{{Testimony from a former Cigarette addict}}<\/p>\n
According to the testimony given by a former cigarette smoker who recently celebrated a one-year anniversary of quitting smoking. <\/p>\n
{\u201cWell, of finally quitting \u2026 like most smokers, I had tried to quit many times and failed. But this quit stuck, and I\u2019d like to share the top 10 things that made this quit successful when the others failed\u201d.}<\/p>\n
{{1. Commit Thyself Fully}}. In the quits that failed, I was only half into it. I told myself I wanted to quit, but I always felt in the back of my mind that I\u2019d fail. I didn\u2019t write anything down; I didn\u2019t tell everybody (maybe my wife, but just her). This time, I wrote it down. I wrote down a plan. I blogged about it. I made a vow to my daughter. I told my family and friends I was quitting. I went online and joined a quit forum. I had rewards. Many of these will be in the following tips, but the point is that I fully committed, and there was no turning back. I didn\u2019t make it easy for myself to fail.<\/p>\n
{{2. Make a Plan}}. You can\u2019t just wake up and say, \u201cI\u2019m gonna quit today.\u201d You have to prepare yourself. Plan it out. Have a system of rewards, a support system, and a person to call if you\u2019re in trouble. Write down what you\u2019ll do when you get an urge. Print it out. Post it up on your wall, at home and at work. If you wait until you get the urge to figure out what you\u2019re going to do, you\u2019ve already lost. You have to be ready when those urges come.<\/p>\n
{{3. Know Your Motivation}}. When the urge comes, your mind will rationalize. \u201cWhat\u2019s the harm?\u201d And you\u2019ll forget why you\u2019re doing this. Know why you\u2019re doing this before that urge comes. Is it for your kids? For your wife? For you health? So you can run? Because the girl you like doesn\u2019t like smokers? Have a very good reason or reasons for quitting. List them out. Print them out. Put it on a wall. And remind yourself of those reasons every day, every urge.<\/p>\n
{{4. Not One Puff, Ever (N.O.P.E.).}} The mind is a tricky thing. It will tell you that one cigarette won\u2019t hurt. And it\u2019s hard to argue with that logic, especially when you\u2019re in the middle of an urge. And those urges are super hard to argue with. Don\u2019t give in. Tell yourself, before the urges come, that you will not smoke a single puff, ever again. Because the truth is, that one puff will hurt. One puff leads to a second, and a third, and soon you\u2019re not quitting, you\u2019re smoking. Don\u2019t fool yourself. A single puff will almost always lead to a recession. Do not take a single Puff!<\/p>\n
{{5. Join a Forum}}. One of the things that helped the most in this quit was an online forum for quitters (quitsmoking.about.com) \u2026 you don\u2019t feel so alone when you\u2019re miserable. Misery loves company, after all. Go online, introduce yourself, get to know the others who are going through the exact same thing, post about your crappy experience, and read about others who are even worse than you. Best rule: Post Before You Smoke. If you set this rule and stick to it, you will make it through your urge. Others will talk to you through it. And they\u2019ll celebrate with you when you make it through your first day, day 2, 3, and 4, week 1 and beyond. It\u2019s great fun.<\/p>\n
{{6. Reward Yourself.}} Set up a plan for your rewards. Definitely reward yourself after the first day, and the second, and the third. You can do the fourth if you want, but definitely after Week 1 and Week2. And month 1, and month 2. And 6 months and a year. Make them good rewards that you\u2019ll look forward to: CDs, books, DVDs, T-shirts, shoes, a massage, a bike, a dinner out at your favorite restaurant, a hotel stay \u2026 whatever you can afford. Even better: take whatever you would have spent on smoking each day, and put it in a jar. This is your Rewards Jar. Go crazy! Celebrate your every success! You deserve it.<\/p>\n
{{7. Delay. If you have an urge, wait}}. Do the following things: take 10 deep breaths. Drink water. Eat a snack (at first it was candy and gum, and then I switched to healthier stuff like carrots and frozen grapes and pretzels). Call your support person. Post on your smoking cessation forum. Exercise. Do whatever it takes to delay, but delay, delay, delay. You will make it through it, and the urge will go away. When it does, celebrate! Take it one urge at a time, and you can do it.<\/p>\n
{{8. Replace Negative Habits with Positive Ones}}. What do you do when you\u2019re stressed? If you currently react to stress with a cigarette, you\u2019ll need to find something else to do. Deep breathing, self massage of my neck and shoulders, and exercise has worked wonders for me. Other habits, such as what you do first thing in the morning, or what you do in the car, or wherever you usually smoke, should be replaced with better, more positive ones. Running has been my best positive habit, although I have a few others that replaced smoking.<\/p>\n
{{9. Make it Through Hell Week, then Heck Week, and you\u2019re Golden}}. The hardest part of quitting is the first two days. If you can get past that, you\u2019ve passed the nicotine withdrawal stage, and the rest is mostly mental. But all of the first week is hell. Which is why it\u2019s called Hell Week? After that, it begins to get easier. Second week is Heck Week, and is still difficult, but not nearly as hellish as the first. After that, it was smooth sailing for me. I just had to deal with an occasional strong urge, but the rest of the urges were light, and I felt confident I could make it through anything.<\/p>\n
{{10. If You Fall, Get Up}}. And Learn From Your Mistakes. Yes, we all fail. That does not mean we are failures, or that we can never succeed. If you fall, it\u2019s not the end of the world. Get up, brush yourself off, and try again. I failed numerous times before succeeding. But you know what? Each of those failures taught me something. Well, sometimes I repeated the same mistakes several times, but eventually I learned. Figure out what your obstacles to success are, and plan to overcome them in your next quit. And don\u2019t wait a few months until your next quit. Give yourself a few days to plan and prepare, commit fully to it, and go for it! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Testimony from a former Cigarette addict}} According to the testimony given by a former cigarette smoker who recently celebrated a one-year anniversary of quitting smoking. {\u201cWell, of finally quitting \u2026 like most smokers, I had tried to quit many times and failed. But this quit stuck, and I\u2019d like to share the top 10 things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[75],"byline":[2268],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-homenews","byline-richard-mugarura"],"bylines":[{"id":2268,"name":"Richard Mugarura","slug":"richard-mugarura","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2268,"name":"Richard Mugarura","slug":"richard-mugarura","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049478,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11639.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11639.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11639.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11639.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11639.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11639.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11639"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11639"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}