How To Quit Smoking

There are a number of things that you can do to pretty much on your own to quit smoking. Here's how you start;

1. Get to know the dangers: whatever was the reason that you started smoking in the first place, not one justifies continuing. The dangers that you put your body to as a smoker are severe and fatal. Cigarettes contain tar which coats the inside of your lungs when you inhale. You lungs are your body's source of oxygen, oxygen that each and every cell needs to live and grow. When the lungs are coated with tar, less and less oxygen is picked up by the blood vessels. The lungs themselves are organs and require oxygen to breathe, but the smoking deteriorates their health and functionality. Every muscle inside your body will weaken due to the sheer lack of oxygen, the food you eat will not be fully broken down and the nutrients will be wasted because digestion and absorption requires oxygen. You do literally fill yourself up with smoke. Your immune system also buckles due to lack of nutrition and you become vulnerable to more diseases. If you carry on smoking, you will most certainly develop lung cancer. Diseases like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other forms of cancer are also more likely to seek you out as compared to non-smokers. Children born to smoking mothers have asthma from birth and lighter than average weight. Just type in smoking on Google and you'll find mountains of information by medical experts the world over on what a killer that stick of tobacco is.

2. It's an addiction, treat it like one: smoking is an addiction. The nicotine in the cigarette makes you want to light up again and again. Acknowledging that this is indeed an addiction will be your first step to getting rid of it. You will have to gradually phase out the gradually from your life. If you smoke three cigarettes a day, go down to one. Keep telling yourself I'll have my first cigarette of the day in just a while and delay the time at which you actually light up.

3. Don't think you ‘not smoking': stop telling yourself that you're not smoking. Instead just void the whole mental conversation about you not having a cigarette on your hand. Just do ahead with your day as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Also don't tell yourself, ‘I'll never smoke again'. As mentioned earlier, smoking is an addiction and final thoughts like these are more likely to make you rebound.

4. Meditation: meditation is actually a very good way to help your mind get rid of those urges to get a cigarette. Focus your mind on having a healthy life, full of purity and beauty. Just let any images of smoking come into your thoughts. This will gradually strengthen your will power and you'll feel that you can go without a cigarette for longer periods of time.

5. Make it a holiday: mark a day when you will not smoke and make it a special holiday for yourself. It could be your birthday, wedding anniversary, New Year's day, etc. celebrate with your friends and family.

• John Palsson
• 12/12/2008, 4:59 AM
• 0 Comments