Defying Temptation – Never Easy, But Worthwhile

When you are trying to break your addition to nicotine, you will find that there is always temptation waiting for you somewhere or other. It may be that you start to really crave a cigarette because you saw someone on TV smoking and they looked like they were really enjoying it. It may be that you have been hanging out with friends and some of them haven’t given up yet. It can even be something as simple as sense memory – you’re listening to an old CD and it takes you back to a time when you were smoking a lot and enjoying yourself.

Temptation is an unforgiving mistress. As Oscar Wilde once said: “I can resist everything but temptation”. The really unfair thing about it is that it’s not a case of overcoming it and forgetting it – temptation will return time and again, and you will have to keep winning the battle with it. It would be easier if there were some kind of reward system – you don’t smoke for a week, you get a wide screen TV, or something. But this isn’t how it works. If it did, we’d all give up for a week, get our TV and start smoking again.

If you’re a competitive person, then you might consider temptation to be your opponent. You’re not going to let the cravings beat you, are you? Hit them out of the park and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Or if you are not, think about it in another way – overcoming cravings will give you a stronger will and make it easier to overcome other challenges in the future.

The Myths About Giving Up

Stopping smoking is not easy, and it can be made harder if you make the mistake of buying into any one of a range of theories which when it comes to the crunch just don’t hold any water. Take, for example, the issue of preparing to give up. People will tell you that it is easier to quit if you wean yourself onto menthol cigarettes. Is this actually true? No, it’s not. There’s still plenty of nicotine in there, and you’re more likely to go back to full-tar, smoke flavored cigarettes.

Then there is the idea that it will be easier to give up smoking if you only smoke at certain times – like after meals, just after getting up or after sex. The fact of the matter is that if you associate cigarettes with a certain time, you will always want to smoke then, and sooner or later you’ll be adding extra caveats – only with a cup of coffee, only when you’re nervous, right up until the point where you’re smoking cigarettes “only because I really wanted one”. Breaking the dependence is tough, and not made any easier by allowing exemptions.

Weaning yourself off cigarettes is not the best way of giving up. If you are going to break the chain, it is really best to break it cleanly and absolutely. If you fall off the wagon and “just have one”, make sure it is just one. Don’t rush out and buy a packet because you feel as though you might as well. Although it is best to not smoke at all, having one every once in a while is certainly better than getting back to being a smoke machine.

Giving Up For The Right Reasons

Controversial as it may sound, giving up smoking because it is costing you too much rarely works. If money is the only issue, then cigarettes are going to have a hold on you for a while. A pack of twenty might set you back a fair amount – but what about rolling your own, or using a small machine to make the cigarettes? There are plenty of cheaper options, and a mere financial consideration is unlikely to make the difference if you aren’t committed for other reasons.

Does this mean that finance is a pointless consideration in stopping smoking? Not at all, but you need to have other reasons. Giving up for the sake of your health is one consideration – but again, don’t expect it to be the silver bullet. You have probably been told by other people “You shouldn’t smoke – cigarettes are bad for you!”, and you have probably responded “No, really? I thought they were good for me!”, laughed and carried on smoking – so you need to confront the hard facts about how bad they are for you.

If you give up smoking, your breathing will get better and your sense of smell will improve. Your clothes will smell better and your skin and hair will improve. You will wake up in the morning feeling like you can face the day without having to reach for the cigarettes and lighter. Most importantly you won’t have to worry about the health problems and the hole in your finances that can be caused by smoking, and this liberation of your mind is worth the effort.

Dealing With Cravings

Stopping smoking is always going to be difficult. There is the combination of a physical craving and a psychological one to deal with, and it is unsurprising that many people who attempt to give up smoking don’t last long on their first attempt. One of the hardest issues is the craving that affects a lot of smokers. Trying to break those cravings is something that prevents a lot of people from giving up.

The best way to start to get rid of cravings is distraction. When you give up smoking you are always going to have a problem if you keep thinking about how you’re giving up. This keeps cigarettes in the forefront of your mind and makes it very difficult to keep it up. However, if you fill your time with other things, you can keep your mind off the cravings for at least a while – hopefully long enough to get you over the tricky first week.

Once you have broken the firmest psychological and physical cravings, you stand a much better chance of giving smoking up entirely. That’s not to say that the cravings go away entirely and immediately. It is likely that you will still miss cigarettes and at certain points will think “This would be a lot easier/more pleasant if I had a cigarette right now”. But if you aren’t feeling a strong physical pressure to smoke, it will be a lot easier to deal with the psychological cravings – and at some point, you are going to have to face the struggle of making a clean break anyway.

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