Top 10 psychological and emotional reasons to quit smoking

To stop smoking, smokers need strong motivation to drive them to kick the nicotine habit. Indeed, there can be strong personal reasons, pressure from peers and family members or due to social stigma attached with smoking to give up the habit.

The following list tries to address the psychological and emotional side of benefits smokers can derive when they take the arduous journey of quitting smoking.

1. Smoking is no more 'cool'

Cigarette smoking no more considered cool compared to 70s and 80s when everyone smoked. The smoking habit considered unhealthy. Cigarette companies generated the ‘cool’ image due to cleverly designed commercials. For someone intelligent, the appeal of coolness is diminishing given the health hazard the smoking habit carries. There are mandatory ghastly looking images on cigarette packs in some countries not only horrifying, but also a revelation.

2. Stop buying packs of cigarette saves you lot of money

For a moment, imagine how many cigarettes a smoker smokes in a year on an average 20 cigarettes a day. Cool 7000 cigarettes a year! Astounding, right? No! Try the numbers if one smoked for the last 10 years. That totals to 70,000 cigarettes. Now, that is worrying. We have not considered special occasions, weekends; jaunts to nightclubs where one tend to smoke more than usual, sometimes two times the average. This puts the numbers even higher.

Just do the math and see how much cigarette one has burnt in her life. Interestingly, the amount of money one spends just to satisfy addiction is staggering. It is fraction of a dollar, no doubt, for each cigarette. However, how much money one spends on buying cough medicine, breath fresheners, throat fresheners, teeth whiteners, and visiting dentists just because one wanted to be normal?

3. Increased Confidence levels once one stop smoking.

You look like a rock star to others who are trying to quit smoking. Apparently, almost every other smoker wishes to stop smoking one day. However, how many honestly stop smoking and never become a smoker again in their lives? You will be surprised to find out how people expression can change when one mention that she quit smoking. It is shocking for most of smokers and pleasant surprise for many of her not smoking friends. Just imagine how tall she can walk!

4. Worry no more about how bad your breath smell in front of clients or customers

The cigarette smoke smells nasty. Smoking creates bad odor in your mouth and few feet around you. The smell lingers longer if you smoke in an air-conditioned room. You make every other not smoking person to suffer because of your habit. Does it sound selfish? Perhaps, yes. Stop smoking and never worry about the stink again.

5. Save astounding amounts of time

Can you imagine how much time one save by stop smoking? If you are a busy person and a smoker, you can gain lot by stop smoking. It is a simple arithmetic.

One may argue that he or she is smoking the cigarette while working. The smoker while smoking unknowingly idle away productive minutes. How much time you end up wasting just for smoking every year? You be the judge.

6. No embarrassing stares at you

Nowadays, many public places are out of bounds for smoking. However, when smokers lit a cigarette in places with children, senior citizens, pregnant women, and sick persons, for example, invite cold stare from others. It is embarrassing for both the guilty smoker and others. You can walk guilt free when you quit.

7. Feel healthier and fresh day after day

We know there are nearly 2000 types of chemicals produced while smoking and some are hazardous and carcinogen! Smoking can cause irreparable damage to mouth, gums, teeth, and lungs. We are wise enough to stay away from death inviting sticks.

8. Help your society to become smoke free and earn good karma

Leading by example, you can help others to quit smoking. You can motivate others who are trying to quit smoking. You will earn good karma by doing this.

9. Make your family members happy and healthy

Do you know how happy your friends, family members and others feel for you when you stop smoking? It is certainly a feel good factor for you. You help them to eliminate passive effects of smoking. The whole environment becomes healthy. You will love it.

10. Develop cleaner and healthier living environment

Imagine the cigarette butts, empty boxes that thrown around on the street by un-mindful smokers. By quitting smoking, you are helping to keep the clean environment and smoke free. Our world beset with global pollution. By quitting, you can contribute positively to the global cause.

