Where would you put yourself are on a scale of 1-10 on wanting to stop smoking. If you are contemplating and thinking about stopping smoking ,your score might be a 5 or a 6. Are you seroius and want to stop smoking, then your score should be a 10 because to stop smoking you will need to have a 100% commitment . The best thing to do is to treat stopping smoking as an important project that you have total control over. With any project, planning and strategy are important for things to go the way you planned.

• The first thing that you need to do is set a quit date when you will stop. Think about this quit date very carefully. Don’t say tomorrow or the next day because you will need to be prepared to stop smoking and have a plan on how you are going to best achieve success. For example you might need to have some nicotine replacement therapy and you might need to see your GP for this or buy it for a pharmacy.

• Once you have set a quit date, write that date down and record on your mobile phone or a calendar or wherever you can be reminded of the date as a visual aid.

• On your quit day make sure that you have no cigarettes in the house. If you do you are already setting yourself for failure as your brain will keep reminding you that you have cigarettes hidden away.

• On the quit day if you are planning to use a nicotine replacement then start to use it now. If not then have some strategy in place for dealing with the nicotine cravings that you are definitely going to experience.

• If you have friends who smoke you will need to try and avoid this situation, as you do not want to put under peer pressure to have a cigarette. The best thing would be when your friend goes and has a cigarette not to accompany them. For your most vulnerable times of the day you should aim to stay away as much as possible from cigarette smokers.

Constantly remind yourself and write the reasons down why you want to stop smoking

If you stop smoking now it will be one of the best things that you can do in your life. We all know the enormous health risks involved when you smoke. No one goes out to deliberately compromise their breathing and lung capacity do they?. Your lungs can only take so much damage to them, from the inhalation of the tar and other poisonous components of a cigarette. Stop smoking now before that lung damage becomes permanent and you become out of breath at the slightest exertion

Conquer your nicotine cravings and you are nearly there

Nicotine cravings can cause some nasty withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety and depression. You can expect the cravings for nicotine are going to be usually worse in the first week of quitting. If you were a heavy smoker then you will most probably need to have some form of nicotine replacement to help with the intensity of these cravings.

Remember though that the nicotine cravings are going to be a tempory thing and whilst unpleasant they will gradually get easier to manage.

Nicotine cravings will vary in intensity and will come in waves each one lasting a few minutes of time. If you can deal with the cravings for nicotine then you will be well on your way to stopping smoking. Try using glucose or chewing gum when you have cravings as this glucose is said to help and also taking physical exercise such as going for a run.

Once you have quit smoking then remember that it is just as easy to start again. Do no think for one minute that it would be alright just to have one cigarette or to share someone’s cigarette. If you do this, then you have not stopped smoking and it is a easy route from having a cigarette to having 5 and 10. Remind yourself of the reasons why you stopped smoking.