How To Break The Smoking Habit

Many habits are coupled with biological causes, like substance abuse or smoking. These are more serious than other habits and require professional help. (Smoking might not, but substance abuse does.) We are going to deal only with the habit in this article.

You can only begin to break a habit after you have accepted that you have a habit, you have accepted that the habit is bad for you, and that you want to change the habit.

Smoking is a choice, each time you feel the urge to light up, you can choose not to.

A first step is to identify the reasons and behaviors that define your habit.

What is your bad habit?

Why did you start the habit in the first place?

What things act as "triggers" for you to engage in your habit? These are things that make breaking habits so hard.

Who are the people who allow or enable you to continue your destructive habit?

Who else is affected by your habit? If there are people in your household who do not smoke, they are exposed to a lot of second hand smoke. Second hand smoke is thought by some researchers to be as dangerous as first hand smoke.

The reason why you started smoking might not be the reason why you continue to smoke so you will need to look at your current situation and look at the things that make you want to smoke.

Large portions of the people who take up smoking do so to be accepted by others. After smoking for some time on a regular basis and with the added evil of the addictive nature of nicotine the original reason might have little bearing on the reason why you continue to smoke.

If you know the reasons and your "triggers" you can then think of better ways to deal with those reasons, and ways to avoid those "triggers".

If you have identified the behaviors the lead you to smoke, you can begin changing those behaviors.

Here are some of the tools that you will need to be successful.

A smoking habit, or possibly you are an ex-smoker looking for re-enforce information.

Patience, some people say that it takes 30 days to form a new pattern and 90 days to form a habit, so plan on giving this a good chance.

Will power, remember you have the choice not to light up, this is where the will power comes in.

A reward, what will you buy with your $2500 - $4000 pay raise?

Friends who don't smoke, if you do not have any, find some new friends. Hang with your friends who don't smoke.

Here are some methods you can try.

Go to dinner at a non smoking restaurant.

If you Golf, Bowl, or play cards, or engage in some other activity on a regular basis and usually smoke. Try to do that activity without a cigarette. Leave them at home, or in your car.

Have your own no-smoking zone. Find someone you like who does not smokes, and disapproves of you smoking. If you like that person enough you will have less desire to light up when you are with them.

The next time you have the urge to pick up a cigarette to smoke think about the things that made you want to light up. Wait 5 minutes, and see if the urge goes away.

If you normally smoke after eating, try a couple of breath mints instead.

If you think smoking relaxes you, try some deep breathing exercises. This gets easier to do after awhile not smoking.

These tips may help you with breaking the habit, you will still have to work on the addiction part.