The path to quitting smoking is a long and winding journey. There are typically numerous failed attempts coupled with just a cigarette here and there, but before you know it, you’ve cut down, but you’re still smoking.

It’s time to take the next step and commit. You can do it!

Smoking is an addiction triggered by numerous different situations. Maybe it’s seeing someone smoking, it’s seeing a pack at a store, or maybe it’s a stressful situation and cigarettes have been your coping mechanism. The first step towards quitting is identifying your triggers and avoiding them. It’s about being mindful and in control of yourself, not being controlled by outside forces.

What is Mindfulness

Being mindful is taking the time to recognize a situation, be aware, digest information, and process it before responding. It’s how you respond, not react. (Link to reaction blog post). Mindfulness is being fully aware of your thoughts, emotions, physical feelings, behavior, and recognizing a situation for what it is without trying to force it to change.

You may think that you’re mindful of situations by seeing and recognizing them. But when a situation arises, are you digesting what’s happening and allowing what’s negative to drift away and focus on the positives? When you’re driving and someone stops abruptly, are you shouting and tensing up or are you processing what’s happening and understand that someone may have ran out in the road?

Becoming mindful involves different techniques to relax your body and mind so they can work as a cohesive unit. It’s something that won’t happen overnight, in a week, or even a month. It’s something that will take time and practice and once you achieve it, you’ll be grateful every day.

Benefits of being mindful

While there are numerous benefits to being mindful, when it comes to quitting smoking, being mindful will help:

• Reduce your stress levels
• Reduce your anxiety
• Improve your overall mood and outlook
• Improve your eating habits
• Improve your workout and motivation routine

Taking an extra ten seconds in a situation will not slow down your busy life. We all have things going on and in a world filled with distractions, ten seconds to focus on a positive situation is nothing compared to five minutes of scrolling through social media.

Meditation to Quit Smoking

Being mindful is a meditative technique that will spill over into nearly every element of your life. Meditation is more than just sitting cross-legged in a dark, calm room and thinking about positive things. It’s a self-realization and retraining of your mind to focus on yourself, your thoughts, YOU, so you aren’t letting yourself get caught up in things happening around you.

Your Stress is Triggering You

When you reach into your pocket, purse, bag, jacket, to grab a cigarette, what’s your trigger for doing so? Smoking is bad. Any medical professional will tell you that, but you still do it anyway. Are you reaching for a cigarette because it’s part of a routine where every 30 minutes you “need” one?

Whatever your reason for smoking is, take note of it. Note why you feel the need, what you do when you smoke, and where you are when you smoke.

Stress is a trigger for many bad habits, and smoking is often used as a coping mechanism for it. When in reality, all that happens by smoking when stressed is putting a bandaid on a running faucet. It’s a momentary solution for an underlying problem.

By practicing meditation to quit smoking, you’ll become more mindful, you’ll manage stress (link to stress blog post) more effectively and efficiently, your anxiety will decrease, and your overall health will improve. 

Control Yourself

It’s easy to lose control in an instant. It’s like seeing a tray of cookies at work. Just one won’t hurt when you walk by. But then you find a reason to walk by the tray again…and again…and again. Exhibiting self-control is never easy. That’s where meditation comes in.

Reprogramming and retraining your brain to exhibit self-control will do wonders not to just quit smoking, but to help you become an overall better person. No longer will you see cigarettes and think that just one won’t hurt. You’ll see them but only in your unconscious mind. Your conscious mind will pass over them like there’s nothing even there.

Exhibiting self-control can be implemented in more ways than one. Meditation can help you accomplish this.

Start Being Mindful

To take your first steps towards becoming mindful, find a quiet, comfortable place in your home. Relax and make sure that you aren’t in a position where you could fall asleep.

Once here, slowly close your eyes and allow yourself to get lost in your thoughts. Allow what comes to your mind to come, and don’t force anything. If negative thoughts begin to creep in, take a deep breath, slowly exhale, and refocus.

Take a few moments to practice visualizing yourself in positive situations where you aren’t smoking and how much better you’ll feel. Think about how you’ll improve your life by quitting smoking and why you’re looking to quit.

Helping You Quit

Life is busy, distracting, stressful, and filled with situations that we’d love to go back and change. Start retraining and reprogramming yourself to become mindful of yourself and your surroundings so triggers no longer cause you to reach for a cigarette. It takes more than just willpower to quit smoking. The only way to overcome this is to make conscious changes, as well as unconscious changes. 

Theta GMS (Guided Meditation and Suggestion) therapy is a great tool to help you manage withdrawal. The slowing down process through guided meditation allows you to pay attention to what is going on inside of you at the present moment. Being fully aware of what is, allowing yourself to sit with that, and retrain those thoughts and triggers into a positive. 

Our program is designed to help you break through the ‘negative trance’ that nicotine has got you in – and don’t kid yourself, it has you programmed! Our quit smoking downloads will help you be fully present while combating the craving to put you on the fast track to being a natural non-smoker again. Your first steps towards a healthier lifestyle can start today. Stop putting it off until tomorrow.