Kick Out the Smoking Habit

Why become a slave to a habit which has become easy to form but
seems impossible to break? Smoking is one of those habits which
becomes easily entrenched but it can be minimized or even
stopped by using simple steps to disrupt it.

Let us assume that you are a chain smoker and for reasons of
health must break that habit. You may have a strong will power
and stop smoking because you will it so. But in most cases the
craving will remain and the embedded tendency will be too strong
to be completely ignored or discarded. Somewhere along the line
you will be tempted to take one surreptitious smoke and then
another and soon the old habit will reassert itself.

The only way in which you can crack the solid, impenetrable
walls of the habit successfully is to attack it gradually,
consistently, on one or more of these fronts:

1st. The "time-delay" attack. Introduce a time change in the
usual smoking routine. Start with a five minute interval between
smokes. Make it five minutes to the second. As soon as the time
is up pat yourself mentally on the back for having the strength
of character shown, light your cigarette and enjoy every puff of
it. Keep up this five minute interval between smokes,
consistently, until it stops being a hardship and becomes the
new habit, of lighting cigarettes five minutes apart.

Lengthen the interval between smokes to ten minutes and then to
fifteen minutes each. Turn the waiting period into a little game
or a contest. If you have nothing else to do to occupy the time
in between, improvise some form of temporary diversion to while
away the passing moments. Continue this waiting period in a
playful mood until the new interval between smokes becomes part
of your regular smoking habit.

2nd. The "time-check" attack. Use your clock or your watch as a
monitor, as a control to confine your smoking to certain
periods. Let it be exactly on the half-hour and the full hour
during the day, and the quarter hour and three-quarter hour
during the evening. The underlying purpose is not to turn you
into a clock-watcher but to give you a measuring or limiting
control to help you inject an arbitrary time element into the
customary smoking schedule and thereby interfere with your
entrenched smoking habit.

3rd. The "time-out" attack. Set aside certain periods of time
during your waking hours when you will refuse to light a
cigarette no matter how strong the urge. Let it be a "break" a
"stay-away" time when you use your will power, when you place
yourself under absolute control for the ensuing period of time.
The period selected and the duration of such self-restraint is
not as important as the deliberate premeditated step you have
taken to oppose the call of the habit and purposely interfere
with its entrenched routine.

4th. The "interference" attack. Disrupt the way in which you
normally smoke by introducing new and challenging elements to
your ritual. For instance, if you enjoy smoking best by sitting
down or leaning back in your seat, get up and remain standing or
start walking around the room while puffing away at your
cigarette. If you are in the habit of taking long, leisurely
puffs, change to short, nervous pulls at the cigarette. If you
usually inhale stop doing it. If you wait ordinarily between
puffs and let the smoke out lazily, bunch the puffs together. In
other words, mix things up and keep changing your way of smoking
from one cigarette to the next. Do it consistently,
deliberately, consciously. Introduce as much confusion as you
can contrive so that the old smooth continuity of the smoking
habit will be disrupted.

5th. The "substitution" attack. Change brands of cigarettes,
from a regular to a King size, to a filter type, to one having
mint or menthol in it, to a brand milder or stronger. If that
does not help much change to a pipe or to stogies. Then, in
between, pop a piece of hard candy or a stick of chewing gum
into your mouth instead of a smoke. Give your lips and your
mouth something else to do for the time being. Continue such
substitutions until your system begins to accept them as part
of, or in lieu of, the old smoking habit and eventually its hold
upon you will be weakened and nullified.

These five ways of gradual frontal attack and deliberate
interruptions with your set pattern of the smoking habit can be
adapted to attack and interfere with any other non-desirable
habit and prove just as effective in breaking its hold upon you.


About the author:
Anthony Churchill is a regular contributor and editor. This
article is extracted from 'The 5 Secret Keys' a large
compilation of self-help manuals he has created for
1-0-1publishing. You can read more about 'The 5 Secret Keys' at
http://www.becomemoreconfident.com