1) I still enjoy it. When I hear this from my clients I tell them that it's fine if they are still 'enjoying it'. Just because you might be enjoying it, that doesn't mean that you're not ready to quit. If you are waiting for some time in your future when you hate every single cigarette before you decide to quit, chances are that time will never come and you'll just continue to kid yourself.
If you think about all the cigarettes you smoke in a day, how many would you say that you are really there, in the moment, 'enjoying' that cigarette? If you're like most of the people I've seen, probably not many. If you think about it, most of the cigarettes you're having are just getting in the way of something else and you're not really enjoying it at all. Often you might be having them in a rush, to just get your little 'fix' so you can just get on with what you were doing before the cigarette. What an inconvenient hassle right? If it is something you truly enjoy why wouldn't you encourage children to do it?
If you think about all the cigarettes you smoke in a day, how many would you say that you are really there, in the moment, 'enjoying' that cigarette? If you're like most of the people I've seen, probably not many. If you think about it, most of the cigarettes you're having are just getting in the way of something else and you're not really enjoying it at all. Often you might be having them in a rush, to just get your little 'fix' so you can just get on with what you were doing before the cigarette. What an inconvenient hassle right? If it is something you truly enjoy why wouldn't you encourage children to do it?
2) Stress / it relaxes me. I've already touched on this, but let's go into a bit more detail shall we. Many of my clients will say that it's stress that keeps them smoking. Or they'll say they are going through a stressful time, and hence they are not ready to quit. I'm sure you recognise that this is not accurate at all. Simply because nicotine is a stimulant, it actually elevates your body's internal state of stress. It raises your blood pressure, increased your heart rate and stimulates your nervous system - all the things that put the body into a state of stress.
If you think about it, it's all the things that you are doing right after a stressful situation that is reducing your stress, except the cigarette. Let's say for example you're sitting at your desk and something stressful has happened. Or you've just had an argument with your partner. What do then usually do? You say 'right, I'm going for a cigarette'. You leave the room or the office, you go outside the building, you go find a nice quiet place to yourself to have a moment on your own. Your taking some nice slow deep breathes, you're thinking about the situation and what you're going to do to address it, you're having some thinking time. Then you go back inside and psychologically you've DE-stressed, but physiologically, you're actually in a higher state of stress than before you went out the door!
I say to people, if you had done the exact same things, but you just left the cigarette out, get up, go outside, find a place to yourself, take some deep breathes, have a moment to think and then come back, you'll find that you'll be mentally AND physically relaxed.
You see, breathing is THE most important thing in your entire life. We all know what happens when you stop breathing. But any benefits that you're getting from the deep breathing that is actually REQUIRED while smoking, is all just gone from the 4,000 chemicals you're inhaling at the same time. However, if you take some slow deep breathes during any kind of stressful situation, you're body will instantly react in a calming, relaxing way.
One of the main jobs of your heart is to pump oxygen around your body. So the more oxygen you give it, the more it slows down because the less it needs to work. The more oxygen you send to your brain the more relaxed you feel. If you were take 20 slow deep breathes right now, you'd instantly feel the positive difference in your body.
The funny thing about the flip side of the stress excuse is that people will often say that they also smoke when they are relaxing, maybe on a holiday, not stressed at all. Hm... does something seem a little incongruent here to you about this? The point I'm making yet again is that all the 'benefits' you think you're getting are simply illusory.
3) Poor will power. Some people will say that they just haven't had the will power, or they got poor will power. The idea that will power can get you to quit is to assume that it's your conscious mind that is in control of your smoking, but it isn't. At the end of the day, you can know all the reasons on a conscious level how silly smoking is, how there are no real benefits to it, which you probably already know. However it more than likely won't be enough to get you to quit because it's not your conscious mind that is controlling your smoking. If it was, then every single person would just wake up one day and just QUIT - cold turkey. Some people can do it with the tips mentioned above, but a lot can't.
I've heard many other reasons why people have not been able to quit. Some of these include: everyone around me smokes, my partner, wife, husband, roommate smokes, it helps me think when I want to take a break.
But at the end of the day, if you're really honest with yourself, it's not the fact that these are reasons that have kept you smoking. You just used these as excuses because you just weren't ready to make the decision to quit. And I want you to know that this is TOTALLY ok. It's fine to just say, 'I just haven't been ready to quit'.
Article Source: Nick Terrone
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