The Most Effective Way to Quit Smoking for Good

Do you feel stuck between wanting to be a healthy, happy non-smoker and feeling you need cigarettes to cope with the ups and downs of life?

Have you tried to quit before with willpower or medication, only to struggle and relapse because of overwhelming cravings, stress, or weight gain?

Are you looking for an effective way to quit smoking without missing cigarettes, but feel you’ve heard it all before and don’t know where to start?

If you said yes, you are not alone. Millions of people try and fail to quit smoking every year, just like Angela.

A self-professed cigarette lover of over thirty years, Angela had multiple failed attempts under her belt, from cold turkey to nicotine patches and everything in between. She joined our support group, declaring this was her last hope in a life-or-death struggle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A smart and successful woman with a warm smile, Angela arrived each week looking like she came straight from the salon. Nobody could have imagined how someone as successful and confident as her struggled so much with this addiction. She had achieved every goal she’d set for herself, except quitting smoking. As she described her difficulties with quitting, her coughing fits would begin.

Angela’s COPD had dramatically decreased the quality of her life. It made it hard to breathe, ruined her stamina, gave her an unstoppable cough, and her health anxiety kept her up at night. Cigarettes were ruining her life, and still she could not put them down.

Like everyone who’s ever tried to quit, Angela knew all the reasons why she shouldn’t be smoking but felt she needed cigarettes to cope with stress and boredom. Logically, she wanted nothing more than to quit smoking. Emotionally, she found it impossible.

Throughout the years, I’ve helped many smokers and vapers just like Angela; now I want to show you how you can quit smoking, even if you love cigarettes.

My name is Nasia Davos. I’m a psychologist, author, certified life coach, and certified smoking cessation coach. Above all, I used to be a smoker, too. Over the last decade, my team and I have developed a psychology-based quit smoking method that has been featured on:

• TED talks,
• Huffington Post,
• Harvard Blog,
• Healthable,
• Reuters, and
• NBC News.

This method has also been selected as the best natural method to stop smoking by VeryWell Mind and has won the Wellbeing Program Specialist of the Year Award for the last two years in a row. More important than all of this recognition put together are the countless success stories of the people we’ve helped break free from smoking!

But I didn’t always know the secret to becoming a happy non-smoker. When I first tried to quit, I experimented with every available method and failed more times than I’d like to admit. I went cold turkey, used the nicotine patch, switched to vaping, got hypnotized, and took medication, hoping that if I could stay away from cigarettes long enough, my desire to smoke would eventually go away. It never worked. All my attempts ended in tears, despair, relapse, and left me thinking that I don’t have what it takes to succeed. It was only after spending months researching and interviewing smokers and happy ex-smokers (I’ll tell you that story another time), that I realized I’d been trying to quit the wrong way!

The Wrong Way to Quit Smoking

Most people believe that quitting smoking is about conquering the physical addiction to nicotine, but the truth is that nicotine is weak. It’s a substance with a short half-life, which means that 50% of the nicotine in your body is gone 2 hours after you have a cigarette. The other 50% has left your body 3-5 days after you stop smoking. It only takes 5 days to beat the physical addiction!

If the real problem were the physical cravings for nicotine, you would not be able to sleep. Think about it: you might not go more than 2 or 3 hours without a cigarette during the day, but you can sleep through the night without being woken up by your physical cravings.

Since nicotine doesn’t have a strong physical hold over you and leaves your body quickly, you can see why you have struggled to quit smoking using nicotine substitutes or medication. 

Using patches and gums that feed your body lower doses of nicotine does not help you become nicotine free. It only prolongs your nicotine withdrawal. Also, taking pills that are supposed to lower your cravings cannot stop you from lighting up when you feel down or anxious. It only delays you solving the real problem.

It’s All in Your Head

If quitting is not all about the nicotine, what is it about? The addiction to smoking is only 20% physical. The other 80% is all mental. 

The mental addiction is your desire or need for cigarettes, how much you believe you enjoy smoking, and how ingrained it is in your life. The mental addiction is what causes irresistible cravings. That is why you can sleep through the night without cravings, but when your mind is awake, you can’t help but think about your next cigarette. Your mind constantly reminds you to smoke when you talk on the phone, finish your meal, or want to reward yourself.

The desire and need for smoking are mental. Why else would we relapse a month, a year, or even a decade after our bodies are nicotine-free? For the same reasons we smoked. Those reasons are all mental, not physical, such as enjoying smoking, relieving our stress, and believing cigarettes are a friend. We relapse when we quit smoking, but continue to believe cigarettes somehow benefit us.

