Last night I was watching TV and saw one of those Quit Smoking ads. It reminded me of when I was a smoker, how I had stopped, and how the way I stopped was one of the most powerful and profound life insights I have ever experienced.
Like I lot of people I first tried all the usual things – willpower, herbal cigarettes, nicotine gum. None of them worked for me. Then I heard about a book called ‘The Easy Way to Stop Smoking’ by Allan Carr.
And it was perhaps the most powerful book I ever read, and not just because it showed me how to stop the filthy habit easily.
Firstly I’ll explain the how most of the standard (i.e. Government) stop-smoking campaigns work. Now I don’t want to belittle these campaigns, they are pursing an extremely noble cause
, but I believe they have a fundamental problem.
Basically they work like this :
- Smoking is a terribly dangerous and unhealthy activity (true)
- Quitting is unbelieveably difficult, you’ll have a miserable time and possibly struggle every day for the rest of your life. (True if you think this)
Allan Carr’s method works like this
- You gain NOTHING from smoking. All ‘benefits’ are imagined. (true)
- Stop smoking. And be HAPPY about it. i.e. Yippee, I’m free! (True if you think this)
And boy did it work for me. Stopping smoking was actually fun!
Perhaps even more importantly it provided with an astonishing insight – things don’t have to be the way people make out. You always have the choice on how things actually are in your life, on whether to enjoy or despair.
By the way, if you have a smoker in your life, buy them this book. Its quite short and only takes a couple of hours to read. They probably won’t want to read it. Just say to them ‘Don’t stop smoking, just read the book’. In my experience when I’ve tried this, everyone who reads the book stops smoking. It really does work.
Tags: quit smoking
