How I quit smoking

How many of you smoke?

I remember once when I finally quit smoking, I told my friend who is a non-smoker expecting a pat on my back from him. Instead he just look at me and said, “what is the big deal.? I do it everyday.”

In a recent survey, one in every five school children smoke in developing countries. The survey which was conducted in 12 developing countries also found that nearly 25% of the child smokers started the habit before the age of ten and more than two thirds wanted to quit.

It took me nearly twenty years to finally quit smoking. It will be an uphill task for these school children to quit. They will inevitably fall into what I call the OSCILLATING STRUCTURE. They will feel powerless as long as they are trap in this structure. It is like someone who try to lose weight. First they will go on a strict diet, go without meals, do regular exercise but as soon as he lose some weight, he will eat more, do less exercise and before long he will gain back most of the weight he lost or even more.

Let me share with you three principles that helped me quit smoking.

· Primary Choice

· Secondary Choice

· Fundamental Choice

Primary choices are choices about major results.

I want to be a non-smoker. I want to be an effective manager. I want to weigh 149lbs by 31/12/2000

Secondary choice is a choice that helps you take a step toward your primary result.

Once I decided to be a non-smoker, the next step is to make many secondary choices whether to accept a smoke when friends. Whether to buy cigarettes or not to buy even the though the urge to smoke is unbearable. Every day I will be faced with these choices to smoke or not to smoke.

Fundamental choice is a foundation upon which primary and secondary choices rest.

It is a choice about a state of being. For example I want to be healthy.

After years of heavy smoking, I made a fundamental choice to be healthy. I had tried to quit smoking several times without success. Once I had made the fundamental choice to be healthy, I was able to quit smoking for good, change my diet and begin to exercise regularly. I could have taken all these actions without having made the fundamental choice for health, but my tendency for success would not have been as great. In the past I had tried to take these actions, but I had never been able to make them a way of life.

If I have never make the primary choice to be a non-smoker and the fundamental choice to be healthy, then no matter what system I try to help me quit smoking, it will not succeed. I have tried nicotine pad, nicotine gum, gradual elimination and cold turkey. None of these processes will help me become a non-smoker, if I have not make the fundamental choice to be healthy.

On the other hand, if I have made the primary and fundamental choice to be a non-smoker and healthy, just about any system to stop smoking will work for me.

Knowing “WHY” is more important than knowing “HOW”. Once you know the “WHY” the “HOW” will inevitably follows. But it is the “WHY” that is difficult. Each and everyone of us are faced with the forever illusive question of What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of an organization? Why are we here?