I was once a prolific smoker. I’m not proud of the fact, but I was I gave up several times and then I started again. I did this over a period of about twenty years and at the worst I smoked nearly 100 a day. I haven’t smoked for more than ten years and I wouldn’t again. So my views about the easiest way to quit smoking is based on a personal view. What works for one person, won’t necessarily work for another.

1. Be honest with yourself: If you don’t really want to give up then you may have the strength to stop smoking, but you won’t stop for good. There is no one else who can decide this for you. Okay, there are some people that are told by Drs that they must never smoke another cigarette again and they stop – but we’re talking here about the easiest way to quit smoking and that isn’t it, because it generally means you’re very ill.

2. Work out the costs: You may have already decided to give up , but even if you are only thinking about it, my belief is that the easiest way to quit smoking is to contrast and compare the pros and cons for stopping and the pros and cons for continuing. Okay the pros may be that you will save money and the cons may be the costs to your health, but it’s worth going through this more thoroughly. You will probably find that some of your answers may surprise you. This should help to show you the reasons of why you should quit.

3. Decide what will replace the cigarettes: If you’re serious about giving up smoking, keep a diary for a week. Write down every time you have a cigarette. Think about what you were doing before you lit up, what you did while smoking the cigarette and what you did afterwards. You need to know what you will do to replace the cigarettes. This isn’t just a case of chewing gum instead. If you smoke because you’re stressed, then you need to have strategies for dealing with the stress.

Picture being a non smoker: One of the easiest ways to quit smoking is to start visualizing yourself as a non smoker. Start running through in your mind exactly what difference it will make to your life if you give up smoking.

Plan to be a non-smoker: Decide whether you’re going to go cold turkey and just throw the cigarettes, lighters and ashtrays away or whether you’re going to give up gradually. Personally, I found the easiest way to quit smoking was to throw everything away and then start scrubbing the house of the residue effects of nicotine.

Decide if you need help: When I gave up I had a goal buddy and we were able to encourage each other in our quest to give up smoking. Even if you don’t have a goal buddy make sure that anyone who you live with is supportive of you giving up. It’s very difficult if you’re around someone who keeps offering you cigarettes.

Work out a reward system: Even if you decide to just to give up one day it’s really good to have a reward system for yourself that can support you. You can try saving the money that you don’t spend on something special or you could reward yourself at one week, one month and every month afterwards. You want to do anything that will help you not smoke again.

As I said at the beginning, the tips here are very much my personal view of the easiest way to quit smoking. I haven’t talked about patches or gums to help you, because I never used them. Some people favour using a hypnotist, The thing that ultimately made the difference to me was completing a cost and benefit analysis which really made me realise that I had no reasons to carry on. I couldn’t even throw all my smoking kit away, because my husband was still a smoker at that point. But in the end I found it easy to quit, because I really wanted to and I found there were other things that I wanted much, much more.