What stopping smoking taught me about habit change.

I was at a wedding at the weekend. The mother of the bride was a good friend of mine from medical school. A few years ago, she commented that I was literally the last person in our year who she would have anticipated ending up doing the job I do. It was a fair comment indeed, as for many years, I lived a famously unhealthy and hedonistic lifestyle.

One example of this was the fact I was a 30-a-day smoker. I actually started smoking when I was 13, and by the time I was 15 I was smoking several cigarettes a day. I tried more than once to stop smoking in my teens but was unsuccessful due to the gnawing withdrawal symptoms I experienced.

On the 23rd of March 1987, I was alone in the student house I shared with three other medical students. It was the Easter holidays and my friends had gone off to their respective family homes, but I stayed alone in the house with the intention of catching up on my studies (I wasn't the most diligent student and had some serious catching up to do).

Sometime in the morning, a small package addressed to me hit the doormat. I recognised my brother's handwriting immediately. Inside was the book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by British author Allen Carr. My brother had written inside the book that he had used the book to stop smoking, and it was 'good to be free'.

If I'm honest, I had no intention of stopping smoking that day. But I wasn't entirely committed to putting in the hours with the books, and was happy for any distraction.

I smoked my last cigarette that day.

I don't remember the contents of the book in detail, but I recall Carr making the point that if you want to successfully stop smoking, you need to get your head in the right place. He pointed out that a lot of us who are trying to stop smoking focus too much on the inconvenience and discomfort involved in stopping (cravings, missing out on a 'stress reliever', etc.). Carr makes the point that we are much more likely to succeed if our focus is on the positives, such as not being tied to smoking, not smelling of cigarette smoke and better health.

Another thing that I took from the book was the importance of how we talk to ourselves about the change we're seeking, and how we identify with it. Ideally, we will want to identify now with the change or state we want. In this respect, telling ourselves or others that ‘I'm trying to give up cigarettes’ is not particularly helpful, while declaring ‘I am a non-smoker’ or ‘I don't smoke’ is.

I believe that these ideas made the process of stopping smoking much easier than I imagined it would be, given past experience.

However, this post is not really about stopping smoking – it's about habit change. And in summary, here's what I recommend:

1. Focus on what you're gaining from the new behaviour, not on what you're 'losing' or any perceived inconvenience or discomfort.

2. Identify as much as possible with the changed version of yourself and, rather than see it as a ‘place to get to’, bring it into the present moment.