Really want to quit smoking? Then Quit Making Excuses.

All too often I hear statements like, "Once I have gotten rid of my stress, I am going to quit smoking" or "It’s going to be my New Year’s resolution" or "I could quit right away, if it weren’t for (fill in the blank)".  You know what I’m getting at.

So here’s what you need to do.  You need to put down in writing the things you want to accomplish (quitting smoking) and come up with the reasons why.  And while you are doing this, write down all the reasons why you can’t (your excuses). 

Just putting excuses down on paper so that they are something solid you can see is enough to make some people look at how silly they really are.  For others, they may have to analyze their list of excuses and figure out why they believe these reasons to be true.  Usually it is due to repetition.  You’ve been telling yourselves for years that these are the reasons why you smoke, and if you tell yourself something enough times, eventually it will become an ingrained belief, whether it is the truth or not.

I’ll give you a few of the most common ones to start with but it is up to you to do this for every single reason why you think you smoke.

"If I quit smoking, I’ll gain weight."

The blunt answer to this one is ‘who cares!’  Studies have shown that you are better off to be 70+ pounds overweight than to smoke when it comes to your health, but that’s not a goal you are looking to attain either.  The truth is that yes, some people do gain weight after quitting, but this is usually less than twenty pounds and if that frightens you, then this problem can be easily remedied by careful and detailed planning before you quit.  Get it through your mind that you are not going to substitute food for cigarettes and if you do, it is healthy foods like celery, carrots and fruit, not candy bars, chips and other ‘comfort food’.

"I enjoy smoking too much to quit."

If that’s the case, then why are you reading an article on quitting smoking?  Truth is that I also said this exact same thing.  It’s purely a defense mechanism so you can justify why you smoke to other people.  The problem is that as I said before, if you say something enough times, eventually you will come to believe it.  This is no different.  So it’s time to be completely honest with yourself.  Do you really enjoy smoking or is it just a lie you’ve come to believe?  What do you love about it?  Is it the coughing, the breathlessness, the stale smell in your hair, clothes, car and home?  What is it that you truly appreciate about what smoking does for you?  When you look at it that way and actually write the answers down, I think you’ll find that you really don’t like smoking very much at all.

The thing is that I am not trying to come across as mean or condescending, so please don’t take what I am saying the wrong way.  No, what I am trying to do is be truly helpful by telling you that none of the excuses that you are currently using or have used in the past do anything for you other than keep you smoking and once you come to terms with this fact, the easier quitting will be.

You can do this.

To your health,

Darren Warmuth

Darren Warmuth is the founder and developer of the End the Habit Stop Smoking Program.

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Darren Warmuth starte smoking at age 9. After multiple attempts to quit, he finally devised his own system and quit in just four weeks, a system that will work for anyone who uses it. Contact him through his "End the Habit" stop smoking method website.