Are you ready to stop smoking? Or continue to damage your general health and well being plus wasting all that money in the knowledge that you are now in the minority. Why did we start smoking in the first place? Peer pressure when we were young? Massive advertising promoting it was 'cool' to smoke?

Very few of us continue to smoke without having pangs of guilt, however. Yet, we are very good at making up excuses to justify why we do what we do. We either tell ourselves that it's not possible due to all these different excuses, or we call them all out whenever somebody, with well-meaning, asks us why we don't quit.

We believe that we will be unable to stop smoking because we simply do not have enough willpower. We might indeed have tried it once or twice and failed and have put this failure down to a lack of "willpower." The truth is that we don't really understand what willpower is and we don't understand how the power of our own mind is more than capable of getting us to a point of smoking cessation.

We might think to ourselves that we actually enjoy smoking, that it gives us some kind of a feeling of exhilaration, makes us more accessible or more outgoing. The truth is however that any short-term bursts of positive feeling have long gone, as the receptors in your brain are simply not capable of replicating that situation ad infinitum. No, your habit has taken over.

Did you know that nicotine actually accelerates your reactions, that it increases your blood pressure and that it is essentially an "upper?" This puts another illusion and myth to rest, as when we think that smoking relaxes us this is a chemical impossibility.

But surely, if you stop smoking you will not know what to do with your hands! A very common and totally unfounded belief. If you focus on how silly this notion is then you will dismiss it without further thought; that's if you decide to, of course.

To many, one of the most powerful stumbling blocks along the road to your new life is the belief that if you stop smoking you will simply put on a lot of additional weight. People believe that smoking is therefore some kind of amazing dietary plan that helps them keep the weight off themselves and leads them to better physical condition. Here, they are completely ignoring the damage that they do to their bodies, the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, breathing problems and even death. Once we actually stop smoking we will feel much better about ourselves, have a lot more energy and in truth be in a much better position to maintain our bodies carefully and sensibly, so that we do not become overweight at all.

Excuses, excuses - it's time to wake up.