Everyone knows it’s hard to quit smoking. If you’re mentally prepared to quit, you honestly don’t want to smoke anymore, then you’re already more than half way there. If you’re trying to quit for something or someone else, you’ve got an almost insurmountable task ahead of you.
Sometimes all you need is a fortuitous catalyst. The last time I was very successful at quitting I’d recently started mountain biking competitively, so the incentive was there to have working lungs. Breaking my leg in an unrelated act of stupidity put a stop to biking long enough for boredom to start me up smoking again. I’ve quit a couple of times since, but haven’t been very successful at staying that way.
Way back in November of last year I’d started thinking it was probably soon time to quit smoking… again. One of the main reasons I’ve been putting off quitting for so long this time around is the feeling this is probably my last real chance to quit. If I pick it back up again this time, I’m screwed. I’ll be a smoker for life. Enter my latest fortuitous catalyst:
After a couple of days feeling so horrible I couldn’t even contemplate smoking, it occurred to me this was the perfect time to give it another go. Instead of looking forward to feeling repaired enough to light up, why not look for reasons to give it up again? And then this old article bubbled up to the top of the traffic charts at b5media’s newly redesigned destination site, blisstree.com. Seeing the immediate benefits to your body in a very short time after finishing your last smoke was pretty cool.
So check out the article, and look for a catalyst in your life to help you put down smoking. I’m not saying you should strip down and stand naked in the cold spring rain, or lick the hand holds on the subway ride home this evening… but if you’re looking for a good chance to get enough of a break from smoking to make quitting easier, consider getting sick 
