This blog is designed for everyone who seriously wants to stop smoking.
It
doesn’t matter if you are a five a day teenager, or a one hundred a day
pensioner, male or female, or if this is your first or fiftieth attempt
at stopping - if you really want to stop smoking then this is the blog
for you.
Please feel free to continue to smoke until you finish reading this blog.
Welcome to “Stop Smoking - A New Approach”.
You are now in front of a blog that without a shadow of a doubt will change your life! Indeed, if you use this blog exactly as instructed, you cannot fail to achieve your goal of becoming a non smoker! How can I make such a powerful claim? Do yourself a favour and find out by reading this blog from top to bottom!
Now without further ado, let’s get straight down to business.
There is only one reason you are still a smoker and it is this:
You are constantly in the grip of a psychological process
called denial.
Until you gain an awareness of this denial process you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to stop smoking. This blog will teach you how to recognize and deal with your denial and will equip you with all the knowledge and skills that you will need to become a non smoker. On completion of the blog and its tasks, you will feel much more in control and will be in a position of such power that you will actively welcome the stop smoking challenge.
1 YOU AS A SMOKER
Permanently stale breath, morning phlegm cough, nicotine stained teeth, shorter life expectancy, stained fingers, constant financial drain, various health problems, poor role model for your kids, dirty ashtrays, bland tasting food, smelly clothes and more and more frequently in today’s health conscious climate, a lack of social acceptance.
2 YOU AS A NON SMOKER
Fresher breath, cleaner lungs, whiter teeth, likely to live longer, no stains on your fingers, more money, better all round health, good role model for your kids, tastier food, fresher home, fresher clothes and a greater level of social acceptability.
These two very different images serve to highlight the fact that if you are prepared to tolerate all these negative aspects of smoking, i.e., the health risks, the cost, the stale odors etc., then you really must be getting something very powerful indeed in return. Furthermore, if you consider that you continually pay for your need to smoke, not just with money, but also with part of your life expectancy, and with some of your potential for good health, then it is easy to see that you are not just smoking for pleasure, or because you like the taste, or because it gives you something to do with your hands. The truth of the matter is this - you are prepared to pay such a huge price to continue smoking because you are addicted to the chemical nicotine.
Even if you don’t think that you are addicted to nicotine, please bear with me until you get to the section on addiction. You might find that it is your denial that doesn’t allow you to see that you are addicted. Denial is an integral part of the addiction condition and without understanding how your own denial process works, you will find it very difficult to overcome your desire to smoke. This blog is centrally focused around this process, and will teach you everything you need to know about denial, in order that you can be ready to deal with it when it attacks.
Who exactly is this blog for?
This blog is designed for everyone who seriously wants to stop smoking.
It doesn’t matter if you are a five a day teenager, or a one hundred a day pensioner, male or female, or if this is your first or fiftieth attempt at stopping - if you really want to stop smoking then this is the blog for you. Here’s why:
The addiction perspective:
Because this blog tackles smoking from an addiction perspective, it recognizes that you will repeatedly face both psychological and physical withdrawal difficulties.
You will learn as you progress through each entry how to deal effectively with such difficulties and will find that stopping smoking will not be as difficult as you might previously have thought or experienced.
The information that follows will allow you to stop smoking with only a small and completely manageable level of discomfort, and will focus in the main on the absolute core of your addiction - your denial mechanism.
Later on you will be looking at this denial process in some depth, but in the mean time here is some basic information on how your denial works:
There is a little piece of your unconscious mind (the bit of your mind that thinks without you being aware of it) that will constantly try to trick you into smoking. It will do this by either,
(A) Making you feel that nicotine withdrawal is unbearable and that stopping smoking is not worth the discomfort and effort. or by,
(B) Creating what seems to your conscious mind (the bit that you think with and are aware of) like really good reasons for starting smoking again.
It achieves this by passing these invented ‘reasons’ to your conscious mind in the form of a thought or an idea. For example, having made the decision to stop smoking, you might find yourself a few hours later thinking “Actually, now that I come to think of it, this isn’t really a good time to stop - I think I’ll stop next week instead when I’m not under so much pressure”.
With the help of this blog you will soon learn that these ‘reasons’ created by your unconscious mind are always nonsense. On closer examination they will be exposed as a mechanism that allows you to resume smoking, by giving you a guilt reducing excuse that you can use to justify your change of heart. More importantly, these reasons give you the excuse you need to smoke, and smoking will, of course, relieve your unpleasant feelings of withdrawal. This is exactly what denial is all about - it is your unconscious mind finding any excuse at all, no matter how ridiculous, that will allow you to justify smoking, and thereby relieve your feelings of discomfort.
