Smoking is a really unhealthy addictive pattern.
Smoking is very hard to take control of because the habit is associated with other things we do every day, like drinking coffee first thing, with alcohol consumption or after a meal. Smoking is also used to control nerves, bad tempers, bad moods, always when we feel the need to calm down. By reaching for the fags when we feel the urge which is associated with our pattern behaviour, we feel satisfied in the moment and what we believe to be a happy feeling is in actual fact nothing more than a sub conscious death wish.
Our lungs are not designed to hold smoke which turns to black tar, lining the delicate area with damaging unhealthy toxins that over time clog and cause failure to work properly. The lungs are designed for fresh air and oxygen adsorption. The air we breath keeps us alive and in perfect working order, so to tamper with that by inhaling nicotine and cigarette smoke means we choose to take the risk of dying over the choice to give up.
Venus Cow says, "Don’t smoke, choke and smell like an old ashtray, it’s stupid."
Besides giving you possible lung cancer, yellow stained teeth which is so aging and small deep lines round your mouth and eyes, smoking can destroy your immune system leaving you vulnerable and prone to infections. We know this and yet we choose to ignore the facts overcome by our desire to smoke at any cost because we believe in our minds we love it.
Common sense tells us if we ignore the facts and still continue to smoke every day we will age prematurely, die early and have no one to blame but ourselves.
Giving up a bad habit like smoking is difficult because we believe we cannot live without it which is ironic when living without it is the key to a long happy life. In order to take back control we have to first be honest, without the internal desire to stop smoking it ain't going to happen. We cultivate the desire in our meditation, visualize healthy white clean lungs, set ourselves goals then reach them by recognising we are in control of our own choices.
If you really want to quit smoking and knock your tobacco addiction on the head go to your journal and plan a day where you will change your routine in order to see if you can trick yourself into changing your behaviour. My advice, don't share your plan with other people.
If when you wake up your daily habit is to go to the kitchen, make a coffee and light up before you can get going, the night before hide the kettle and make sure you have no cigarettes. This will force you to have to drink something else, like milk, water, juice which in reality is way healthier to start your day and will help stop your mind associating coffee and caffeine with the desire for nicotine. If you wake up and your habit/routine is to smoke your first cigarette when you get to work, leave the packet you have at home and make yourself go without for a day. If you can go without for a day, you can go without forever.
Smoking can not only slowly kill you but is a very expensive habit so make a list in your journal of how much you spend a year on fags right now and then think about all the things you could do with the extra money when you manage to give up.
There is only one way to stop smoking and that is to just stop but we all have will power problems even the best of us so if you really cannot give up even though you want to live longer and save money at the same time, go see your GP and get some help.
Personal achievement is empowering and to be able to train your brain to say, "No thanks I want to live longer more than I want the risk of lung cancer or early death" has to become your personal mission impossible. I have given up smoking myself so I understand how one behaviour triggers another. I gave up alcohol and coffee at the same time for this very reason but too difficult for most people all at once. The good news, once you've changed one behaviour pattern successfully you'll watch your self discipline and will power grow and thus mastering another challenge gets easier.
And for all the people out there who smoke whilst spending thousands on anti aging lotions, potions, pills and botox in order to look younger, and I am not just talking to the ladies here you are wasting your hard earned cash. Smoking is depleting your natural collagen production making any miracle cure impossible no matter what the advertisers tell you. And for the guys smoking can seriously affect your fertility.
Venus Cow says, "Warning, smoking kills."
Photo by: Nguyen Linh Unsplash