Quit by Choice

Here’s an exercise to help you give up your reasons to keep smoking:

Take a legal pad (or a notebook, or just a sheet of lined paper) and draw a line down the middle from top to bottom. Label the first column “Reasons to Quit” and the second “Reasons to Keep Smoking”.

In the first column, list all the reasons why you want to quit (don’t worry about whether they’re emotional or logical at this point, we’ll refine the list later; just write down all the reasons you can think of that you want to quit).

In the second column, list all the reasons why you want to keep smoking (again, don’t worry about whether they’re emotional or logical at this point, we’ll refine the list later; just write down all the reasons you can think of that you want to keep smoking).

Take your time with this. Spend at least an hour on it. Dig deep. You want to uncover all the reasons you can think of to go one way or the other. Whenever you feel like you’re stuck, like you can’t think of one more reason for either column, pick one of the reasons already on the list and play “what if?” with it:

Ask yourself, “What if this wasn’t really true? What would my reason be then?”

For example, you might have a reason in the “Reasons to quit” column that says, “My spouse wants me to quit.” Ask yourself, “What if he or she didn’t really care whether I kept smoking? What would my reason be then?” Write down whatever answer occurs to you, and then ask “What if?” about that reason, too.

Keep digging until you find a reason that’s so strong, so fundamental, that there’s no way it couldn’t be true. Then move on to the next reason on your list and do it all again. Do it again tomorrow. And the next day. In fact, take your list out every day, read through it and play “what if?” with it again; the more you reasons you can think of why you want to quit, the easier it will be to actually do it.

And the more reasons you can think of to keep smoking, the easier it will be to defuse them once you actually do quit and your reasons to keep smoking become your excuses to relapse.

More to come…