It’s important to have reached the tipping point when you want to quit smoking. Not the physical tipping point where your body has been damaged, and you need to quit! The mental tipping point is when you feel ready, the point when your want to outweighs your need to.
A lot of people come to me to quit smoking, but they have been motivated by the things that are going on in their lives. Their lives are out of balance from things such as marriage failure, anxiety and stress etc.
In situations such as this, you need to balance your life. The reason for this is that when you are unbalanced, you cannot give quitting your full attention and therefore reduce your chance of success.
When people who are unbalanced in their lives decide to quit smoking, it is always advisable to get your life into balance first and then quit smoking.
It is vital to know what you need in life so that smoking does not become a way of combating things such as anxiety, stress etc.
Many people spend no time planning their lives. They spend more time planning a holiday than planning their lives. At Transformations, Coaching & Hypnotherapy not only help you quit smoking but can help you design a plan for your life so that you do not need to smoke. We help you to have a great life by helping you to find out what you want from life and why you want it.
When you are clear on this and have a plan to achieve this, then life feels meaningful. When we don’t know where we are going and leave our lives to chance, we feel vulnerable and fearful.
It’s so, so important to understand you have needs and actively work to meet them in your life so that parasites like cigarettes can’t get their hooks into you.
Nobody has a perfect life, but when you are aware that you have needs and have a vision for your life, then you are more balanced and less vulnerable to fake solutions like smoking and other habits.
So if you are chronically stressed by your life, chronically lonely or unsatisfied, then it might not be quite the right time to disentangle yourself from smoking. Smoking, like cults, con artists or abusers, preys on the vulnerable.
But I want to emphasize that you should never wait for life to be perfect – you could wait forever (or however long the cigarettes decide you have left).
Make sure you are at least “steady on your feet” before you fling the smoking parasite from yourself.

About Steve Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner originates from Rhodesia, (Zimbabwe) then working around the globe before finally settling in Brisbane Australia. As a scientist, Steve always had an interest in human development, especially Mind Plastisicity and how we cope with stress, anxiety and addictive behaviours. Over the past 15 years Steve has assisted many clients to transform their lives by resolving the obstacles holding them back.

Entries by Steve Gardiner