Here’s my take on Johann Hari’s captivating and insightful Ted Talk on addiction.
Hari explains that the only way you can get overcome an addiction is by leveraging a new connection in your social surroundings.
In other words, bond deeply with the people around you, find something exciting to live for or remove from your life the things or people that drain you emotionally.
And the same applies to smoking. Smoking is an addiction. And it’s especially hard to quit because it becomes part of your daily routine. It becomes your friend, your comfort and it’s always available to you.
In my experience, I have seen that people smoke either to boost a good emotional state or to escape from a bad one. We smoke to relieve stress, boredom or sadness. We also smoke to enjoy a happy moment – from chatting with a friend to drinking a cup of coffee in the morning.
That’s true whether you smoke 10 or 30 cigarettes per day; whether you started smoking yesterday or 40 years ago.
So what do we understand from this about quitting smoking?
1. You don’t need to use willpower, nicotine substitutes or chemicals to quit smoking
You are not addicted because you want to smoke. You are addicted because you choose to smoke.
So quitting smoking doesn’t have to do with will. It has to with the deeper emotional needs you try to meet.
- In the willpower method, you try to resist the cigarette you desire. But the desire is still there- so you suffer.
- Using nicotine gums and patches is not going to give you the freedom you seek. Because you remain physically addicted to nicotine. And at the same time, you fall into the trap of thinking that the nicotine is the only reason you’re still smoking. So you forget to deal with the emotional reasons behind it.
- Using smoking tablets is the worst thing you can do. Because these chemicals create depressive feelings and even suicidal thoughts. So while you ‘re quitting smoking the only thing you want to do… is to smoke.
As you can see, all the above methods deal with removing the smoking behavior- not the core of the problem.
You must remove the emotional baggage that keeps you stuck to smoking. So you need a strategy.
2. You have to go through certain psychological stages to quit smoking without pain
Otherwise, you will always feel that you are missing cigarettes. So you might go back to smoking during a stressful period in your life.
So what you have to do to be free is:
- Remove the emotional connection you have with cigarettes. The CBQ method, – that my TED talk is all about- shows you how to feel better without your smokes.
- Find satisfaction and connection in other things instead of smoking. You heard Johann Hari. I couldn’t agree with him more.
And that’s exactly why the CBQ method, that has a total 94% success rate, shows you how to replace smoking with another healthy/non-addictive/non-dependable habit. Get the 4 quit smoking stages of the CBQ method.
So not only you CAN quit smoking naturally, but most importantly you can do it without going through pain.
You can quit feeling better than ever- physically, emotionally and mentally.
Where to start?
If you want to prepare for your next quit attempt having absolute confidence in yourself, then you need to follow the 4 quit smoking stages of the CBQ method.
Click here to get the exclusive video where I explain how to quit smoking using these 4 simple stages. (name and an email address needed to send you the link to the video)