No amount of nicotine patches, gums, lozenges, vaping, and pills can help you quit smoking, because they only deal with the physical aspect of your addiction.

The good thing about addictions is that we are not born with them. They are learned. You programmed yourself to believe that smoking is an inseparable part of your life. Now you can unlearn that program.

Your mind is like a computer that runs many programs to help you do things quickly and automatically. Some programs are helpful, like driving, opening doors, writing, or walking, while other programs aren’t. The mental addiction to smoking is an unhelpful program you’ve been running for so long, it’s become automatic.

When you started smoking, you gradually included cigarettes in every aspect of your life, both the highs and the lows. You trained your brain to expect a cigarette at different moments through habit-forming repetition. So now, your mind thinks that life will be incomplete without nicotine, and all the situations you’ve associated with smoking, like driving, drinking coffee, socializing, or taking a break, won’t be as enjoyable without it. Believing that your life won’t be good without nicotine is just a symptom of the mental addiction and the unhelpful program you taught your brain a long time ago.

How to Reprogram Your Mind to Quit Smoking – Even if You’re Too Addicted

While I was trying to figure out how to reprogram my mind to quit cigarettes, I interviewed many happy non-smokers. They all had certain things in common, and it wasn’t how much they smoked, how stressful their lives were, or even how “ready” to quit they felt. All ex-smokers who did not crave or miss cigarettes had, unbeknownst to them, gone through 4 mental and behavioral stages.

During my research, I found a lot of evidence that supported the importance and effectiveness of each stage. But I couldn’t figure out why these 4 stages put together in a specific sequence made such a huge impact, until I realized that these are the exact 4 stages we all follow when we become addicted to smoking (or any addiction and habit for that matter). These 4 stages are the same 4 phases you went through when you programmed your mind to enjoy smoking. Going through these 4 stages, again, in the right sequence, will help you reprogram your mind back to that of a non-smoker. 

After following these stages, I was able to help myself and others, like Angela, quit smoking for good. Since then, I’ve put the 4 stages in a method that everyone can use to succeed. That method is called the Cognitive Behavioral Quitting (CBQ) Method.

What Makes the CBQ the Best Way to Quit Smoking

The CBQ Method helps you overcome the mental addiction to smoking by reprograming the thinking and behavioral patterns that keep you addicted to nicotine. It’s a psychology-based method that removes your desire to smoke by changing how you think about smoking (cognitive) and breaking the habit (behavioral) in 4 steps.

The CBQ is a world-recognized method because of its 94% success rate. 85% of smokers quit permanently on their first attempt with our program and 9% quit on their second or third attempt. Our members always tell us how surprisingly easy they find it to quit smoking, whether they’re light, heavy, or secret smokers. 

The 4 stages of the CBQ Method tackle the core reasons why you smoke so you can quit without feeling a void or the need to substitute smoking with food, alcohol, or other vices. Since this method is based on psychology, it also shows you how to stop relying on cigarettes to relax, concentrate, or cope with negative emotions.

Now that you know why the CBQ method is the easiest way to quit smoking naturally, you might be wondering what the 4 stages of quitting smoking, and how to apply them to your own life so you can quit for good.

How to Quit Smoking Naturally, Starting Today

To show you how the CBQ Method can work for you, I’ve put together the “Step by Step Starter Guide of the CBQ Method.”

Getting it is free, and there are no strings attached.

In the free starter guide (video + workbook), you’ll discover:

• The 4 quit smoking stages and how to follow them so you can stop desiring cigarettes without using medication, substitutes, or “band-aids”
• What to do at each stage so you can reprogram your mind to quit smoking.
• Why the CBQ Method can work for you even if you’ve been smoking all your life, find quitting hard, and love cigarettes.
• The CBQ Method starter guide workbook with the outline of the 4 stages – plus tips, inspirational quotes, and notes you can use along your journey.
• And how you can apply the CBQ Method, starting today.

Click here to get the Starter Guide of the CBQ Method.

Right now, all you have to do is put your name and email address below to receive the CBQ Method starter guide in your inbox.

And if you’re tired of trying to quit and failing, there’s a special free gift waiting for you on the other side.

Get the Starter Guide of the CBQ Method

Thank you so much for being here with me and reading along.

See you soon,
Nasia Davos (MBPsS, IPPA, MA)
Creator of the CBQ Method™

P.S. In this free guide, I walk you through the 4 stages of the CBQ Method. You will learn how the CBQ Method works, what happens during each quit smoking stage, and how you can apply the 4 stages to your own life.

These are the exact 4 stages that have reached and helped millions of smokers quit for good.