How to Remain Smoke Free
Stop Smoking Strategies
By Jonny Bowden
Becoming a non-smoker has two components -- quitting and remaining smoke-free. For the nicotine addict, picking up a cigarette is an automatic response to a trigger situation. Modify those situations and you'll help yourself avoid smoking. Minimize your risk for picking up a cigarette with these proven strategies that will help you break the connection between situation (trigger) and response (smoking).
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Have Sex Outside
One of the biggest triggers for a cigarette is sex. We've been programmed from decades of movie-watching (and personal experience) to expect the after-sex cigarette to be especially satisfying. To disempower the situation, have sex in an unusual place, perhaps outdoors, where the connection to a cigarette isn't reinforced by your surroundings. It will help you break the connection.
Use the Six-Minute Rule
This technique works with food cravings as well as with cigarettes. Here's how it works: When you crave a cigarette, give yourself permission to have it, but promise yourself you'll wait six minutes. That short time is manageable, but it helps break the automatic connection between impulse and action. Also, since most cravings pass fairly quickly, you may well find that after six minutes the craving has diminished enough for you to master the impulse.
Plan After Dinner
One of the biggest triggers for smoking is eating, especially the after-dinner cigarette. To break this habit, find another activity to do after your meal. It can be as simple as a walk, a sprint up a flight of stairs, a set of jumping jacks, a 10- minute magazine break or a hot bath. If the activity requires any preparation (like running the bath), do it before the meal. Then rehearse in your mind exactly what it will look like and feel like for you to do that activity right after eating. After you eat, immediately do what you rehearsed.
Switch to Tea
Coffee and cigarettes: There are songs that celebrate the pleasures of this pairing. Part of the association is to a taste (java), so break that association by switching to another beverage. Green tea has enough caffeine to give you your morning jolt, and it's a whole new flavor and taste, one to which you haven't attached an association yet. Let's keep it that way. Other choices could be iced beverages, juice, herbal tea. Just make sure it doesn't taste like or resemble your regular coffee beverage.
No Smoking Inside
Make -- and keep -- a "no smoking in the house" rule. This accomplishes adds an extra layer of inconvenience to the act of smoking. (Think of those office workers in New York City who now have to go outside in the cold and smoke 15 feet from the entrance to the building!) It also helps break the association between smoking and familiar surroundings.
Get a Buddy
Regardless of whether you agree with their philosophy, one of the most successful aspects of Weight Watchers is its group support program. Group support is one of the most powerful tools for both breaking addictions and for remaining substance free. Members of 12-step groups routinely have a sponsor -- a committed listener they can call at all hours to share their temptations who will support them in sobriety. Find a support program, or, at the very least, find a buddy you can quit with (or one who has already quit). Stay in communication with him or her constantly. It works for weight loss and for cigarettes.
Use the Secret
Remember 'The Secret'? The idea behind it was that thoughts have energy and power, and that what you think about and what you concentrate on is what you attract. What you believe is possible has a greater chance of being manifested into reality if you put the power of your intention behind it. The same is true for smoking. Instead of framing the task of becoming a non-smoker in negative terms ("I have to stop smoking, but it's so hard"), frame it in positive terms ("I am a non-smoker"). See yourself that way. How would you act? How would you feel? Use the power of those visualizations to help you create a life in which cigarettes have no place.
Your Nose Knows
Aroma is a powerful cue, and you can use it to break some connections to cigarettes. One of the things non-smokers frequently report is that they're able to smell things they never smelled before, particularly the disgusting smell of ashtrays, smoker's breath, and smoke on clothes. Use aromatherapy to freshen up the house. Wash all of your clothes to get rid of the smoke smell. Use a mint toothpaste to keep your breath fresh, and brush frequently. Create an aromatic atmosphere that would be disturbed by the presence of smoke. Get used to that smoke-free environment. (This strategy is especially effective if you've recently quit.)
Meditate
Lots of behaviors just aren't compatable with deep breathing. One such behavior is smoking. The urge to light up rarely follows a feeling of deep relaxation, serenity, consciousness and the absence of stress. Use meditation or deep breathing exercises to access a state of deep serenity, and learn to go to that place as often as possible. Next time you have a craving, close your eyes and put yourself in that peaceful space of kindness, goodness, serenity, joy and health. Take a few deep breaths and create that space. You may find a cigarette just doesn't belong.
Cultivate Mindfulness
Consciousness is the enemy of absolutely every bad habit on the planet, from overeating to smoking. Why? Most addictive behavior is done mindlessly and we're rarely in touch with the feelings that precede the action. Before we know it, we've smoked the cigarette without even thinking about it. Each time you crave a cigarette, stop for a minute and ask yourself what you're really feeling. See if you can be with that feeling for a few minutes and really let yourself experience it. You'll find that if you can be with that feeling -- honor it and acknowledge it -- you may well be able to do it without smoking.
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