Smoking behavior modification is accomplished on many levels...There is situational smoking behavior modification, habitual smoking behavior modification, and most importantly emotional smoking behavior modification. While the emotional aspect of modifying the behaviors that contribute to your nicotine addiction is most important, it's better left 'untouched' in the initial phases of your recovery.
If you have just made the commitment to quit smoking, now is not the time to worry yourself with anything besides the present. At the current time, your most ideal goals are: Becoming educated on your tobacco addiction and the daily impact it has on your life and building a solid support system. Remember to only surround yourself with those who support your decision to stop smoking and discard the comments and create space between yourself and those who aren't as supportive.
Quitting smoking is very much an act of forcing the body to perform something neurologically discomforting after which you take steps toward behavior modification so you can heal from the pathological desire to ignore your daily stress factors and hard-to-feel emotions. You can, however, plant a seed for a critical change in core beliefs that will help you quit smoking by not viewing this outline as a stop smoking guide at all rather a set of tools to provide you with constructive ways throughout the day to take control over your own life section by section, one step at a time.
One of the biggest obstacles smokers face is the 'fear' of never smoking again...You don't have to decide to quit smoking forever...You merely need to commit to quit smoking on your designated quit date 5 minutes at a time while you take back the reigns to the state of your emotional well-being.
Habitual smoking behavior modification is the means of providing your hands and mouth with something besides cigarettes (exercise, healthy snacks, cool water, juice, fidgeting toys, etc.). We are going to focus more on situational smoking behavior modification whose implementation is highly conditional. The unique situations you face throughout the day at work, at home, in public, while driving (the list could continue infinitely) all affect you differently...They each invoke their own set of emotions or stream of thoughts.
As a smoker, your gut instinct is to interrupt the discovery process of what is affecting you, as you immediately recognize the potential for discomfort and reach for your cigarettes. But what if you took just a moment to dive a bit deeper? Even though the individual details of each situational scenario are as variable as your individual life, there is a basic guideline for replacing your bad habit with a healthy process of examining your decisions, feelings and points of view.
Practice asking yourself the following questions every time you want to smoke and answering them as honestly and with as much of an open mind as possible.
First of all, if the thought to smoke arises in your head, ask yourself immediately, "What am I feeling?"
Possible Answer: Fear of judgment of not being able to perform at my job, fear of economic insecurity, overwhelmed.
What exactly is going on right now?
Possible Answer: I am at work and I don't really feel well. I have a list of assignments whose instructions are not crystal clear, and my supervisor has just reminded me of a deadline for a project I completely forgot about that's due in an hour. Take a deep breath, refrain from smoking and think...
What smoking behavior modification step can I do immediately to make this situation less stressful or easier to deal with?
Possible Answer: Prioritize! Put first things first: I have a deadline to meet! Honesty is always the best policy. I could mislead my supervisor, or I could fess up and 'accept the possible judgment.' Odds are, even though my supervisor will be disappointed with me, I'm not going to get fired; and I may be able to ask for suggestions from my supervisor or peer on how to accomplish the task more quickly.
Depending on your state of mind, level of self-esteem, or personal reasoning; it may be easy to convince yourself to do just the opposite: Play it off, go smoke, throw something together and play dumb. That type of thinking will not only accomplish nothing, it will also keep you addicted. Do not let your addiction convince you to do anything besides the most logical next step...Do not smoke a cigarette yet! Instead, take the action directly in front of you.
You can choose to speak to your supervisor and them smoke (assuming you have time before the project is due); and having put it off just long enough to accomplish something uncomfortable is just the right amount of practice for when you no longer rely on cigarettes as a crutch.
What about the details on the back burner (stock piled assignments)?
First, it's important to understand that a stack of papers or folders can be quite overwhelming...When broken down one at a time, it tends to lose its power. Take the time to evaluate each project assignment and sort them into 2 piles: Those you understand completely, and those you don't. There not much so foolish as trying to complete a job whose details are foreign to you. Get clarification.
The next step is a matter of prioritizing each assignment. Do they have different completion deadlines or are any of them contingent upon documents you need from other departments?
This is where the process of smoking behavior modification begins to take a life of it's own! In the past, if you've needed to take multiple trips to a department head or secretarial station, you may not have minded so much, as you took the opportunity to smoke a cigarette. Now that you won't be smoking, however, you can begin to focus your time and energy on streamlining your own efficiency! Maybe soon, you'll be ready to focus your efforts on working from home!
Imagine evaluating your work projects as a systematic factory approach. Before you start any of them, you evaluate each of them and what you will need to complete them. Your first mission is then to make a list for everything you will need from each department. You will make one trip around the building, or wait one time per set of files you need to be fetched, or whatever the case may be. You will have that many hours of focused time not wandering the building actually seated at your desk and working. Just think! You've come up with this idea, and you haven't even reached your quit date yet!
I bet I know what you're thinking... "There is no way I'm going to be able to sit at my desk and focus that long!" Well, you may be right. Quitting smoking, however, performs miracles on the clarity of your brain once you are no longer living in a constant cloud. Being as all the internal organs that were once suffocated by tobacco smoke and nicotine have been cleansed, your ability to focus will almost certainly sharpen once your initial troublesome cravings are gone.
Obviously, this is one possible example of ways to evaluate your situational smoking habits and behavior modifications steps to correct them. You can apply the questions to anything in your life. Answers to 'What is happening?' in a relationship may include possible jealousies or other destructive behaviors that are damaging to an intimate partnership. For now, try to be as honest with yourself as possible and ask if you're being fair. Even if you can't identify your feeling (that will come with emotional smoking behavior modification) at least try to analyze your behavior and examine simple ways you could modify it to not compound the stress of the situation even if it means simply walking away and not commenting until you've calmed down.
Try, try, try to not smoke a cigarette until the feeling has passed. Teaching yourself to face your emotions gradually in preparation for your quit smoking date will help you begin to build a smoking behavior modification plan that will help you finally recover from nicotine addiction!
