Are you pushing against your Quit or using leverage? Using force just won’t do it. Think of your addiction as a huge boulder in front of you, on your path to success. You can’t go around it. Can’t go over it. Or under it. What do you do? What CAN you do? Use leverage, of course. Leverage makes it so much easier. A friend asked me the other day how I quit smoking and, to be honest, I was shocked by the question. I mean, I knew how I quit and how simple it was, but my friend’s direct question threw me off. But, of course, leverage was the answer. The Pleasure/Pain Principle, to be exact. Tony Ro ..read more

I used to think it was a pleasure. Back in the “good” old days. A nice meal followed by a cigarette and pleasant companionship… a night out on the town, a few drinks and, again, good companionship. Or a hard day’s work followed by a few beers at the local joint with a few work buddies, shoot some pool, comradeship all around, more drinking and smoking, that bluish haze from all the cigarette smoke… No pleasure there, coughing up thick phlegm, followed by more beer and cigarettes… If not a pleasure, then it must be a curse. Ask any smoker. Most smokers will tell you the opposite. The average sm ..read more

If you really want to quit smoking, throw your cigarettes away. That’s a priority. It tells your Inner Addict that you’re done. You mean business. No more relapsing. No more games. Once you’ve done that, with no doubt in your mind, and with full resolve, you need to begin seeing yourself as a non-smoker. From this moment on you are no longer a smoker. Keep that vision always in the forefront of your mind, that of being a non-smoker. Say it… Say: “I am a non-smoker!” And again… Do the best that you can to believe what you’re saying. Full belief will come in it’s own time so there’s no need to p ..read more

I’ve written in the past about seeing our Quit in a different light, how much easier it can be. A tweak here or a tweak there can mean the difference between an easy Quit or a hard one. Cravings, for instance can cause grief for a lot of Quitters so I’d like to address that issue today. I know, they can be a pain in the derriere. Cravings are the main bugaboo of many a smokers’ nightmares but how do we stop them, if at all possible? The short answer is: you don’t. The long answer is more complicated but can be easier on your mind. With a little trick you can rob them of their power. The big wo ..read more

Once we fully understand and see through the lie, we can begin to heal. The lie? My first reaction was anger (at the tobacco companies) but I soon developed a sense of humor regarding my anger. I recall reading a newspaper article about a lady suing a tobacco company for not telling her she could develop cancer from smoking their cigarettes. Of course, the lawsuit came after the cancer. Such is Life… And I had to admit my smoking was my own doing. No one was forcing me to smoke. It was my choice to smoke. So I turned that around. And just like that it registered. Now it was my choice NOT to sm ..read more

“The Optimism Bias” is a technical term for the illusions of smokers. What it basically says is “all of this perceived danger and negativity around smoking does not affect me in any possible way. I’m healthy and strong and happy as a smoker. Cigarettes are my friend.” I discovered this bias in the Cardiac Ward of the hospital where I had my Open Heart Surgery. It was a crowded ward and we all had some type of heart problem, a lot of us due to smoking. Most of us, in point of fact. Only a few took the problem seriously. I took it seriously because I’d had a very painful heart attack and was tol ..read more

One thing I learned over these many years is how to change from one belief to another. It’s really very simple. Not always easy, mind you, but always simple. Since this is a “quit smoking” post it seems logical to use that as our starting point. And that, dear friend, is the one and only time I use logic in this post. Logic and smoking just don’t mix. So we want to go from being a smoker to being a non-smoker. What we need to do then is identify those beliefs that sabotage our efforts to stop. And, incidentally, once you identify and debunk those beliefs, no effort will be required. You’ll sim ..read more

Attitude is the difference between doing it and wishing you had done it. Attitude is 100% in our control. A lot of what happens to us is beyond our control but how we respond to what happens to us is ALWAYS in our control. And true attitude, what I call kick-ass attitude, always responds in the positive. Always respond, never react. A response means you’re in control whereas a reaction means whatever you’re reacting to is in control. Feeling is probably the most important part of attitude. If you say “I want to stop smoking,” but you don’t really feel able to stop, you’re probably headed for a ..read more

My take on one’s Quit is that in order for it to work one must DO the work. By that I mean that each of us must OWN his or her Quit. No one can do it for us. Others can assist us and show us what to do and how to do it but the actual doing is on us. The work of quitting is our work. But what does that really mean, to own your Quit? Where is your focus, on the problem or the solution to the problem? If you worry and fret over your Quit you lack power over it, and that is not a good place to be. You must accept responsibility for your Quit. Own it. Or it owns you. One surefire way to own your Qu ..read more

The actual physical addiction lasts less than a week and is more like a mild case of the flu, which if we were aware of that (and believed it) we would have absolutely no problem in quitting. In much less than a week we would be done with smoking. Would that it were so… It seems the most pervasive story creates a friendship of sorts between the smoker and the addiction. We speak of it as “my friend” that is always available. We know that it is always there for us, in good times and bad. And erasing that “friendship” brings a frightening sense of loss that is as real as the loss of a family mem ..read more