If you are reading this as a smoker, the fact that you’re free to smoke might seem rather obvious. Here you are, lighting up cigarettes and smoking them. Of course you can do that. It’s after you have made an attempt to stop that your choice to go back to smoking can seem to have been surrendered.

The work involved in stopping smoking is in coming to understand that you have the freedom to return to smoking - even though you are not exercising that freedom by smoking.

The chances are that you have a deep-seated belief that you have been developing for many years, even decades. And it takes some time and effort to turn this false way of thinking around.

A friend of mine, Susan, is typical of someone working through a substantial problem with deprivation. When she first stopped smoking she got very angry, then lethargic and apathetic. When I spoke to her a week later she was feeling very deprived, yearning to smoke for hours on end, even though she was genuinely horrified by the thought of going back to smoking.

Dealing wth deprivation is part of learning how to quit smoking.

Understandably, she said that she didn’t feel very confident at all. She told me that she couldn’t smoke. Her (false) logic was that if she wanted to stay off smoking, then she didn’t have the option of smoking. ‘If I want to live,’ she said, ‘then I can’t smoke.’ ‘Not true,’ I told her. You want to live; true. Smoking will kill you; that is possible. But the truth is that you still have the option of doing that. It’s a freedom you have, whether you want it or not. It’s a fact of life.’

I wasn’t encouraging her to smoke, I was encouraging her to acknowledge that the choice to smoke exists, so that she wouldn’t think she was being deprived. When she turned this thinking around she felt much more positive and in control, and found staying stopped much easier.

Her background explains the trouble she was having coming to terms with the concept of free choice. Her parents were both heavy smokers. While they smoked and smoked every day, they always told her, over and over again, that she ‘must never become a smoker’.
They were both very ill from smoking, and understandably wanted a better life for their daughter. Susan started smoking when she was 16 and you can imagine the reaction when her parents found out. There was much screaming and yelling, and again she was told that she was not allowed to smoke, that she ‘had to stop’.

Once, a few years ago, she stopped smoking after a visit to a hypnotist, but she had just repressed her desire, and was back smoking after two weeks. She didn’t even see the issue of choice and deprivation until she read a few good self help books, after 30 years of smoking, simultaneously believing she just wasn’t allowed to smoke.

When she reminds herself that she does, in fact, have the freedom to smoke, not smoking becomes easier and far more positive. Her desire to smoke is significantly more tolerable, when before it was ‘like a scream through my body’. Knowing she has a choice provided the key.

She goes through periods of forgetting her freedom, but then she will remember it again, eventually shifting her thinking enough so that her choices are real to her.

Sometimes it does take a while for the penny to drop, and this is what causes the initial difficulty in quitting smoking. It’s important to keep on repeating to yourself that you are totally free to be a smoker. You may understand that you have the choice to smoke, but only on a relatively superficial level. You see the logic, but inside you are still fighting against the belief that you are not free at all. It takes a while for your thinking to change on every level.

Many people feel the effects of thinking they are deprived, but are not aware of the thinking that is causing them. In fact, most people aren’t even aware that it is thinking that is causing them at all.

Often a person who has been feeling deprived for a week or two will say to me, ‘When will it get better?’ ‘When you change the way you are thinking,’ I reply. A common mistake is to believe that the sense of deprivation is caused by something physical, like a flu virus, and must be patiently tolerated until it runs its course. I have seen the transformation in so many people, though, who have made that all-important shift in their thinking and instantly stopped feeling deprived!

If you feel angry, remind yourself that nobody is making you do this and that you have not trapped yourself: you are free to return to smoking, whether you actually do that or not it’s up to you.

If you feel grief, remember that you have not lost anything; smoking is completely available to you.

If you forget your motivation, remember that you are not locked into one irrevocable decision: you can become a smoker again. Consider that option carefully and honestly, and if there’s anything you like about not smoking, it will become obvious.

Stopping smoking doesn’t have to feel like a restriction and a tragedy: it can be a liberation and a genuine reward. But you will only experience it that way while you really understand you have still got the freedom to be a smoker if you so choose.

That choice doesn’t exist only at the time you stop. A return to smoking continues to be an alternative for the rest of your life, and this can be difficult to accept, especially if you have a strong fear of failure. How to enjoy your continued freedom to smoke - and not deny it or fear it - is something you can learn, with the right techniques.

Too many people are hell bent on knowing all the tips to quit smoking for good. While getting a good understanding for the number of tries that it will take is important, it shouldn’t be your main focus when you’re thinking of giving up smoking.

You might be confused as to what this information can actually do for you.  It actually serves the purpose of setting you up to be confident as you approach the date when you need to quit smoking.  If you have a grasp on the amount of time it could take you to quit, it will prevent you from feeling as a failure in the event that it takes you more than a single try.  This is very important, because most people start to feel as if they just cannot quit after failing a single time.

The majority of people in all honestness to themselves usually take at least two attempts to successfully quit smoking.  While most people would love to quit after a single attempt, it is usually necessary to have two attempts minimum.  You might wonder exactly why two attempts are necessary but the answer is really simple.  For the most part the first time people start trying to quit they have an attitude that tells them it is very simple.  This tends to find most consumers completely off guard, especially since it is not as easy to quit smoking as you might imagine.

Breaking the addiction to nicotine is not easy, nor is it something that can always be done in a single attempt.  If you are prone to trying to quit smoking entirely on your own with no help you will often find that your chances of success are much lower.  It is almost always necessary to obtain some form of help when you are trying to quit smoking in order to be successful.  This is the primary reason why it typically takes a minimum of two tries to quit smoking.  No matter how many attempts you may try, it is best to plan to quit for good anytime you attempt to quit.

Being aware of how difficult it really is to quit smoking is quite significant.  If you are aware of the challenges you will be in a much better position because you will have the ability to create a plan to help you quit.  Knowing the challenges that you face will also allow you to create a plan that is suitable based upon the precise reason that you smoke.  For example, if you tend to smoke due to stress you should be aware of what causes you stress out and look for ways to avoid the stress.

If you have a plan created to help you quit smoking before your first attempt even begins you may find that you are able to quit after a single attempt.  Not having a plan before you even attempt to quit will increase the chances that it takes several tries to be successful.  Creating a plan to help you stop smoking is not impossible, it merely means you need to be able to identify the problems that you could experience in your attempt to quit smoking.  This means if you simply sit down and create a plan to help you deter temptations and also avoid potential problems you will have a much better success rate.

Merely deciding to stop smoking at a whim will generally result in a series of problems.  It is very important to take your time creating your plan so that you can successfully quit.  Taking advantage of these small details in the plan that you create can go a very long way towards ensuring that you are ultimately successful.  Just be certain that all of the small details of your plan are well organized.  This means you really need to keep your confidence up, feeling as if you will not be successful can leave you creating a lot of problems.  Avoiding problems is very important to ensure that you are able to quit with as few attempts as possible.