When shall I Stop Smoking?
What a great question, how about now? Seriously, why delay. I think if we were all honest with ourselves, we would say that procrastination (i.e. not doing things) has cost us more in our lives than action.
I think the whole ritual of ‘this is my last cigarette’ is counter productive. I remember having hypnosis once to stop smoking (failed that time), sitting outside this office, puffing away. I had subconsciously implanted the fact that in quitting smoking I was depriving myself of something.
If you are not ready to stop smoking NOW, ask yourself why. Be honest. If the answers you come up with include things like, I enjoy smoking, smoking makes me feel more confident, smoking is cool – try and rationalise these things. Why do you enjoy smoking? Why don’t you feel confident without a cigarette. The bottom line is, there is no good reason to smoke. One of my particular favourites was ‘I don’t want to get old’, you know what….if I do get old and stop enjoying it, a quick parachute jump could easily solve that problem. You need to give old ‘you’ a chance to live, you never know you might enjoy it.