How to Make a Plan to Quit Smoking

Imagine you are at your doctors office and he just told you that you have to stop driving a car. It's bad for your health and if you continue you risk disability and/or death. You must stop today!

Did you just go into a total panic? You might be thinking, "But how am I going to get home from here? How to I go to work tomorrow? Or take the kids to soccer practice? Or go grocery shopping?

The thought of never being able to drive again might just cause you to rebel, go into denial and ignore your doctors advice. You might tell yourself, "It's too hard. I've been driving for too long to change. I might be one of the lucky ones. Bad things happen to other drivers but not to me."

But if you had six months to make a plan on how to use other forms of transportation, you could do it. You might get a bus schedule and map out the routes to work, the grocery store and the mall. You might ask coworkers if you can car pool with them and a neighbor if you can tag along to the grocery store.

You discover there is a wide variety of modes of transportation and you have options: planes, trains, buses, bicycles, skates, unicycles, skateboards, walking, motorcycles, scooter, boats, ships, canoes, rick-shaws, tuk-tuks, horseback, helicopters, cable cars, tramways, funiculars, sailboats, yachts, elevators, ski-lifts, escalators, chauffeured limousine and even a spaceship.

Not all of these options may apply to your particular situation but you do have options. You might need a different option for every time you used to drive a car but by getting creative it can be done; and what works for someone else might not work for you. It might not be easy but not impossible.

Quitting smoking is exactly the same. If you had to quit today, what would you do? Would you go into a panic because you don't have a plan on how to have your cup of coffee without a cigarette? Or what to do at break-time? You might need a different idea for every one of your cigarettes.

Here is an except from my book, "How to Win at Quitting Smoking" which you can get a free copy just by signing up for my blog. This is how to break your smoking habit BEFORE you quit:

Activity: Make a smoking corner, away from all household activities, -- someplace you do not normally go and only smoke there. It could be the side of the house, by the garbage cans or in a corner of the garage. Don’t make it someplace you enjoy going to, but someplace you do not like and do not spend time there.

Even if you already smoke outside, like on the patio or porch, find someplace new. After you quit smoking, you want to be able to go to this place without it triggering a craving to smoke. Change the place where you used to smoke to a new relaxation corner where no smoking is allowed. Practice your relaxation techniques there and/or use this area to work on your Action Plan.

Smoke by the clock. Do not smoke whenever you want to but instead let the clock dictate when you smoke. Choose a time schedule so you smoke often enough to not have strong withdrawals or cravings. Smoking a pack a day is one cigarette every hour; 10 cigarettes a day is every two hours; two packs a day is every half hour. If you do not feel the need to smoke when it is your time to smoke, you don’t have to, but you can’t have another cigarette until it is your next time to smoke.

Do not try to cut down -- the purpose is to learn new behaviors while your brain is still calmed by smoking and to break your old associations.

When it is your “time” to smoke, go to your smoking corner, stand (unless you have a physical challenge) and smoke. In your smoking corner, do not do anything else except smoke. Do not take your coffee with you. Do not take your cell phone. Do not listen to your iPod. Do not leave a window open and watch TV. Do not talk to others. The purpose is not to multi-task when you smoke but to give yourself time to be conscious of what you are doing. By separating your smoking behavior from your other behaviors, you are “breaking your habit”.

After you have smoked a cigarette, go back into the house and go about your normal activities. Have a cup of coffee or watch television. See how it feels to be doing this activity without smoking. It might feel weird but that is normal. Remind yourself that this strange feeling is just a thought about smoking and not a physical craving.

Stop Smoking in your car. If you are driving when it is your “time” to smoke, pull over to a safe area and get out of your car to smoke.

Do not smoke with other people. If your work place has a designated smoking area, do not go there to socialize with your fellow smokers, but only go there at your time to smoke; do not get distracted by talking to other smokers. Leave as soon as the butt is put out. 

For more good ideas to break your habit sign up for my blog in the right hand column and receive a FREE copy of "How to Win at Quitting Smoking".

Why is it so hard to quit smoking?

Becoming smoke free can be one of the hardest changes one makes in their life, but why is it so hard?

For true change to happen it is only possible when the desire to become smoke-free is stronger than the desire to continue smoking and when the smoker has the tools, skills and self-knowledge, that build self-confidence, to take effective action.

Every former smoker will tell nobody quits until they really want to quit, until then it's a struggle. Yet 70% of smokers will say they "want to quit" but in reality, what they want is to continue getting their perceived benefits from smoking (stress relief, enjoyment) and want to avoid the negative consequences (cancer ete.). They want their cake and want to eat it too--but you can't have both. The popularity of the e-cig is that this is the promise they are making. The only problem is they can't back up their promise because no one knows the long term health effects from using the e-cig. To build desire the "WHY: of becoming smoke-free is most important.

