To succeed at quitting smoking, you need to replace the habit with something else. You want to replace the cigarette habit with a healthier one. Here are ten good habits that you can substitute for the bad habit of smoking:
Working Out: If you find yourself feeling jittery or stressed as you quit smoking, you may want to give exercise a try. Not only is a workout such as jogging, tennis, or walking good for almost anybody, but it’s also a great way to calm your nerves.
Taking extra leisure time: How much time did you spend each week getting and then smoking cigarettes? Take up a personal pursuit or hobby you have been putting off due to lack of time.
Drinking lots of fluids: Drinking lots of fluids actually promotes your attempt to quit. Increased amounts of fluids literally help wash out some of the toxins and pollutants that have accumulated in your body as a result of using tobacco.
Stock up on orange juice. Some evidence suggests that cigarettes burn up ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, in the body, so replenishing your body’s stores of vitamin C either with citrus juices or with tablets (100 to 500 mg a day) is a good idea.
Meditating: Meditation is one of the most powerful and gratifying tools you have available to you. The beauty of meditation is that it’s easy to learn and extremely portable. You can meditate anywhere and at almost any time.
Start by taking a deep breath and visualizing the inrushing air as cool, cleansing, and filling every part of your body with clarity, peace, and calm. Continue your deep, regular breathing. Use a slow, measured count of four for the inhalation, four for the held breath, four for the exhalation, and four for the pause before restarting. Feel the oxygen expanding into the furthest reaches of your body.
Starting with your toes and then working up, alternately clench and relax each body part, spending as much time as necessary to instill a poise, a kind of relaxed alertness, in each limb and muscle. As you proceed, keep visualizing the incoming breaths as cleansing, wiping out the day’s thoughts and cares. You’re aiming for stillness, for awareness that’s not clouded or distracted by errand lists, snatches of a song, or thoughts of “I.”
Focusing your energy outward: Focusing your mental energy, your perceptions, and your immediate responses to the world outward is a great strategy for quitting success and for success in general.
When every fiber of your being is crying out for a smoke, you can resist by turning your attention outward from your body to something else. The person standing next to you at the bus stop ¯ what does she look like? What happens if you say hello to her? What is she wearing? Do you think she’s going to a safe, pleasant place, or does she have her own inner struggles that she has only partly succeeded in masking from the rest of the world?
Using nicotine replacement therapies: Tobacco substitutes, including the patch, nicotine gum, nicotine aerosol, inhaler, and Zyban, can help you free yourself from nicotine entirely, but giving yout the nicotine your body craves without the accompanying toxins.
Falling for fruits and vegetables: Rethinking many of your tastes and preferences is a fundamental aspect of quitting smoking. You need to learn to appreciate and value totally different tastes and sensations. Think about celery ¯ the cleanness of it. Or spinach ¯ can you smell it? Can you taste the difference between romaine, Boston, and iceberg lettuce?
How do you feel about a cold, luscious peach on a hot summer day? Constant exposure to chemicals like nicotine dumbs down your palate. You achieve the opposite result of refining and upgrading your taste buds when you stop tampering with the delicate symphony of taste and smell.
Visualizing health: The visualization thing is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s important to appreciate the impact that seeing things the way you want them to be has on your life and feelings. On the other hand, it’s also important not to blame yourself for the bad things that come your way.
Changing your priorities: As a smoker, your priorities include making sure that you always have enough cigarettes on hand. Smokers’ priorities also include having that first cigarette of the day, as well as self-medicating throughout the day so that their nicotine levels (and thus their mood and energy level) never run too low. Rather than gratifying the cravings and needs of today, actively decide to live in and enjoy the body you were.
Redesigning your interior: When you think about it, though, the effort to make yourself over begins inside. It flows outward from the heart and mind and feelings. It is interior redesign.
What does the inside of your mental home look like now? Is it gracious, full of light, comfortable, and spacious, or is it a “carpenter’s dream,” begging to be renovated?
The way you want to be is solid, consistent, and steady. You decide what you want in life, and then you mobilize what it takes to get it.
