 Immediately after stopping:
Develop a clean, fresh, nonsmoking environment around yourself - at work and at home. Buy yourself flowers - you may be surprised how much you can enjoy their scent now.
The first few days after you stop, spend as much free time as possible in places where smoking isn't allowed, such as libraries, museums, theaters, department stores, and churches.
Drink large quantities of water and fruit juice (but avoid sodas that contain caffeine).
Try to avoid alcohol, coffee, and other beverages that you associate with cigarette smoking.
Strike up a conversation instead of a match for a cigarette.
If you miss the sensation of having a cigarette in your hand, play with something else - a pencil, a paper clip, a marble.
If you miss having something in your mouth, try toothpicks or a straw.
Avoid temptation:
Instead of smoking after meals, get up from the table and brush your teeth or go for a walk.
If you always smoke while driving, listen to a particularly interesting radio program or your favorite music, or take public transportation for a while, if you can.
For the first 1-3 weeks, avoid situations you strongly associate with the pleasurable aspects of smoking, such as watching your favorite TV program, sitting in your favorite chair, or having a cocktail before dinner.
Until you are confident of your ability to stay off cigarettes, limit your socializing to healthful, outdoor activities or situations where smoking is not allowed.
If you must be in a situation where you'll be tempted to smoke (such as a cocktail or dinner party), try to associate with the nonsmokers there.
Try to analyze cigarette ads to understand how they attempt to "sell" you on individual brands.
When you get the crazies:
Keep oral substitutes handy - try carrots, pickles, sunflower seeds, apples, celery, raisins, or sugarless gum instead of a cigarette.
Take 10 deep breaths and hold the last one while lighting a match.
Exhale slowly and blow out the match Pretend it's a cigarette and crush it out in an ashtray.
Take a shower or bath if possible.
Learn to relax quickly and deeply. Make yourself limp, visualize a soothing, pleasing situation, and get away from it all for a moment. Concentrate on that peaceful image and nothing else.
Light incense or a candle instead of a cigarette.
Never allow yourself to think that "one won't hurt" - it will.
Find new habits
Change your habits to make smoking difficult, impossible or unnecessary. For example, it's hard to smoke while you're swimming, jogging, or playing tennis or handball. When your desire for a cigarette is intense, wash your hands or do the dishes, or try new recipes.
Do things that require you to use your hands. Try crossword puzzles, needlework, gardening, or household chores. Go bike riding or take the dog for a walk; give yourself a manicure; write letters.
Enjoy having a clean mouth taste and maintain it by brushing your teeth frequently and using a mouthwash.
Stretch a lot.
Get plenty of rest.
Pay attention to your appearance. Look and feel sharp.
Try to find time for the activities that are the most meaningful, satisfying, and important to you.
Breathing Exercises to Stop Smoking
When I was a kid, people were always telling me to "take a deep breath." The football coach would admit that a pile-up of squirming, flailing bodies was a somewhat frightening sight. "But," he'd say, "take a deep breath and plunge in."
When my father taught me to dive, he said: "Take a deep breath, and jump right in." Many of my teachers used to say that, too. "Take a deep breath, and dive right in." And there I'd be, up to my ears in work.
As you know, a great many medical truths are to be found in folk sayings, and the value of a deep breath is one such truth. A deep breath gets additional oxygen into the lungs.
Not just one deep breath-but three deep breaths -constitute my substitute for smoking when I need a "concentration break." Yes, I admit it. Deep breaths aren't exciting. No one will ever write a popular song about "Six Deep Breaths in the Dark."
But . . . they are the magic that will enable you to live instead of exist. When coupled with the power of self-hypnosis, they'll be a source of energy.
You can use breathing exercises to control the urge to smoke. It is common knowledge that the human body takes in a lot of toxic substances, both through the air and through food and drink. Apart from this, various toxins are also released in the body as a result of the various processes that are going on. These toxins have to be released on a continuous basis or else they will accumulate in the body with serious results.
One of the best ways of releasing these toxins is by means of exhaling while breathing. One funny fact is that most of do not breathe properly. Just take a look at the picture like this. With each breath that we take, we take in oxygen. This oxygen is carried by the blood to every cell of the body and every cell must indeed get enough oxygen not just to survive but to remain healthy as well.
So it is imperative that we make an honest attempt to breathe properly. But first of course we have to make sure that we are breathing in unpolluted air. The time best for breathing exercises is early in the morning when the air is comparatively unpolluted. Now what you have to do is this. Again, sit comfortably so that there is no strain to any part of your body. It is not imperative that you close your eyes, but I have always noticed that the exercise works better when the eyes are closed.
When you're ready, what you have to do is to breathe in deeply and slowly, and feel the fresh air filling up your lungs until it just can';t take any more. Conjure up images of the air encircling throughout your body and reaching every cell, literally bathing it with oxygen. Of course it doesn';t happen that way but the image helps a lot. Then hold your breath for a few seconds and then very slowly exhale letting out all that foul air.
Again conjure up an image of all the toxins being released from your body. Every cell has become free of the burden it was carrying. Now pause for a second or two and again breathe in deeply, slowly letting your lungs fill up with all that good, clean, rejuvenating air. Repeat this exercise at least ten times and take your time for it taking care not to rush through.