When the benefits from smoking are compared with the negatives of trying to quitting, the cigarettes win out but when becoming smoke-free is MORE important than continuing to smoke, the method will appear because the smoker will seek out the tools, skills and self-knowledge that are needed to go through the process of changing to a life of being smoke-free. 

After having a strong "why", the next part is the "how-to" part. Often smoking is considered part of our "self-care" especially when dealing with stress, fear, anxiety. When everything is falling apart, our "friends" are still there to offer comfort. Smoking is a low-effort coping strategy and if like most smokers you have started as a teen--you haven't developed other effective coping strategies because smoking has always been there and has worked. Part of the struggle is to develop other "self-care" techniques but often they require more effort than just lighting up. This differs for every smoker and the tools, skills and self- knowledge.

Allan Carr's book, "The Easy Way to Quit Smoking" is great for motivation because he takes every argument used to continue smoking and rips it apart. He works on the WHY to quit, but not the HOW to quit. In over 20 years of working with smokers, as soon as the WHY to quit is stronger than the desire to continue to smoke, the rest is just gaining the tools, skills and self-knowledge.  This builds confidence and when a smoker feels they have the ability to succeed, they will take effective action. 

Effective action means having a plan in place to deal with the many different aspects of smoking and not relying on just one method to quit. Some smokers are more physically addicted than others and may need medicinal therapy. Habit cigarettes require behavior modification, stress cigarettes require effective stress management. 

As a Tobacco Treatment Specialist, my job is to help a smoker develop the desire, figure out what tools, and skills are needed through self-knowledge and how to develop an effective action plan. 

What works and what doesn't work?

I'm approached all the time to sell products that claim to help a smoker quit. One company claimed that cravings would vanish by smelling a cinnamon scented wand. In a very unscientific experiment, I gave them out to all of the participants in one of my workshops. One third said that the wands did remove the craving, one third said the wands did nothing and one third said smelling the wand caused an increase in cravings. Another man swore that when he rubbed a Peruvian amulet, his cravings went away.
I firmly believe that regardless of how outlandish a quitting method seems, that every method will work for some, but no method works for everyone. Some products will work because of the placebo effect, which if the user believes strongly that a method will work for them, then with the power of their own mind, they will be successful. So when a client will ask about any alternative method used for quitting, I have to admit that I am biased. I've been facilitating cessation classes for 19 years and I often hear, "This class is my last resort--I've tried everything and nothing works." (which includes acupuncture, & hypnosis). The individuals that attend my classes are the ones that have tried all the other methods and products and found they didn't work.

So what does work? Smokers are like individual snowflakes, each connected to their cigarettes in various ways. So instead of endorsing any particular product or method, I encourage smokers examine how they relate to their cigarettes. When do they smoke? What habits are associated with smoking? What physical effects do they feel when quitting? By looking at how they are connected to their cigarettes, will tell them what aspect they need to work on to be successful and often it is not just one aspect but many.

Rather than spending money for products claiming to be a magic wand to quit but probably won't work, except to line the manufacturer's pocket with the smoker's money, practice changing one aspect of smoking. Break one habit, such as not smoking in the car anymore, only smoking outside. Practice going outside for a smoke break with your friends but don't smoke. Talk to your doctor about different medications, it may take trial and error to find a combination that works for the individual.

First Step Towards Quitting Smoking

Quitting is like a baby learning to walk. First the baby grabs onto the coffee table and holds on, next stands up and immediately falls on their butt and finally takes a first step and falls on butt again. But we would never chastise a baby because they don't take off and start running immediately because we know it is a process and that the baby is learning how to use muscles they have never used before. I started smoking when I was 14, so you're like me, you've been smoking longer than you've been doing almost anything else--smoking is connected to sooooo many things in your life, it is a retraining process. You need to learn to use muscles that you haven't used before. You didn't become a smoker over night. Do you rememer your first cigarette? You probably coughed, felt light headed and maybe sick to your stomach, but you kept at it until it felt normal. It was like learning how to walk with one shoe on and one shoe off, at first it was ackward but in a very short period of time, it felt normal. Now it's a reverse process, like learning how to walk with both shoes on, at first it doesn't seem normal, it feels ackward-its a process of learning how to live without each cigarette, each instance that you smoke, each habit, each emotion. but often we are too hard on ourselves for not quitting overnight or doing it perfectly the first time.
So start the process with becoming conscious of smoking. Maybe your first step could just be to leave your cigarettes in another room instead of on the table next to you, so instead of unconsciously reaching for one and lighting it up, you actually have to think for a minute and go get one. All you need to do to start learning how to walk with both shoes on, is to take one baby step and train yourself step, by step on the road to recovery. Fianlly, make it OK to stumble and fall, just like a baby, be gentle with yourself, it a learning process, a retraining program, believe in progress, not perfection and before you know it, you'll be off and running and be smoke free.