Before you even think about quitting smoking here are a few important things to realize, including possibly the most important thing of all.  First, understand that if you are a regular smoker and have been for some time, let’s say a good pack or two a day for the last ten years or something….it doesn’t have to be that much, but if you’re a real smoker like that and not someone who’s just dabbled in it, then quitting will be roughly on the same degree of difficulty as quitting heroin or alcohol.

Not saying that when you do quit you will wind up writhing on the floor with the sweats, throwing up until your nearly dead, shaking and/or seeing snakes and other unpleasant creatures crawling all over your bed….you may feel so bad those things will seem like a welcome change, but you won’t actually experience the D.T.’s the way you would with alcohol or heroin withdrawal…but nicotine is widely scientifically recognized as one of the most powerfully addictive substances known to man.

Understanding the enemy and his full potential is always advisable in a war, and if your going to quit, you’re going to be in a war.  And that brings up the most important part…before you even think about quitting, ask yourself what language you use when talking about cigarettes and smoking.

If you’re a person who says things like, “I really should quit, I know I should quit, everyone keeps telling me to quit”….stuff like that is not the proper motivation for going to war.  Really, quitting is so difficult and demanding that the ONLY attitude going in that has even a remote chance of working, is the one where you’ve been saying to yourself, “I hate stinking cigarettes, cigarettes make me sick, I’m an idiot for smoking”….stuff like that, that’s how you need to be feeling.  If you’re quitting because someone told you to or because you think it might be the right thing to do, save yourself the trouble and just keep smoking until you do hate it. 

If you’ve got the fire in your belly to go to war because you hate the enemy and you are not going to let them do this to you anymore…then you’re ready to quit.  What I say next you’re really going to feel bad about, but if you are ready to quit then I believe the only way is cold turkey.

The patch, the lozenges, the gum…you know, you’re not really sky diving until you jump out of the plane and your not really quitting if your wearing a patch.

The reasons those things don’t work is that they try to prevent you from suffering, and it’s my theory that in quitting smoking, suffering is about the only thing that really works. All you have to do is manage the suffering and not let it overwhelm you.  The way you do that is you realize that your enemy is The Urge.  Again, you want to understand the enemy…his strengths and weaknesses.  The Urge’s strong points are that is is a vicious devil with hideous inhuman strength and it will come at you just about as many times a day as you smoked a cigarette…so if you smoked a pack and a half you need to defeat approximately 30 Urges a day.

So they come at you hard and they come at you as frequently as you used to have cigarettes…that’s their only real strong point.  

Their weaknesses, on the other hand, are many and profound, and that’s what you need to exploit.  The best knowledge you have in defeating every single Urge is that you know they have a limited duration. In other words, they are intense, but brief. In fact, your best opportunity to succumb to or defeat each Urge probably takes place in the first three to five seconds of it coming on.  The whole thing might last a minute, but if you don’t give in to it, and set your mind not to in the first three to five seconds, that Urge will pass and you will have won one battle.  Of course since the enemy is never going to get stronger than he did on his first attack, and you won that one, you know you can always beat this particular dude.  

Here’s more good news….every time you defeat an Urge it’s like you grab a magic key in a video game, and at the same time, in the same vdeo game The Urge loses a little strength….that happens each time. So you start going to the matt with this guy and knocking him flat maybe six seven eight times…and now he’s fading a your getting stronger.

So the trick is, you don’t want to really think about quitting smoking.  You want to throw your pack out, and start defeating Urges, one at a time.  You can win as many of these three or four second skirmishes as you need to, right?  And after you’ve won, let’s say a hundred of them….now you have a couple full days of it under your belt…and you’ve actually started to understand how you have to suffer for a minute or so fifteen or twenty times a day, but when each tough minute is over, it’s over, and you go on enjoying your life until the next one comes along.  

The more you win, the stronger you get.  And the weaker the enemy gets.  You have to always be vigilant….you can’t ever think it’s gotten so easy that it’s OK to lose once or twice…it will never be OK to lose once or twice…you just keep winning….for three weeks is all…after that the crap is out of you, the Urges fade to next to nothing and you’re now spiritually, emotionally and physically stronger than you’ve ever been, your hair smells better, your clothes smell better, you’re a better lover, you sleep better, eat better, and have more fun…you’re free…and you have a great new sense of self esteem as well, you hated something in your life, so you got rid of it.  

Sure, you suffered a little…through those thousands of little five-second battles…but that suffering taught you all that the patch or the lozenge or the gum could never teach you…and it’s information you really need….because the suffering taught you the most important thing of all…you NEVER WANT TO GO BACK.

Here’s something else that might help.  Get yourself a custom rubber stamp from Rubber Stamp Champ that says,” I Quit”, and every time an Urge comes along, stamp The Urge out instead of giving in.  It’ll make you feel better. At Rubber Stamp Champ we make custom made rubber stamps, customized self inking rubber stamps, custom ink stamps, address stamps, return 

address stamps, pre inked stamps, date stamps, permanent ink stamps, UV inks, specialty inks and pads, notary supplies and a whole lot more in terms of marking devices and replacement pads. And we make them fast and at great savings to our hundreds of thousands of customers.

For example….most places these days, you wind up paying more than $20 for a custom made Ideal 50.  You walk into an office supply store and order from a catalog and it’s going to cost you upwards of $25 to get acustomized Ideal 50 and then you’re going to wind up waiting a good three weeks before you get the stamp in your hands.

We do the same stamp, the same Ideal 50, the same custom self inking rubber stamp….only here’s the difference…we do it complete for $6.25….and we do it in one day.  That’s the way it is, everyday online at The Rubber Stamp Champ.  If you buy rubber stamps at all, it just makes more sense to get them from us.  And if you’re smoking cigarettes,and you hate them, get an “I Quit” stamp and start stamping out Urges today.