Your denial will be able to create excuse after excuse, and will convince you that these excuses are all completely plausible. Reasons, perhaps, like:
“If it hadn’t been for that boss of mine embarrassing me in front of my work mates....”, or, “If only I hadn’t been caught speeding....”, or, “if my boyfriend hadn’t split up with me....”, or, “It’s my birthday next month, perhaps I’ll wait until then to stop....”, or any one of a thousand other rationalizations or justifications, every single one of which, if believed, will ensure your failure.
The real reason you continue to smoke (not the one created by your unconscious) is simply this:
YOU DO NOT LIKE THE FEELINGS OF WITHDRAWAL
This blog can, and will, create in you an awareness which will allow you to override this destructive unconscious ‘voice’ and will give you the tools you need to look honestly at the pain of withdrawal. It will help you to see that most of your discomfort is in fact an illusion, created deliberately by your unconscious. Once you have learned how to tackle the discomfort of withdrawal and discovered how to recognize and defeat that ever present destructive unconscious ‘voice’, you will then move on to tackling associated difficulties such as unwanted weight gain. You will then learn how to set up effective support structures to help ensure your long term success.
In the final entries, you will find an easy to follow ‘battle plan’, summarizing all of the support strategies discussed in the blog.
In some sections of the blog there will be exercises to help you to understand the addiction process and how you are affected by it, and also how to deal simply and effectively with each potential relapse situation as it arises.
What this blog isn’t:
This blog is not going to try to scare you into stopping smoking by telling you that if you don’t stop you will die younger, or that you are much more likely to get cancer or some other smoking related disease. Lets face it - you already know all that scary health stuff and you are still a smoker! Scare tactics simply don’t work!
Another thing this blog won’t be asking you to do is to reduce your smoking over a period of time with a view to eventually stopping altogether. This tactic is common, but usually ineffective.
Reducing nicotine intake slowly still keeps your body supplied with at least some nicotine, right up to the point where you stop smoking altogether and your withdrawal symptoms begin. This process is ineffective when you consider that at the end of your cutting down period you are still going to be plunged headlong into the difficulty of dealing with withdrawal. Why bother? You can start dealing with being a non smoker as soon as you finish this blog, without having to torture yourself for weeks beforehand! Your newly acquired skills and knowledge really will give you the edge that you need to stop smoking without too much difficulty and will allow you to start your new life as a non smoker immediately. Although the cutting down method may work for a few people, experience has shown that the most effective method of stopping smoking is to simply stop, then deal with any issues that may arise.
The method of stopping smoking discussed in this blog is undoubtedly effective. It is also realistic. It doesn’t promise you a totally pain free ride. It does though, teach you how to effectively manage the discomfort of withdrawal. You have, I’m sure, heard talk of the ‘easy’ way to stop smoking - wishful thinking I’m afraid! If stopping smoking was easy then surely just about everyone who smokes would have already stopped! The method discussed in this blog works, because it recognizes the fact that you are addicted to nicotine and therefore your solution must lie in Dealing with the physical and psychological problems that nicotine addiction presents.
This addiction / denial centered approach really does work and, it is absolutely guaranteed to work for you, providing that you take all the lessons to heart and follow all instructions to the letter. If you are prepared to do this then you will gain something that you really want - you will become a non smoker!
Of course, like just about everything in life that is worth having, it does not come for free - you are going to have to pay a price!
That price is as follows:
You must agree to participate fully in all the exercises.
You must agree to pay the price of feeling at least some discomfort, some of the time.
You must agree to use the knowledge and skills in this blog to overcome any withdrawal discomfort that you might feel.
You must agree to follow all instructions. Even if you can’t always see the point!
Now, if you can agree to all of these simple terms then, as I mentioned earlier, I am prepared to offer you this guarantee:
I absolutely guarantee that you will become a non smoker.
If you don’t become a non-smoker it will simply be because you did not follow the instructions in this blog to the letter. It is of the utmost importance that you understand this “following instructions to the letter” concept, otherwise you will be giving your denial mechanism a foothold. If you do give it a foothold, you can be damned sure that sooner or later it will have you smoking again! So once again – if you want to stop smoking be sure to follow the instructions.
The following entry will help you to understand nicotine addiction and will go some way towards explaining why you continue to smoke, even though deep down you don’t really want to!
