Healthy Everytime

Just listen to anybody who smokes and quite regularly you’ll hear things like “I’m going to try and quit smoking, just as soon as I (fill in the blank)”. Perhaps you’ve heard them say these things a number of times and now you just don’t listen. Know what I mean?

First things first. Get out a notepad and spend some time writing down the exact reasons that are driving you to rid yourself of this habit. Then once you are done with that, turn the page over and jot down all the reasons (excuses) you might make to justify why you haven’t.

Just putting excuses down on paper so that they are something solid you can see is enough to make some people look at how silly they really are. For others, they may have to analyze their list of excuses and figure out why they believe these reasons to be true. Usually it is due to repetition. You’ve been telling yourselves for years that these are the reasons why you smoke, and if you tell yourself something enough times, eventually it will become an ingrained belief, whether it is the truth or not.

Have a look at a few of the most often stated excuses and apply them to your list if applicable, however in the end it is your job to list every single excuse as to why you smoke that you can think of.

“I’m afraid that I’ll gain weight if I quit smoking.”

Yes, it is possible that you may gain a little weight when stopping smoking. However it is usually less than 20 pounds (which, by the way is WAYYYY better for you than continuing to smoke would be). But if you take proactive steps to assure that when quitting, the only snacks available to you are healthy rather than high calorie comfort foods, this should not become an issue.

“Smoking makes me happy.”

If that were truly so, then chances are you wouldn’t be sitting there now gathering information on quitting, would you? Don’t worry. I’m not picking on you. I used to say the very same thing. Making statements such as this creates one major issue. And that is the fact that the more times you say it, the more you become to believe it. I’ve said it before. So time to come clean and be honest with yourself, is smoking really that enjoyable or is it just a fallacy you’ve convinced yourself to be true? What is it that you think smoking gives you? More money, better health and cleaner, fresher breath? Looking at it from that angle and writing down the answers will show you that you really don’t enjoy smoking that much at all.

Now don’t take those statements as viscious or cruel. In no way are they meant to be that way. What they are meant to be is a wake up call - and one that I needed as well. If, as smokers, we keep making excuses as to why we continue the habit, the outcome is that we will remain addicted to the nicotine. And the sooner we realize this reality, the easier quitting will be.

Trust in yourself and you’ll find that you already have what it takes to beat these lies.

Have you ever said those words? How about “I’m going to try AGAIN”, or “Might as well give it another shot, what have I got to lose.” You can’t think like this. A famous quote and pardon me for not knowing who said it, states that ‘Nobody who tries anything, accomplishes very much.’ And the same is true for quitting smoking.

Even though you are looking to convince yourself or someone else that you truly desire to quit, by saying ‘try’, you are conditioning your subconscious beliefs for potential failure.

Need an example? How about this. My wife has a fear of roller coasters and I don’t know where it came from. She’s not afraid of heights and not really afraid of speed, so why this is, I still haven’t figured it out. And the funny thing is she can’t tell me why either.

In any case, there have been occasions when my son and I have been able to convince her to stand in line with us and have got her to say ‘I’ll try.’ But here’s the thing; every time we get near the loading lane, she bails out and decides to wait for us at the end instead.

So how does she get out of it and still feel good about herself? Because she only said she would ‘try’ and that doesn’t really count. The same goes when you are the path to becoming a non-smoker. By only trying, you are leaving yourself an easy exit down the road. And this isn’t something you want to do.

Talk to any smoker who has gone through this process, some of them more than once, and you will find that when they set out to achieve their goal of quitting they said ‘I’ll try’ and when they failed, they state ‘Oh well, I tried.’

So what you need to do if you are to commit is remove the word ‘try’ completely. Use a statement like this. ‘I am going to quit to better my health. For the betterment of my family. For the betterment of my finances. No exceptions.’ Can you see the difference? You must state the exact reasons for why you want to quit. With no allowances for weakness or failure.

If you want to hold yourself accountable to your goal of becoming a non-smoker, then you MUST put statements like this onto paper. And then you MUST place these pieces of paper where you can see them often so that you never lose sight of your ultimate goal.