For some reason, people all over the globe like to rank things. You can see it everywhere you look: Billboard 100, Top Ten Countdown, AP Top 25 Football Teams, NFL Power Rankings. No matter what the ranking may be, people love to see a structured hierarchy that lists the strength of relative items from least to greatest.
Although I don’t fully understand this incessant need to rank things, I acknowledge that it has a practical application. People generally don’t like wasting their time with “the mediocre”. They want to know what’s on the top of the food chain when they make their decisions, whether it’s determining what to buy or what steps to take when breaking a smoking habit. When they do a Google search, they look at the results on the first page or two, not page 10. For that reason, one of the questions that I constantly receive is what are your best tips to stop smoking?
Truth is, I can’t honestly say that one step to smoking cessation is more important than the other. Every step you take is important and valuable, so there isn’t much need to “rank” one over the other. I can, however, provide a list of five tips (all on equal footing) that I believe are the most useful in the early stages of quitting, They are as follows:
Have Good Reasons
This is a point that I speak on frequently when discussing smoking cessation. Let’s face it: we do things better when we have something worth fighting for. Whenever we feel that the things we care about most are threatened by smoking, that’s when we feel our greatest motivation to quit. Once your reasons for quitting are clear, you’ll have taken a huge first step to ending your addiction.
Do Your Research
Although I strive to provide my visitors with as much information as possible, I can’t cover everything. There’s an entire ocean of information out there that can show you just how dangerous smoking is to your health, and give you tips to ultimately stop smoking. Learn what you’re up against before you get started. That knowledge will help you in the long run.
Set a Date to Quit
You may have heard of this from lots of “quitting experts”, and there’s a reason for that. Trying to quit smoking spontaneously almost never works. I’ve tried it several times in the past, and each time I was unsuccessful. When I finally did stop smoking, I had set a date for when I was going to officially call it quits. You should be careful with this, though. Don’t think that just because you set a date, you can smoke as freely as you like in the days, weeks or (hopefully not) even months before. It’s during that “in-between-time” that you should be working on the first two tips that I mentioned above. Prepare for the date as if it were your wedding day: you want everything to be perfect when it finally arrives.
Confide in a Friend or Loved One
This tip was very difficult for me to follow. The reason was that I hid my smoking habit from almost everyone that I care about. Confiding in someone about my addiction meant outing myself to what I’d been doing, and that wasn’t easy. Despite my reservations, when I finally did open myself up to those close to me, they proved to be a solid rock that I could lean on during difficult stretches. It’s always useful to have someone who can hold you accountable throughout the process, and you may need them more than you realize now.
Don’t Beat Yourself Up if (When?) You Stumble
Quick fact-of-life: everyone falls short in their efforts now and again. The thing that separates those that succeed from those that fail is whether they have the wherewithal to not only try again, but try harder. When you stumble (and not to be rude, but you most likely will) try to figure out what your misstep was. Think about what you could have done differently to avoid the situation. There can always be a different outcome, no matter how strong the craving may be. But whatever you do, don’t beat yourself up about it. Almost everyone trips up at least once in this process.
So there you go. Of all the tips to stop smoking that I could give, I have found these to be the most valuable for myself and others that I’ve consulted with. Please, take some time to look them over and contemplate how you can use them to develop a quit plan. As I stated before, structure and focus is the key to making any quit plan work. These tips can at least get you started on that path.
Curtis
