If you have stopped smoking in the past and not felt much of a desire, then you may well fall into the same pattern whenever you make an attempt to stop.
The best way to check yourself when quitting smoking is by deliberately inducing your desire to smoke, so that you can retrain yourself to manage it and consciously accept it. This might look as though you are making things more difficult for yourself, but in fact you are simply facing up to a difficulty that already exists.
Inducing a desire to smoke is a conscious mental exercise. It means deliberately interrupting your thoughts about the other things in your life, and, with your cigarette packet in front of you, focusing on the feelings inside you of wanting to smoke.
There is a reason you are avoiding feeling your desire to smoke: you are no doubt afraid of it because you think it might make you smoke. You see it as an enemy, a nuisance and an unnecessary pain. When you deliberately induce it, you break down this negativity and fear, and turn the desire into something you have power over.
If you find inducing the desire difficult you will need to be creative to really understand how to quit smoking. Watching other smokers light cigarettes can be helpful. Smelling your cigarettes in the packet or, if you used to make your own, rolling one up should produce the desire to smoke. For some people, imagining that they are smoking is the best way to connect with their desire to smoke. If you are really stuck in repression, buying a new pack of your favourite brand and taking the cellophane off may do the trick.
Tags: cigarette packet, how to quit smoking, light cigarettes, mental exercise