Don't stop smoking until your target date

Don't even cut down. Most methods of breaking the cigarette habit do not work and cannot work because they do not and cannot get to that level of your mind where patterns of habit operate automatically. If you try to stop two minutes from now, you're almost certain to fail again. Failure breeds failure. You'll make it just that much harder ever to break the tobacco habit.

Set the date-and make it an ordinary day. Not a special holiday, not a day when there'll be parties. Don't discuss your plans with anyone else. If you do, they'll be coming at you from all sides. They haven't been able to shake the habit, and unconsciously they won't want you to beat it either.

Your target date is a private affair, and if you are not sure that you've mastered the techniques of self-suggestion, you ought to be able to delay "target day" for another day or two (but no more than that!).

Between now and your target date, "talk back" to the advertisers. Don't read hastily or listen carelessly; examine their claims and promises and slogans intently. Finish their sentences for them. Quote statistics back to the copywriters and the announcers. If they tell you that their cigarette is as icy as a mint frappe, test their claim. Hot smoke is just that, and not even the finest photography and advertising copy can change that fact. Don't let a false claim slip by you. You're fighting a deadly important battle against deadly diseases.

You'll probably begin to lose your taste for cigarettes before target date. You'll begin to realize that there are very few cigarettes each day that afford you very much pleasure. You'll begin to look forward to stopping. Instead of worrying about what's going to happen when you're free of this nasty habit, you'll grow anxious for target date to come.

You won't have the jitters. If anything, you're going to be a far more relaxed person once you stop. You won't start to gobble up sweets and other food substitutes. You'll have a good new habit that doesn't add weight-just ease.

If the urge ever returns, you can eradicate it quickly and easily with self-suggestion. If you "slip" and do happen to smoke a cigarette or two, that doesn't mean it's the signal to start burning them up again at the rate of a pack or two a day. All it means is that you'll want to spend a few minutes a night for the next few nights reinforcing the sound decision you mad and did successfully carry out for a while and will again.

A Word About Relapses

I won't tell you to expect a relapse, but the fact is that 1 out of 3 people who are trying to quit will experience relapses. This is something that happens within the first three months when one is trying to quit.

Now if at all you experience a relapse understand that there is nothing to feel bad about. It is quite a natural phenomenon. But just because it happened, do not let it get the better f you. All you have to do is start the quitting process all over again and believe me you will be stronger this time because you know what to look out for.

But the odds are that you won't slip. You're going to enjoy your new self. And the nicest thing is this: when you give up smoking, you are no longer committing suicide on 'the die installment plan'.