Choosing To Smoke Less, But...
Don’t fight your desire to smoke. Contrary to general belief, to give up smoking you do not need to
abolish your desire to smoke. You will start giving up the habit automatically once you choose not to
follow your desire to smoke each and every time you have it (the desire to smoke). This will take the
fuel out of your subconscious, rebellious mind and stop you short of becoming a victim of external forces,
situations or people. A master of yourself, you can choose to smoke or choose not to smoke. Keep your
cigarettes with you as long as you feel you want to have this choice. It may even be a good idea to
encourage your desire to smoke by keeping your cigarette pack in front of you, smelling it from time to
time. Watch other people around you light up and inhale, imagining that you inhale deeply too. Do not
count the days that pass without you smoking and do not look ahead in time either. You neither need to
prove to yourself nor to anyone else that you can beat this addiction. In fact, you don’t want to beat it all.
You want to benefit from it. You are neither a better person if you quit, nor are you a worse person if you
don’t. You are free to stop smoking today and begin again tomorrow. You will always have this choice,
and you will always be only a puff away from being a smoker, just like the rest of us.
The choice of using and training your free will has to be made in the ever-present moment, right now,
and has to be done anew repeatedly many times each day. The longer the periods of time during which
you actualize your choice not to smoke, the more quickly diminishes your urge to smoke, becoming less
intense each day. Whenever the desire to smoke returns, which is possible because the ghost of memory
doesn’t just leave your subconscious overnight, you are once again compelled to make a new choice. This
time, however, your conscious mind finds it much easier to stick with its previous successful choice
because of the newly improved self-confidence and self-esteem. Setbacks don’t exist in this program;
only exercising your freedom of choice does. One way or the other, you are in charge.
The conscious retraining of your mind will benefit your entire life. It will restore your power of using
your free will and remove the “victim” within you. Because you have been told so many times in your life
that you cannot do this or cannot do that, you began to use this belief dogma to accept your addiction as
being too difficult to quit. By reclaiming your power of making conscious choices you will be able to
break the self-fulfilling “I can’t” pattern in your life for good. This will become a great asset in every part
of your life.
Ending The Addiction
Before you decide to stop smoking (or any other addiction), make sure that you are aware of the
following points:
- Make ending your addiction a priority in your life.
- Don’t try to make too many other changes in your life at the same time.
- Don’t reward yourself for ending the habit; quitting is enough of a reward.
- It is good not to tell anyone about your intention to stop smoking because this only undermines
your freedom to choose to smoke. - Carry your cigarettes or tobacco with you, so you can choose to smoke whenever you decide to.
Also, people will assume you are still smoking; this way you don’t have to prove to anyone that
you are capable of quitting the habit. - Unless for health reasons, don’t try to avoid places where other people smoke; you want to remain
in charge under all circumstances.