As always this time of year includes the obligatory New Years resolutions which for most people stay the same every year. In fact, the most common New Year’s resolutions are:

Drink Less Alcohol
Get a Better Education
Get a Better Job
Get Fit
Lose Weight
Manage Debt
Manage Stress
Quit Smoking
Save Money
Take a Trip
Volunteer to Help Others
As you can see there are a lot of themes that everyone is familiar with including quitting smoking – this could be cigarettes or marijuana – and the sad thing is most people make the same resolutions year after year and do not keep them.

Why is this?

Mostly this is because they are made on the spur of the moment while slightly drunk or high perhaps. Made with every intention at the time, but made out of a desire for change and bettering ourselves without any real clue on how to achieve these goals.

So we go ahead with our lofty goals by immediately dieting, trying not to spend money, getting a gym membership, and going cold turkey with out quit smoking aims.

Then what happens?

Dieting becomes hard and whatever fad we jump on loses it’s appeal very quickly, post Christmas bargains call to us and we convince ourselves we are saving money until one day we find ourselves back in debt and it all seems hopeless again, the gym membership gathers dust after we go a few times then suddenly get busy… and smoking, well once those cravings hit and you have a bad day a single relapse makes you feel your resolutions is broken and it is all forgotten about till next year.

What this really means is that resolutions will never work because we never really plan them out. They are started in a burst of passion and desire for change but without a framework to actually achieve these things.

Now the entire process of quitting takes a lot of introspection, planning, dedication and motivation, but the best thing you can do to start is this.

Apply the power of the pen!

Writing things down is one of the most amazing psychological motivators you can get as weird as that might sound. The sheer action of putting your thoughts on paper where it cannot be twisted and changed by your cravings, bad moods, and other mutable things in your mind is astounding. gras online kaufen 

My suggestion is to write down 3 things first:

1. Put down your exact quit date. Do not make this immediate – make it when you know you will be ready to go and get this done!
2. Write down how you plan to go about your first week. Will you cut down slowly? Will you go cold turkey? Write down exactly how you plan to quit and a week or two’s worth of exact timetabling.
3. Also write down what you plan to do with the time you usually spend smoking. Make a plan to fill that time with something rewarding, fun, distracting – anything that will take your mind of your smoking habit.

These are very helpful to have down in black and white, pend and paper. Once there your quitting plan becomes much more solid! You can probably think of other things you might want to write down, motivational phases, notes to yourself – it could be anything – just get those thoughts out of your head and onto something unchangeable!