Stopping Smoking: 5 Steps To Support Kicking The Habit

Stoptober is upon us and many smokers will currently be in full swing with their stopping smoking attempt.

Many people do, with or without nicotine replacement aids, successfully quit smoking for the whole month. And, of course, some smokers just wake up one day and decide enough is enough and just quit that habit with ease. However, many smokers struggle in their attempts at quitting. Either they find the habit is too ingrained, or they stop for a bit but end up going back to it.

Most attempts at stopping smoking rely on willpower or on nicotine replacements. The thing often overlooked is addressing the habitual psychological side of smoking. Smoking is based on habit, pattern and repetition. You smoke about the same amount each day and in the same situations, places and environments. You’ve done it over and over and over again. By now, your brain expects you to smoke in these situations.

And so you try to remove the cigarettes from your usual patterns and the habit and expectation kick in. You find yourself craving a cigarette. As humans we only have a limited amount of willpower. It gets harder to stick to your good intentions and it becomes easier to give in and just have this one. After all, it’s only one more you’re having, right?

Successfully stopping smoking also involves dealing with the associations and patterns around your habit. And that’s where hypnotherapy can help you to achieve your goal of being someone who used to smoke and who no longer does.

 

Stop Smoking Hypnotherapy

Further down this article I’ve covered five steps I’d recommend as part of your plan to quit smoking. These are things that I get my clients to do in the early stages. They make you pay attention to what you are doing, make some changes to your usual habitual patterns and to start making decisions about whether you smoke the next cigarette or not.

Combined with these steps, hypnotherapy has a strong track record for helping with quitting smoking. In fact, hypnotherapy tends to work well with habits of all types.

Every habit is made up of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that are repeatedly done in similar situations. You can systematically tackle each of these areas so that you are, in effect, priming your mind to enjoy being a non smoker. You change your mindset, your feelings about cigarettes and you start to adopt new patterns of how you do things. Rather than aiming to go ‘cold turkey’, I find that by clearing away many of the routine, automatic, ‘didn’t really need it’ cigarettes, you are only left with a handful to deal with. That’s much easier to focus upon that something you might do twenty or thirty times in a day.

Nicotine has a role but it is less and less as you cut down to just a few. Of course, some clients find that, with their hypnotherapy, they just decide to stop easily. After all, what’s the point in doing something you get very little from (and that costs you a lot more than money).

If you want to know more about stopping smoking hypnotherapy then I’d suggest coming along for a free initial consultation. In the meantime, there are some more related articles about quitting smoking here:

Quit Smoking This Stoptober

More Reasons for Quitting Smoking – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Help To Quit Smoking – Hypnotherapy in Ely

Why Now Really Is the Time To Quit Smoking

Quit Smoking and Stop Being a Social Smoker – Hypnotherapy in Ely

Quit Smoking – 10 Tips To Help You Quit

Quitting Smoking After 30 Years

Glenn quits smoking with hypnotherapy in Ely

 

5 Steps To Support Kicking The Habit

If you have struggled with stopping smoking during Stoptober (or just quitting at any time!), or you’ve just decided that now is the time to quit smoking, then these are five initial steps I’d suggest adopting to help you in your goal of being a former smoker:

 

1. Write Down Your Reasons and Motivations for Stopping Smoking 

Yes, I know you know why you want to quit. You want to be as healthy as you can for as long as you can into the future. You want to be there in your future for your loved ones. You want to look good and feel good without the damage to your gums, skin and lungs from cigarettes. And you may have some other reasons too.

Write down want you want to avoid happening if you were to carry on with your habit (like the ghost of Christmas future if you like), and what you do want to happen into the future having quit the habit.

This forces you to think about what will happen if you continue, something that most smokers try to avoid thinking about. You want to move away from that potential future. And it allows you to focus on your goal of being healthier and happier as a non-smoker.

The other reason you write it down is because of how your habit works. You automatically light up and smoke about the same amount each day. At some point, perhaps after you’ve already smoked one, you might remember that you were planning to cut down or cut it out. Habits work on auto pilot, your good intentions and reasons fade away as you get on with the usual things in the usual way.

Instead, you want your reasons at the front of your mind before you light up. Instead of just operating on habit, spend a minute reviewing and really thinking about your reasons, motivations and future. If you are going to smoke, at least force yourself to make an active decision to light up. Or maybe you’ll decide that you just don’t really need that next cigarette after all.