When you have done that part of the exercise it is time for the second part. Again sit with your eyes closed, but this time, keep one nostril closed with the help of your index finger. It is best to close the right nostril first and that too with your right index finger. Now breathe in deeply and slowly through your left nostril keeping the right nostril closed. When you have held air for a second or two, release your right nostril and breathe out through it.
While you are breathing out conjure up an image of all the toxins being released form your head and the brain especially. And as you breathe in conjure up images of the clean air circulating though out your brain freeing it of all the worries and trouble and lightening it.
Repeat this exercise with the other nostril closed and in this way alternate between the nostrils at least ten times. The entire breathing exercise need not take more than ten minutes. But you will be surprised at how light hearted and free you will feel after the exercise. Once you have practiced it for three or four mornings, you will be in a position to do the exercise each time you get the urge to smoke. These pedestrian, dull, unexciting deep breaths will make it possible for you to stop smoking forever-painlessly!
Relaxation Can Help you Stop Smoking
Many people say they need to smoke a cigarette to help them relax, but the truth is they just need to learn another way to relax!
Here are some tips to help you learn how to relax so you can stop smoking and still not be stressed out.
You say "But I can't relax," "I feel all tied up and jittery." That's because you are trying too hard. Relaxation is the result of no effort. Just let yourself go. If you are expecting something to happen, you are going to make yourself tense, waiting for it to happen.
Expectation has a powerful influence on the conscious mind. If you expect something to happen, you don't question it when it does happen because it takes place as expected. If you expect to achieve self-hypnosis and its benefits, you will surely receive them. If you concentrate your expectation upon receiving "sensations," then your expectation is being focused in the wrong direction.
When you stretch out on the couch to watch television, you relax. You are only expecting to be relaxed and entertained. Nevertheless, the suggestions in the commercials get through to you. Expect to relax, and nothing more.
Many of us have been preconditioned to the idea that we can only be successful in an effort if we "will" ourselves to do it. This, of course, is a fallacy. The more skillful a person becomes in any endeavor, the more automatic it is and the less conscious attention is needed to direct it. Conscious effort (will power) is applied only in the initial stage to practice imitation.
Proof of this can be had from almost any effort from using a typewriter or playing golf to the surgeon's skill with a scalpel. When skill is acquired, conscious attention to the actions involved are no longer required. The conscious mind only directs the skill along the line desired.
If you can examine any of your personal skills- such as dancing, playing golf or driving a car-you will recall that as long as you were "trying hard" (exerting will power) you were tense and possibly nervous.
Make a direct application of this to self-hypnosis and you will see that there is no way you can "will" yourself to relax. The use of will power requires conscious attention and creates muscle tension. If you are probing, doubting, worrying, questioning and examining-you will defeat yourself in achieving self-hypnosis, just as the tense golfer fails and just as the self-conscious dancer has difficulty following the rhythm of the music.
Some people have trouble relaxing
If you're one of those folks who can't loosen up ever, odds are that you're also a very heavy smoker. The chances also are that you mentally chastise yourself for excessive smoking, and that this too is just another one of the many things that acts to make you increasingly tense and increasingly unable to relax. Your case, you will be glad to know, is far from hopeless.
All it means is that you'll have to do a little more work than the next fellow. You'll have to talk yourself to sleep, so to speak, for several nights in a row; you'll have to learn almost muscle by muscle to relax your body. Most of us don't need to do this.
With eyes closed and your body relaxed, you see yourself as being healthier, happier ... and even a bit wealthier, because you do not smoke. You visualize yourself with a new, keener sense of taste and smell. You have the image of yourself with a new zest for living and better vision because you do not smoke.
You can see yourself as living longer, less likely to succumb to painful disease or crippling illnesses due to your smoking habit. See yourself in a crowd. The others are smoking, but you are not. You tell yourself that you do not need a cigarette to occupy your hands or your mind. You don't need a smouldering crutch to lean upon. You feel a little proud, and know that the others secretly admire you for doing what they have failed to do.
You know that you smoked previously for a concentration break ... for relaxation. You also know that there is nothing in the smoke of tobacco that will relax the tissues physiologically. You have a warm, pleasant sensation and a feeling of well-being-because you have stop smoking forever.
Go over this new mental picture of yourself a number of times. Add to it those things you know about yourself which will be improved; give yourself a feeling of self-satisfaction from your ability to resist the tobacco habit.
Play the new role you have created for yourself as you would if you were acting it out in a play. Visualize yourself telling others how easy it is to stop smoking, without the "big jitters" or constant craving. Portray yourself as you would like to be, free from smoking forever.
The suggestions you give yourself under hypnosis should be carefully planned beforehand. You should know exactly what is to go into your subconscious mind. Tell yourself why you are stopping. Tell yourself, without any doubt that you would rather believe in the integrity and ethics of the medical researchers than in the "double talk" of the cigarette industry's advertising.
Make it plain to yourself why you are never going to smoke again. Tell yourself that you aren't afraid this time. You know you've got it licked. You know you've got it licked because this time you understand what is involved in the habit and what it requires to break a habit.
Tell yourself forcefully that you will not become nervous, tense or irritable because there's just no need for it. You know that your mind controls your nerves, and you are perfectly capable of controlling your own mind.
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