Health, Happiness, and Relationships Magazine

How to Overcome Smoking Habit

For many quitting smoking is mostly one of the top items in list of yearly resolutions. Many people struggling with quitting the debilitating habit somewhere in their lives, give up the hope of kicking the habit successfully. A Smoker who is smoking for decades may think it is impossible to quit smoking since the habit has become so ingrained in his or her life that it has become inseparable part of their everyday life.

As an ex-smoker myself, I know how it feels like. I cannot separate my smoking habit from my psyche. It seems the habit has reprogrammed my mind in order to obey to smoke whenever the desire arises. For a smoker, he or she does not need an occasion to smoke a cigarette. She can be waiting in traffic, taking a walk, talking to someone, at work, with friends etc. Every occasion is right for smoking. The mind and body are so well trained to pick up a cigarette and light it with such precision that the act does not even register the smoker’s conscious mind. It all happens automatically; this way, without her knowing, she could have smoked tens of cigarettes in hours.

Smoking habit creates nasty illusions, indeed. Most smokers claim smoking helps them to clear their minds of worries or stress, inspire them with ideas, make them think clear, and so many other gazillion reasons. I wonder how anyone can give a reason that cigarette help them to solve problems. How can anyone explain how so many discoveries, inventions, and great thoughts came into existence without smoking a cigarette? Do we need a magnifying lens to see a non smoker is as good a problem solver, an inventor, researcher, manager as a smoker? The only difference is one thinks without smoking a cigarette and another strongly believes the smoking is the reason for his enhanced, if at all, ability to solve the problem at hand, for example. Why smoking is such a strong habit as to it can hamper one's reasoning faculty to reason that cigarette does not anyway create competitive edge over non-smokers excepting generating smoke, littering ash, and a health spoiler.

To quit smoking, one should as well strongly believe that one can live with his decision without smoking at least for extended periods at a stretch. Moreover, it helps to identify a strong reason or a motivation such as health, children, or family and friends. Take emotional support from your well wishers and your non smoking wife or husband can be your indomitable support. It again requires reprogramming one's mind and reaffirming his mental strength and believing that his will power is strong enough to hold the habit at bay and win over it completely. One must have faith and rest follows.

To quit smoking, it does not matter how long or how short you have been smoking. It takes one decision to call it a day. For anyone who wants to quit smoking, my advice is even while you are smoking, nurse a idea that one day you would stop smoking and think how your life would be like without smoking. Believe me; just such a thought itself can provoke a strong protest from your mind. Keep pushing the idea everyday to quit smoking completely, and reaffirm the decision every morning and evening. Create strong images of your life as to how it looks like when you are not smoking anymore. Preparation can take weeks, if not months. For a smoker, it is almost impossible to imagine a day without cigarette. Nevertheless, with this exercise you have begun a journey to smoke free life. Nothing is impossible; with your will power nothing can stop you achieving what you want.

To quit smoking, one should be very persistent in his journey to cigarette-less life. There would be disappointments along the way for having weak will power. It is alright to fail many times over. Just keep pushing on and try stop smoking for extended periods consistently and continue the exercise to increase the period of non smoking.  Increase the period gradually; from hours to days, day to weeks and weeks to months, and months to years. You have two benefits in this approach. One, you can stop smoking for an indefinite period, and two, you have developed a strong will power that would help you in other areas of life. Nevertheless, smoking is one tough habit to stop!  Fortunately, there are ways to kick the habit.

When I stopped smoking for the first time after almost 10 years of smoking, I did not smoke again for 3 years! Second time, I picked up smoking for couple of months and stopped completely. Second time it was much easier to stop, just like flipping a switch in my mind.  To top smoking, I did not use any nicotine patch, nor availed any counseling or treatment. Once I decided to stop smoking, I just stopped! My mind protested, craved, and cried.  I just lent my deaf years, after sometime the craving just waned away! You can stop smoking too, if you believe so.

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