Planning to Quit Smoking – What You Should Do

The time in your life where you decide it is time to quit smoking for good is a very important step.  It represents the time in your life when you have decided that it is time to regain complete control over your body, and actually take charge of your decisions.  Of course, you made the decision to start smoking, but ultimately this choice is much harder to break, than it ever was to start.  Knowing how to break the habit is very important to being successful and this means you really need to take some time to review all of your options.  

In general, while it may seem like a great idea to start trying to quit tomorrow you need to take a bit of time to set out a plan of attack.  If you are working towards a plan which includes several well laid out goals you are going to be much more likely to succeed.  However, simply taking a chance and hoping for the best may be your best option.  Typically, the hope and wait method is not effective though, so having a plan will ensure that you have something to fall back on.

You should review all of the options for stop smoking aids that are on the market.  There are literally dozens of products that all claim to help stop smoking.  Some really do not work at all, but in general most do really work, but only for certain people.  This means if you are not well suited to the product, it will not be very effective for your venture.  Finding something that is well suited to your needs is critical to ensure your own personal success.  Just because the product has helped 1,000’s of other former smokers does not mean that you will find success with it.

You need to then look at a calendar and pick out a date to quit.  This is very important because having a date picked out gives you something to look forward to.  You should also look at it as an exciting adventure, rather than the day you decided to drive yourself insane and attempt to quit smoking.  Looking forward to the specific date that you pick with excitement and joy will make the overall experience much better.  As you are picking out dates on the calendar, pick out additional dates for smaller goals as well.  For instance, if you decide to quit smoking on August 1st you would want to select August 2nd as your 24-hour victory and then August 7th as your first no smoking week.

Avoiding negative people is very important.  If you are surrounding yourself by people who all think that you are just acting like a baby in your struggles to quit smoking your self-esteem is going to take a huge hit.  Additionally, your self-confidence in yourself to actually succeed in your quest to quit smoking will start to wane.  This is a huge disaster since you need to believe in yourself in order to actually quit smoking for good.  Surrounding yourself with positive people who support your efforts to quit will make it much easier for you.  After all, the friend who encourages you is the friend you should want to be around more anyways.  Someone who is doing nothing but cutting down your efforts probably is not the greatest friend anyways.