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I will break into this week’s helpful hints for quitting smoking by telling you about last week. Last week was one of my roughest weeks in that my father passed away quite unexpectedly. As I look back I can see the signs in that the last few years of his life were not very happy ones. He did not have much of a life, as all that he enjoyed had been taken away from him.

As I watched my dad in his last years I saw a weary, dreary life. Songs and jokes he had once loved to spout were gone from him. His ability to do skits and act in silly ways was no longer present. Even the food he had once greatly enjoyed had lost its flavor inside of his illnesses. He was, in short, deprived of all that he loved in life.

So why do I mention all of this in a blog about helpful hints for quitting smoking? Well first I want to say that I consider this blog to be more of an inquiry about the subject of quitting, than a place that has all of the answers, and I am not an expert on quitting smoking.

I have some answers to some questions- questions like “How do addictions work?” and “Why do people in general do what they do, in the way that they do it?” And I can make a good stab at helping people one-on-one to shift their behavior. But in the final analysis it is you and no-one else who will or won’t quit smoking.

So I mention this about my dad as an inquiry, and because I could see in those last days of his life that the heart and soul had gone out of him. There was nothing left for him to live for. And although he was clearly struggling about letting go of the people he loved, on some level I could see that he had a wish to go.

And if one has a wish or desire to go, or if one is unfulfilled and not living a life that is happy- Or, worse yet, if one is living in some terminal upset or pain, then all of the trying to quit smoking in the world will not make a difference. There will be present a sort of desire to go that will thwart your every attempt to stay here on this earth. And we all know that smoking has a very real possibility of taking your life in the not too distant future.

Now I would be the last one to say that all people who smoke are fulfilling death wishes. Smoking is an addiction and it is pretty hard to conquer the physical and emotional cravings. However I do say that it is probable that my blog on helpful hints for quitting smoking will not be useful to those who are actually living lives of misery. There would almost have to be some latent, or blatant, desire to stop the pain, somehow.

And one could argue that to conquer an addiction- any addiction- the drive to live must be strong, huge, and urgent. So as you do your Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or whatever method you use to begin to quit, do not miss the opportunity to take a good look at your life. And shift your life if necessary into a space of happiness. Now I could certainly do a hundred articles on how to do that. But a good place to start is by looking at my other blogs. My dad, by the way, was a terminally happy person, and not a bad example to follow when he was in good health and fully functioning.

Tags: Psychology