Let’s Start Your Stop Smoking Mission!
Yesterday you set your date when you are going to quit smoking. If you set day 8 as your quit smoking day, you will be smoke free in five days. That will give you a few days to practice with the weapons in your arsenal. Five days from today, your bad smoking habit will be history.
Stop Smoking Day 3
Let’s get out and test your weapons today.
At least once today, use your weapons to shoot down the urge to smoke.
During the five minutes that it will take for the urge to pass, try out some of your arsenal. Try one, or all, or find a combination that works for you.
Make a note in your stop smoking chart that you downloaded on day 1. Pick the ones that you rated “difficult” (“D” in the chart) during your monitoring period.
Social Pressures - Tell Others You Plan To Quit
You may find yourself in a situation (card game, party, coffee break) during which you would normally smoke. It may help to let others know of your desire to quit, and also your reasons for quitting. Enlisting the aid of a non smoker to confide in may also help. Tell your family, friends, and co-workers that you plan to quit.
Tell them how they can help you. Make sure that they are aware of your goals so that they do not say or do anything to instill a negative impact on your desire to quit.
Some people like to have friends ask how things are going. Others find it nosy. Tell the people you care about exactly how they can help. Here are some ideas:
- Get support from other people. You can try talking with others one-on-one or in a group. You can also get support on the phone. You can even try an Internet chat room. This kind of support helps smokers quit. The more support you get, the better. But even a little can help.
- Ask everyone to understand your change in mood. Remind them that this won't last long. (The worst will be over within two weeks.) Tell them this: "The longer I go without cigarettes, the sooner I'll be my old self."
- Does someone close to you smoke? Ask them to quit with you, or at least not to smoke around you.
- Do you take any medicines? Tell your doctor and pharmacist you are quitting. Nicotine changes how some drugs work. You may need to change your prescriptions after you quit.
If you feel that you may not resist the social pressures of smoking, consider the option of giving up these social encounters for two or three weeks until the urge passes and you can be comfortable again.
Tension & Negative Emotion
A crisis occurs during your work or personal day, and one of the main reasons for you to smoke has been tension reduction. Try to deal with your negative emotions and use the tension reducing methods that we talked about earlier. Get away from the area that the tension is associated with. Take a walk, or go to another room. You may also find that nicotine gum will give you enough tension relief to get through.