Habitual Habits

Most of us, me included, have a routine that starts our day and ends it. I get up, hit the snooze button, roll over, hit the snooze again, then that third buzz of the alarm I roll out of bed. The end of the day is similar, I snuggle into my PJs and catch up about the day with my husband, check the weather and go to sleep.

Some of these habits are personality driven, but they all are fine tuned by practicing them daily. When my evening routine included a cigarette before bed, I had learned to insert that habit into my schedule just like all the others. This means we can take the habit back out as well by practicing some other habit. For me it was a pint of ice cream that replaced this before bed smoke. Not the healthiest choice, but it got me to put down the cigarettes.

The next time you go for a smoke, try practicing a new habit. This could be literally anything else besides smoking and it does not necessarily have to include a nicotine replacement drug. In fact, it probably shouldn’t because the nicotine is not only unhealthy for you, it might remind your brain of the cigarettes you are missing, giving a retrieval cue effect.

So do something, anything other than picking up a cigarette. Walk the dog, take out the trash, read a book, water the plants, pick some flowers, go for a drive or call a friend. Replacing our habits with new ones is an essential step in putting down the smokes for good.