 

2. Keep A Record

For at least a week before you plan to stop smoking, keep a record of every cigarette you smoke. This will make you pay attention to how many you actually smoke, rather than just guessing how many. Sometimes it is already less than you thought. If it is more than you were thinking, let that just fuel your motivation to quit as soon as possible for your health and well-being. You need to know what you are dealing with.

Keep a note of how many you smoke and the where and when. Smoking is repetitive and routine. There will be certain times of day, places, people and emotions that are currently associated with your habit. This makes it easier to start cutting down and quitting by working out your plan for each situation. In my experience with hypnotherapy clients, there will always be some you can just knock out because you don’t want or need them.

The better informed you are about your habit, the easier it is to start changing the patterns and associations so that you will be purposefully forming new behaviours and habits.

 

3. Pay Attention and Smoke Mindfully

Chances are that when you smoke, you give very little attention to actually smoking. Your focus and attention are probably elsewhere.

People smoke while driving, on screens or doing just about anything else apart from thinking about what they are actually doing. If your brain isn’t engaged then you can’t make any decisions. So from today, when you smoke, do nothing else but pay attention to your smoking. Put all your attention onto what you do and how you do it. Really pay attention and think. No screens and no distractions. If you are going to smoke a cigarette then at least give it your full attention.

Linked to this, if you are smoking then you shouldn’t be drinking anything but water or eating anything. Separate smoking and make it a stand alone activity, separated form anything else at the same time.

 

4. Make It Awkward and Delay

As humans, we like to make things easy for ourselves. This is especially true with habits and things we do regularly. You probably always have your fags on you or close by. You can mindlessly reach for one and light up with barely any thought. There may be times when you’ve smoked one while barely noticing it’s even happened. You are on autopilot and it’s easy.

If you are doing something you want to be doing then it makes sense to make it easy. Here though, you are doing something you don’t want to be doing. That being the case, you want to go the opposite way and make it as awkward as possible. Instead of carrying your cigarettes on you, keep them further away so it becomes a hassle. For example, when driving, keep them in the boot of the car. If you usually smoke outside at home then keep them upstairs in a cupboard so you have to go and get them, smoke, then go and put them back upstairs again. I’m sure you can think of other examples. It won’t make it impossible for you to smoke but at least you have to put a bit of effort into doing it.

As well as making it awkward, whenever you are about to smoke, stop and make yourself wait at least five or ten minutes. Don’t do anything else, just be there with your cigarette. In fact, if you are going to do anything, start asking yourself whether you really want to smoke it, do you even enjoy or get anything from it and how do you want your future health to be. If you decide not to smoke that one then great. If you do go ahead and smoke it then at least you are actually making a decision rather than just smoking on autopilot.

 

5. Delay The First One Each Day

The first cigarette each day is often one of the key ones that you smoke each day. You wake up and in no time at all you light up. We’ll put aside the fact that you’ll have gone maybe seven or eight hours without one, which in itself weakens the ‘nicotine addiction’ argument. You get up and your pattern is to smoke. You’ve done it thousands of times so your normal routine kicks in, perhaps with a tea of coffee to kick start the day.

There’s evidence to support that delaying the first one as long as possible in the morning is linked to quitting success. So deliberately delay that first one for as long as possible. Get on with getting up and getting ready for the day, perhaps changing how you do things to change the pattern. Alternatively, some people go for a time approach and start delaying, say half an hour, and then adding on more minutes each day.

However you chose to do it, deliberately delay that first one each day for as long as possible and repeat.

 

Stopping Smoking Help

These steps will all help with cutting down and then stopping smoking. However, to change a habit you need to address the psychological elements as well as the behaviours. You need to change your patterns of thinking, acting and feeling to create new healthy and permanent habits. This is where stopping smoking hypnotherapy comes in.

Hypnotherapy has a strong record in helping you to change your habits. So if you really want to quit, then do get in touch and let’s meet to talk through how we can help you to successfully become a non-smoker. Do get in touch and book your free, no obligation, consultation. Your future self will definitely thank you for taking action today.

 

To your health and happiness,

Dan Regan

Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

 

Need help to quit smoking or to stop vaping? Book your Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session with Dan now: Appointments

Find out what other people have said after their hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: Hypnotherapy Reviews

And check out these powerful hypnosis downloads that can start helping you right away with anxiety, confidence and more: Hypnosis Downloads