“Honestly, what had I been waiting for? Quitting smoking was simple. The secret, you see, is hidden in the phrase itself. You stop putting cigarettes in your mouth.” Choire Sicha, NY Times columnist
How could something that started out with the cool factor being so high now be so un-cool?
For the those smokers who are still under the spell, who probably won’t read this, I don’t have much to say to them. They still think that it is making their lives better by being a smoker. It is socially still paying off. But the scales are tipping.
The luster is getting less and less shiny. Their social sphere is getting smaller and smaller because the number of people who aren’t smoking, and in fact are disgusted by it, is growing larger and larger. They have to start hiding.
Some will wait until something dramatic happens. A pregnancy, a lump shows up, a loved one dies, or a partner says “quit or I’m not kissing you until you do.”
Maybe an employer won’t hire them because more and more companies are not taking on smokers as new hires. Maybe they are trying to date and are finding that smoking just doesn’t go over well with the vast majority of potential partners. Or, maybe they are seeing that their skin is aging and people are guessing their age to be 5-7 years older than they actually are, and not because of their mature bearing. Maybe they are thinking, “ so far so good”.
Let’s face it. Each smoker has two voices inside of them. One voice knows that smoking is killing them slowly and that they need to stop NOW! The other voice is saying, “I need a smoke.”
The way to quit successfully is to feed one voice and starve the other. Choose wisely.