How to quit smoking by getting your head straight

Stopping Smoking Tips - Feeling Free

The truth is that you are free to be a smoker. There will be consequences for you should you take that path. But these consequences, however terrifying, do not take away your freedom to smoke. They are the consequences you get if you exercise that freedom by not stopping smoking.

This is your life, and you are free to live it as a smoker if that is your choice. You can smoke. You can go on smoking. You can smoke even more each day than you do now. You can smoke every day of your life and never stop.

I’m not encouraging you to do that: living your life as a smoker will cost you dearly. It will cost you your health, your money and your self-esteem. It may also cost you jobs, relationships and even years of your life.

What I’m encouraging you to do is to find a way to learn how to quit smoking without feeling deprived, so that you will be able to stay stopped and feel happy about that. And the way to do that is to understand - and really believe - that stopping smoking doesn’t limit your freedom to smoke, in anyway.

The most important thing to know about stopping smoking is: you don’t have to do it. Ever!

Does this sound like a dangerous way of thinking? It’s very possible that you are afraid to tell yourself you are free to be a smoker. The fear, of course, is that if you give yourself that option of smoking, you will actually take it. So you try to eliminate it by convincing yourself you have no choice but to stop and stay stopped. And that’s exactly how you create the misery of feeling deprived.