Art Markman, Ph.D. YouBeauty Psychology Advisor replied over 1 year ago:
As Mark Twain said, "It's easy to quit smoking, I myself have done it hundreds of times." Of course, as he really meant, it is very very hard to quit. The first thing you need to do is to make it hard for you to smoke. Don't keep cigarettes in the house. If you do slip and buy a pack, buy only a pack and don't buy a whole carton.
The biggest thing you can do to help yourself is to take up something that will help replace your smoking habit with something else. Figure out the places where you normally smoke. If you smoke while watching TV, then try taking up a habit to keep your hands busy. Learn to crochet or do a puzzle. If you smoke while in the car, then keep some gum handy when you get the urge to smoke. If you smoke while drinking coffee, then switch to tea for a while to dampen the urge to smoke.
The idea here is that one of the main reasons people have trouble quitting is that they are trying to replace something (smoking) with nothing (not smoking). When trying to change habits, you can't replace something with nothing. You have to replace something with something else. So find other things that you can do in the places where you used to smoke and let those become your new habit.
Good luck!
