The ability to quit smoking is more than merely removing the substance from your everyday lifestyle. Many of us will attempt to quit only to fall off the wagon in a burning poof of ash. Regardless of how hard we may try, nothing seems to work.
We could stand there chewing on nicotine gum with three patches stuck to each arm and an e-cigarette hanging off our lips as we walk up to the gas station to buy a pack of “real” cigarettes. What makes this habit so difficult to break for many of us?
1. Availability
Unlike hardcore drugs, cigarettes are readily available at so many locations around your home. It doesn’t take much to talk yourself into running to the convenience store and picking up a pack. There isn’t much stopping you from doing just that either. It’s not like you have to find a “hook-up” to get your nicotine fix. There are no back-alleys that you may never emerge from once you enter. It takes less than five minutes and your “dealer” will do it with a smile as he or she takes your money at the cash register.
2. Mental Habits
There are a lot of people that wind up sitting at their desks at home and chain-smoke as they peruse the Internet and play on Facebook. A lot of the time, these cigarettes simply burn out without the smoker inhaling maybe five or six drags. However, it becomes a mental habit to have the white cylindrical tube in your fingers as you type away at the keyboard. The same goes with driving or after meals. It becomes a mental state that you “need” to have a cigarette in order to complete these tasks.
3. Will Power
A lack of will power is how a lot of people gain weight and fail at quitting. The obsession may not be nearly as bad if the cigarettes weren’t so damnably easy to get a hold of. But since they are, your will power is at an all-time low as you can talk yourself into just about anything. A simple practice you could try is talking yourself out of something instead. However, the mind is a funny substance. You may do a great job at not smoking the entire morning only to realize you just bought a pack and are unwrapping it with your lunch. The part of your mind that is addicted to the cigarettes pretty much tied up and gagged with duct-tape the conscious part of your mind that wants to quit.
4. Imagery
We’ve all seen the commercials of what organs look like from a smoker and comparisons of how many people die of lung cancer every year. To the average smoker, we watch these commercials and think to ourselves, “that’s disgusting” while puffing on a cigarette. Shock value doesn’t work against many smokers as we’ll laugh and light up anyway. A different kind of positive mental imagery needs to be developed in order for something like that to work. Perhaps a commercial addressing the mental aspects of how to help someone to quit could suffice.
When it comes to breaking any habit, it all boils down to will power and the state of your mind. If you believe that something isn’t going to work for you, the chances are it won’t. You need to be ready inside your mind in order to succeed at quitting cigarettes. Without this frame of mind, you are doomed to make the same New Year’s Resolution every year until you die.
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