A concentration break can help you stop smoking

They're going to do more than that. They're going to relax you. They're going to eliminate grinding tension. Throughout our day, we find ourselves in situations that must, physiologically, make us feel fatigued, tight, and stale. If we're at a desk, we may bend over our work. If we're reading, we may slump in our chair. We may sit or stand in a stoop-shouldered posture. We may lean forward, gripping the steering wheel of our car.

All these things indirectly diminish the amount of air we breathe into our lungs; they make it less comfortable for us to breathe deeply. Try it for yourself right now: when your shoulders go forward and your neck and head bend forward, you simply cannot breathe deeply without causing yourself discomfort.

If you don't get enough oxygen into those poor cramped lungs, then your body falters in its job of burning up waste materials. And if that happens, you must feel "stale," "achey," "cramped." And so there is a sound physical reason for using three deep, deep breaths in our battle against the cigarette habit.

Even if you did nothing else after reading this . . . even if you continued to inhale and exhale all those irritants and poisons ... even if you continued to smoke excessively-you'd nevertheless feel a lot better if you could teach yourself to punctuate your day with deep breaths. But let's hope that you won't settle for that. It's not just that you don't want to become another statistic that will someday convince someone else that the cigarette habit is not exactly healthy. The big point is that not smoking will make you a new person-more energetic, far healthier, a more effective worker, a brighter personality.

You have learned to "plant impressions" in your subconscious mind-images of yourself as happier, healthier, and now able to resist the old, harmful urge to smoke. You must also teach your subconscious mind that the "three deep breath" technique will enable you to ignore a momentary desire to hold a cigarette and puff on it.

Before you go to sleep, relax your body from top to bottom. See yourself walking into a room where many people are smoking; suddenly you feel the urge to smoke, too. Instead, you quietly take three deep breaths. You smile and shake your head. "No cigarette for me, thanks."

Think to yourself: "what routine makes me want to reach for a cigarette, I'll take three deep breaths instead. I won't want that cigarette. I won't be breathing poisons into my lungs, because the three deep breaths relax me and ease my tensions."

Think about those deep breaths as you fall asleep. Get into the habit of an occasional "deep breath countdown." It might go this way:
"As I count from ten to zero, I'm going to relax . . . and review . . . and understand-why three deep breaths will help me whip the cigarette habit. Ten-three deep breaths give me vigor . . . I breathe deeply and feel stronger ... I don't need a crutch . . . Nine ... a deep breath gets me over worry and tension . . . I'm relaxed ... a cigarette would harm me, not help me . . . each time I breathe deeply I feel stronger, more at ease . . . Eight . . . three deep breaths make me lose any desire to smoke . . . Seven . . . I'm breathing deeply, and I don't want a cigarette ... Six ... if I ever want to smoke again, I'll take three deep breaths instead ... then I won't want to smoke .. . I'll never want to smoke again . . . I'm going to feel better and be better . . . I'm going to think better and sleep better . . . breathing deeply, like this . . . Five . . . deep breaths make my feelings of tension disappear . . . Four ... I feel more relaxed now, just breathing deeply . . . Three . . . I'll sleep well tonight, because I breathe deeply ... Two ... deep, deep breaths ... feel better ... don't want to smoke . . . One . . . deep breaths take away any desire to smoke . . . Zero . . . I'm relaxed ... at ease . . . feel no tensions . . . just breathing deeply."

Do this frequently, and it will become almost as powerful as a reflex reaction; indeed, it will become a reflex after a while. It is your most important new technique.

How, then, do we use our new technique? It will become our response to all those things that used to stimulate the then-irresistible desire to smoke. There are times when it will be necessary for you to fight the old compulsion to reach for a cigarette. When you have the urge, stop for just a moment:

• Remind yourself that it's a concentration break that you need...
• Remind yourself that there are better ways to relieve tension . . .
• Breathe deeply, three times. And shift your mental focus for a moment. Think of something else. Something pleasant. Something nice. Something good. Then, briskly, swing your mind right back to whatever you'd been doing before you took that three-second break.

The urge to smoke will have passed. And the good new oxygen in your lungs will have pepped you up. Yes, the urge to smoke will have passed!

Eventually you'll not feel that urge more than once in four or five months. In the first few weeks, however, you may feel it more often. When you do, take your "concentration break." No one notices a deep breath -no one, that is, except you; and you're the one who benefitd from it.