The Joy Of Stopping

When you announce that you have decided to give up cigarettes, the response of friends and family is important in deciding how successful your bid for freedom will be. If they react by gathering around and giving you praise and support for your decision, then you stand a great chance of keeping to the good road. If they show concern, saying “Are you sure? You know how hard that’s going to be?”, it’s not the best start to your bid.

The key is to look at your cessation as a positive thing. You know already that it is not going to be easy, but there is a range of positive aspects to giving up smoking. The most positive of all is the simple fact of breaking an addiction. There are no words to describe how much more free you feel after getting the better of your cravings, and it is this freedom and the joy that it brings that are the real prizes for anyone who manages to dislodge the monkey from their back.

Don’t concentrate on the fact that it is going to be difficult. Accept that this is a given, and instead concentrate on the fact that you can do this. It is more important to concentrate on what you are capable of than to focus on the possible problems. In doing that, you create a bigger hurdle in your mind, and the power of positive thinking has been proven. You can’t build a castle by thinking that you can, but you can certainly get more done than if you concentrate on how hard it will be.