Smoking is injurious to health, it kills!
Most of us do not even remember when and why we had picked up the first cigarette. It was so many years ago. We also do not remember when exactly it turned to 2, then 5, then 10 and then 20. It has always been this way it seems now.
What we do remember however is being told to and the urge to quit more than once creeping up on us while we often choose to feed and destroy our bodies with nicotine rather than build it up with nutrition and food. Yes, we all are strugglers playing the victim card, shouting out “It’s not me, It’s the cigarette, It’s addictive!”.
Well, let us ask ourselves, “Really, is that so? Did you pick up the cigarette or did it pick you up?”.
Today, instead of others talking to us, let us have an adult conversation one on one with ourselves. (It is long overdue; I can see the heads nodding to that already.
What is it exactly that we gain from filling ourselves with all that smoke? Let us try and understand. As soon as you light up a cigarette, the reward area in your brain gets activated, releasing the pleasure hormone called dopamine. Hence every time you smoke, you are getting yourself an instant feel-good fix, which you are in turn addicted to.
So, the real question here is, in the life that you have built for yourself, is smoking the only activity that you derive pleasure from?
Is smoking the only way that relieves you of stress? Is smoking so important that you are willing to burn yourself slowly, only to be extinguished soon?
We all know the harmful effects that a single puff of smoke has on our body, so let us not reiterate them. Ranging from lung cancer to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the effects are almost etched in our heads. Still, it does not help us in quitting. So let us talk about what we could do instead to be able to quit. Here are a few steps that we could take:
1. Believe you can:
Desire manifests in words but belief manifests in behavior. It is true. The locus of control is within you. You can start exercising this control only if you believe you can. So, visualize yourself as a non-smoker and imagine all the positive changes that would affect your daily life. From being more fit to living a longer life, the list is endless. How you behave around a group of smokers can be and will be decided by you alone, and what would help is that vision of a non-smoker you.
2. Replace the word “cigarette” with another one:
We may have decided we will quit, but what usually follows is when trapped in a situation where we have to make a choice, we have an internal dialogue that mostly ends up in us giving up. So, imagine a little boy who has been asked to not open a chocolate box. What would most likely happen is he would open it. It is this imposed instruction that triggers him to act that way. So, the moment you think the word ‘cigarette’ your mind cannot think of anything else. Whereas if you replace that with say the names of your children or their images, chances are your mind would be engulfed with them, keeping you from lighting that smoke.
3. Learn something new:
So, once you have completed step one and two, it is time to simultaneously learn a new skill or hit the gym or maybe start training for a marathon or anything that you are passionate about. The only way to forget is to replace. Hence, you need to learn something new that would activate your reward portion of the brain and release the same dopamine that smoking would release earlier. Put your thinking cap on, and decide what it is going to be.
There are many other ways of quitting; using nicotine patches is not one of them, as it keeps you addicted still. These 3 are comprehensive steps that have been scientifically proven to help smokers to kick the habit.
Now, according to the WHO report, every year 7 million deaths are caused by tobacco use, a figure that is estimated to rise above 8 million a year by 2030. Do you wish to be one of them who slowly fade away and burn their own selves up? I am sure we both know the answer to that since I definitely do not want to register myself in that statistic. So let us choose a better lifestyle for ourselves, change the habits by starting with one and cultivate healthier habits that would build us, and not break us. Remember, whether you reach out for the smoke or not, it is a choice you, and you alone make.
