is it easy to accomplish. Before you quit you need to have a plan to help you succeed.

Smoking decreases several hormones, shrinks fat cells and creates huge changes in your cells over all. Nicotine is one of the many hazardous toxins you bring into your life every day. Nicotine is one of the primary ingredients in insecticides, a very efficient killer of bugs. The most addictive substance you will every use.

The most important aspect to any program of change is to develop a loving support group. This means that you need to talk with everyone you know and let them know your plans. Ask for loving support and patience; allow your friends and family to excuse themselves if they cannot be supportive. Grant permission to be aggravated, irritated and upset if need be. Understand that this is not an easy path for them either. Especially when you become aggravated, irritated and emotional.

When you stop smoking some changes will occur, weight gain, emotions and your senses are bare. You will smell your world like you have never smelt it before, odors will be more pronounced, food will taste different and you may find your likes will change.  Textures in food will be more noticeable as will the odors.

The first seven to fourteen days will be the most difficult, but the first four to six months is the riskiest for relapse. This is the most difficult period for smokers, especially if you continue to hang out with smokers. But being alone is also difficult, you begin to feel isolated and left out, especially when everyone you know smokes.

Coffee and alcohol will trigger cravings, as will vigorous exercise. Do not cut the caffeine out of your life all at once, this will just increase the stress of not smoking. Gradually reducing your caffeine intake, making changes in your patterns will make it easier to not smoke.

Which brings me to this next point: Change everything you do before you quit. This means recognize your patterns of smoking. Do you smoke every time you answer the phone or make a call? At work do you light up immediately at break? As soon as you finish your meal? Do you have to take frequent breaks to smoke? Are you absently reaching for a cigarette while watching television? What are your patterns to smoking?

Keep a journal for the first few weeks or a month prior to stopping. After the first week of taking notes, then you may be ready to delay the need to ignite. Take three slow breaths, wait 30 seconds to a minute before lighting up. Begin increasing this throughout the day. Over the next three to four weeks you will be preparing yourself to not smoke. Prior to setting down the cigarettes begin omitting them like first thing in the morning, when you get into the car, picking up the phone, taking your breaks.

This process is retraining your body to not crave the nicotine. Do not replace the hand to mouth behaviors of smoking with eating or chewing on pencils, celery, etc. This is only reinforcing the behavior which will not eliminate the craving. The mind must be reprogrammed. Breathe, three long breaths, slow and gentle. It will pass. Let it pass. You can do this, I know you can.

The use of patches, lozenges, and other stop smoking aids can be very beneficial if used appropriately. Do the math before trying any of them or you will find yourself stressing and craving believing that the stop smoking aid is not working. A pack of cigarettes has twice as much nicotine as a patch. The best thing to do is to reduce your nicotine intake to make the switch easier. The lozenges and other oral stop smoking aids are as habit forming as smoking. The habit of hand to mouth remains intact and the ease of using these substitutes create the opportunity to replace cigarettes with the lozenges. No need to take a break to smoke, thus increasing the nicotine addiction. The hazards increase as well, nicotine is poison, the greater the nicotine intake the higher your risk of illness and death. Remember the insects?

Other tools include meditation, support groups, and nutrition plans. Learn to breath and quiet the mind through regular practices of meditation. Find support through the 12 step groups, make your own, develop a journal and seek professional help if you find yourself losing control or feeling depressed. Learn to eat to support your health and lessen the issues of not smoking.

Remember to remain patient with yourself; this is a major life style change. It is one you can accomplish. The goal is to retrain yourself and teach you to not smoke. Everything becomes more real and intense once the nicotine is cleaned from your body. The chemicals contained in cigarettes, pipe tobacco, cigars and other tobacco products are toxic. Create a plan that will work for you, seek out the resources and support you will need and then start preparing for the day you are a non-smoker.

Here is a Meditation to Help

Sit comfortably, relaxing your body, close your eyes and begin focusing on your breath. Listen as it slowly enters through your nose, filling your lungs, allow your stomach to rise with the inhale. Relax, exhale through your nose, hear the air as it leaves, feel it on the inside of your nose as it passes out of your body. Inhale again, listening and focusing on your breath, then exhale, making the exhale a bit longer this time. Repeat this breath one more time, listening to your thoughts as they dance set them aside as you would a book you have closed the cover on.

Mentally ask yourself if you can remember the time before you smoked? Listen as your mind takes you back to the time you first picked up a cigarette, what were the events. See it clearly in your mind, watch as you pick up the cigarette. Tell yourself, wait, you do not smoke, you do not smoke. Put the cigarette down and leave. Envision yourself as a non-smoker, repeat to yourself “I do not smoke, I am a non-smoker.”

Listen to your breath, notice where the tension sits in your body, focus on the tension allowing it leave your body on the next exhale. Release the tension your breath passes through your nose, feel the muscles relax. Inhale and seek out the next area of tension, focus on it, bring your attention to this area in your body, now exhale and relax your muscles here. Letting the tension flow from your body. Repeat to yourself “I am a non-smoker, I do not smoke, I never did smoke.”

Relax, listen to your breath enter through your nose, feel it as it passes through into your lungs, then exhale. Tell yourself “I do not smoke.” Stretch from head to toe, reaching out as far as you can reach with your feet and hands. As you open your eyes tell self “I am relaxed, comfortable and rested, ready to enter my day.” (if this is in the morning, otherwise, “I am relaxed, comfortable and will sleep peacefully awakening in the morning refreshed and a non-smoker.”)

You may adjust the words to fit you, with the intent that you are reprogramming your body to be a non-smoker. Repeat this each morning prior to rising and at bed time. When you feel a craving use the same breathing exercise and phrases.

I send blessings to you, healing energy and faith that you can accomplish this and be a non-smoker once again. Congratulations on taking the road less traveled.