Useful Tips for Quitting Smoking: Kick the Habit!

Valuable tips to help you quit smoking! As a smoker that is trying to quit your nasty and dangerous habit, you will come across several friends, co-workers, and family members that will offer advice on how to quit. Some advice is good and some is just plain useless (e.g., the friend who tells you to chew dip to replace the habit). Whether it's useful or not, you can never have too much support and advice for this difficult feat. Here is a list of five very useful tips that should help you conquer this stubborn nicotine fit.

1 - If you are quitting, then that means EVERYTHING must go. You must find every single pack of cigarettes in your room, your car, the garage, the patio, your work desk, the living room, etc. It will be VERY difficult to quit when you have easy and immediate access to cigarettes, so throw them ALL out!

2 - Replace your habit . . . buy lots of toothpicks and candy. No, they don't replace the nicotine and smoke, but at the very least, they give your mouth some entertainment, which can offer assistance in fighting those cravings. Drinking water from a straw can also help, as not only are you entertaining your mouth again, but you are also sucking air through this straw, which is obviously a similar technique for smoking a cigarette!

3 - Exercise more! Run on the treadmill . . . play some soccer with your kids . . . play your buddy in racquetball . . . lift those dumbbells that have been collecting dust in your basement for the past five years! Whenever you exercise, you feel like a million bucks and have this notion that you are suddenly healthy! Cigarette cravings don't often come during these "health invigoration moments," so the more you sweat, the easier it will be to stop smoking!

4 - Buy one of those hypnosis CD's for smokers. Even if you don't believe in hypnosis, you can't deny the fact that these CD's can be very relaxing and are very beneficial to easing your mind. If you have one of those nights where you are restless and can't fall asleep (and would really like a late night cigarette), then pop in that CD and just relax. The average hypnosis CD is around 30 minutes long. If you aren't asleep by the end of the CD, then play it a second time. Before your second run of that CD ends, you will surely be sleeping the night away and forgetting about that cigarette you were thinking about earlier. If you listen to that CD long enough, it may actually help you quit smoking altogether, in addition to helping you with your sleep.

5 - Don't ruin your smokeless streak with one careless night. Some people, after going 4 or 5 weeks without smoking, sometimes get the sudden urge to "test out" their willpower. They will buy a pack of cigarettes, but vow to only smoke "just one night" and then resume the quitting stage by the next morning. Yes, it is tempting to see how you can survive this test, but it's almost a sure way to COMPLETELY fail. All of that strong willpower you have built up for the past month suddenly goes out the door when you light up for that "one night." More often than not, that "one night" turns into next morning, next afternoon, next work break, next evening, next dinner, next beer . . . and it never ends. Soon, you will be the same pack-a-day smoker that you were a month ago. In some cases, you might even smoke more than that, as for some demented reason, you may think you earned the right to smoke an extra 10 cigarettes a day because you went 5 weeks without a single one! In addition to listening to the CD while in bed, you can also sit at your desk or car and listen to the CD during your lunch break at work. The more you listen, the more powerful it becomes.