What Best Improves Your Chances Of Quitting Smoking?

At this point, no one should be surprised to learn the truth about smoking: that it’s greatly harmful to us and has contributed to countless premature deaths. If you’re reading this, you’re likely aware and already want to make the right moves to quit, but you might have tried before and found it difficult, or may simply worry about your chances, given your physical nicotine dependence. As such, we’re going to look at what is going to best improve your chances of successfully quitting and never looking back.

Know your motivations

If you want to make a serious commitment to yourself and your desire to quit smoking, then you should take the time to formalise it. Think about the reasons that you want to quit, the things you want to enjoy through a longer, healthier life, the issues that smoking already causes for you, and the improvements you want to make. Take the time to write them down and put them somewhere you might see them daily, such as beside your bathroom mirror. This can give you the motivation you need to make that commitment to yourself every day.

Find the replacements that best suit you

It’s pretty widely agreed upon, at this point, that the single factor that offers the biggest chance of success in quitting smoking, especially if you’re going cold turkey, is using some form of nicotine replacement therapy. Traditional methods, such as patches and gum, have worked for a lot of people, but perhaps the biggest wave of successful quitting has been the result of the rise of vapes. With products like Bar Juice 5000 able to make the process of quitting a lot more enjoyable, while allowing you to gradually lower your nicotine intake, it can be much easier to wean yourself off of cigarettes. Vaping, however, should be done with some moderation as well, to ensure that you’re not replacing one crutch with another.

Find healthy coping mechanisms

A lot of people find that smoking helps them deal with stress. It’s not necessarily true; what is happening is that nicotine cravings cause stress that smoking then alleviates, but that initial craving is the fault of the cigarettes. Either way, people find that without that feeling of stress management, they can slip into other unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as overeating or drinking. Finding the stress-busting techniques that are better for you, whether it’s by getting into exercise or using apps like Headspace to practice meditation, can help you much better manage the stress of cutting cigarettes out of your life. Coping mechanisms are not, by themselves, a bad thing. You just need to make sure that you have the right coping mechanisms available.

Quitting smoking is not easy, by any means. Even taking the steps above, you can find yourself tumbling and slipping back into bad habits occasionally. However, that shouldn’t be the end of your journey. Get back up on your horse and try again. Perseverance, even when you make mistakes, is key.