Quit Smoking for Life. Suzanne Schlosberg

your own head. But should is not a helpful word. It’s not a source of inspiration. All smokers know smoking is harmful and they should quit. But who likes being told what to do? You may attempt to quit because you’re tired of being badgered. But as Burke discovered, a quit made under duress isn’t likely to last.

      What if you haven’t experienced an epiphany, like Burke did at the airport and Cheryl Procter-Rogers did when her girlfriend answered the phone in a gravelly voice? Don’t wait for one! Plenty of smokers arrive at the decision to quit without the drama of a desperate moment. You have compelling reasons to quit; it’s just a matter of uncovering them.

      Your motives may not mesh with what others are telling you, and that’s fine. We’re talking about you, not anyone else. If you’re feeling healthy, the promise of more stamina or avoiding serious illness may not resonate. So let’s find out what does. Maybe it’s the prospect of saving $250 a month and upgrading to a better apartment. Maybe you’d love to sit through a basketball game without having to dash out during halftime in the freezing cold for a smoke. Maybe smoking has stolen your singing voice, and you want it back. Maybe you want to go with your friends when they walk to a new restaurant that is uphill from work. Whatever reasons you come up with for quitting, make sure they are your own. What you need to knock that little devil off your shoulder is your own vision of success.

Exploring the Values You Hold Dearest

      If you can’t yet pinpoint a compelling reason to quit, take a few minutes to consider your core values, the ideals that mean the most to you. Here are some common core values:

       • health

       • living in a clean home

       • caring for your a family

       • being a good role model to your children

       • honoring your spiritual beliefs

       • caring for the environment

       • performing well in your occupation

       • saving money

      Which of these are among your own deeply held values? Does using tobacco conflict with these values? Does quitting support them?

      Answering these questions may spur you to action. “Internal” reasons—those that come from the heart—tend to be more powerful than “external” reasons—orders from your doctor, a new smoke-free policy at the office, an ultimatum from your boyfriend. As inspiration, “I want to know my grandchildren” tends to work better than “My brother won’t get off my case.”

      For Benjamin Johns of Seattle, the conflict between his addiction to smoking and his passion for yoga proved impossible to live with. “If there’s anything unique to yoga, it’s breathing — the idea of the breath as conduit between mind, body, and spirit. To attack my breathing apparatus was against who I am. It required blocking out the truth, telling myself, For today, it doesn’t matter. But, of course, it does matter, because all that really matters is today.” Johns, who smoked half a pack a day for fourteen years, quit smoking at 34.

      Zakiya Shaw, a pack-a-day smoker for ten years, quit at age 28 when she rededicated her life to following Christ and was working as a residential rehabilitation counselor in Tacoma, Washington. “I didn’t feel smoking aligned with the word of God,” says Shaw, now 32. “I feel the body is a temple, and it’s sacred, something we should take care of and value. I was supposed to be living a life as Christ did, and smoking was not something he would have done.” Shaw also felt that as a smoker she couldn’t set a good example for her son.

      For Reese, the contradiction between smoking and her values was staring at her in a job opening she wanted to apply for. The sign on the building read: Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. “I thought, Wow, that would be embarrassing to be working for the Department of Environmental Quality when I was polluting the environment.”

      List here any of your core values that don’t align with smoking. Whenever your sneaky devil rears his head, refer to this list.

      My Core Values That Don’t Align With Smoking

      How do you feel about violating these values by smoking?

      For some smokers, finding the impetus to quit doesn’t involve much soul searching. These folks quit for reasons that are more cut and dried, like they simply can’t afford to buy cigarettes, or they will lose their job if they continue to smoke. Author Sedaris, as famous for his chain smoking as his wit, quit because he was being aced out of fancy hotels.

      Sedaris travels the country reading his humor essays. As he explains in When You Are Engulfed in Flames: “I began to find myself outside of the city limits, on that ubiquitous commercial strip between the waffle restaurant and the muffler shop.” A typical motel that accepts smokers, he notes, has no pool, “yet the lobby smells like chlorine, with just a slight trace of French fries.” Reflecting on his quit, Sedaris writes, “It’s embarrassing, but what got me through my moment of weakness was the thought of the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara.”

      List here your top three reasons for wanting to quit smoking. Once you quit and start experiencing the advantages of being a nonsmoker, you no doubt will add to the list.

      My Top Three Reasons for Quitting

Your Devil Versus Your Angel: The Final Showdown

      Folks often keep their reasons to smoke and their reasons to quit in separate mental boxes. Try settling the conflict between them by writing them all out together. Note your top reason for quitting, such as “I want to be able to walk up stairs without wheezing” or “I want to spend more time with my grandbaby rather than duck out for a cigarette.” Then, jot down your devil’s response, like, “It’s my only vice left” or “It’s my ‘me’ time.” Next, instead of arguing with your devil, simply write down again your top reason for quitting. Repeat this sequence for a half hour. When you’re done, you may just discover that the little devil’s voice has quieted down. That little voice may never go away completely, but you are much bigger than that voice. You can learn to tell it, “Thanks for sharing,” and move on.

      Acknowledge that some of your needs that are currently being met by cigarettes are legitimate; we all need to take a break from stress and carve out time for ourselves. Once you are ready to find and practice other ways to meet those needs, you know you’ve turned a corner toward saying goodbye to tobacco. In the next chapter, we look at how quitting smoking can transform your life. Knowing what you have to look forward to will not only cement your decision to quit but also get you excited about it.

      When Ilene Barth began her journalism career in the mid 1970s, the air in her New York City newsroom was a hazy blue-gray from cigarette smoke, and veteran reporters crushed their butts on the linoleum floor. Barth herself smoked more than a pack a day. When she’d try to quit, she’d find herself “seized up” and unable to write. “I’d be so kidnapped by the deprivation that I couldn’t concentrate,” she says.

      So Barth quit trying to quit, pushing the dangers of tobacco out of her mind. She even wrote a book, The Smoking Life, celebrating tobacco in popular culture. She called cigarettes, as depicted in the movies, “an accoutrement of elegance as well as a prop of grit,” and she railed against the “self-satisfied majority” of nonsmokers.

      Nonetheless, on the advice of a doctor and to give herself peace of mind, Barth agreed, at age 48, to undergo a CT scan of her lungs. “I told myself I was not genetically likely to have cancer because everyone in my family smoked and nobody had developed cancer.”

      Barth, the mother of three, was stunned