Five Ways to Kick Off the Habit!

1. Make committement to quit: Make a open and big decision to quit, and put a note “I AM QUITTING” everywhere, your bedroom, your office, your computer, your cell phone…
2. Discount the value of tobacco smoking:  Smoking wastes money, makes you look bad, causes diseases, affects nonsmokers around you, pollut the environment, etc, etc.  Make a list, revew them daily.
3. Find alternatives: We smoke becuase we need. A cigarette in the morning to wake me up; a cigarette when I feel tired; not happy, pick up a cigarette, etc.  Make a list of all sitations in which you often or must smoke, the find alternative for each of them.  For example, if feel tired, you may drink a couple of coffee instead of smoking.
4. Build strong will: Quitting smoking depends, to a great extent, on a peron’s will power. Be a tuff person will help overcome the primative instict desire to get happy through smoking.  This is a key toward successful quitting.  There are many examples of succesful quitters, including Deng Xiaoping, the communist lead who quitted smoking at once when he was 82 years of age after 50+ years of smoking!
5. Get assistance: Since smoking is highly addictive primarily due to nicotine in the tobacco, many smokers need assistance from doctors to quit.  Assistance includes psychological counseling, and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), all of which can be obtained.

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Jim Sweet, 5/16/2011