Tips To Prevent Smoking
How to prevent smoking? In this article we show some tricks that we can apply to ourselves, but also to the youngest (teenagers). In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 150 million adolescents in the world are already smokers. This is an alarming figure, considering that tobacco has multiple detrimental health effects.
According to the WHO, tobacco smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), among other life-threatening diseases.
More data: according to the same organization, every year tobacco kills at least 8 million people, and several million more suffer from diseases derived from it. There is only one better milestone than quitting: not getting started. That is why its prevention is so important! Do not miss the tricks we offer here to prevent smoking.
Tricks to prevent smoking
Without further ado, we leave you some tricks to prevent smoking, especially dedicated to those who, luckily, have not yet started their use (or are “just” starting). Each of them can be adapted, logically, to each person and group in particular.
Practice physical exercise
Many people mistakenly believe that smoking helps reduce stress. While it is true that when we smoke we can feel a brief sense of calm, it disappears quickly and the smoker soon needs a new cigarette to stop an increasing anxiety. In addition, some experts believe that smoking reduces stress not because of the substances that tobacco contains, but because of the breaths we take when smoking (inhale deeply, exhale little by little).
Exercising can be a good way to avoid being tempted to try tobacco. Sport and physical activity do truly reduce anxiety and stress.
In this sense, an investigation carried out by the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology of the Karolinska Institute revealed that practicing sport exerts a protective role against the damaging effects of stress on neurons.
Obtain and provide information
Information is an essential tool to act with discretion and freedom. In this sense, obtaining reliable information regarding the harmful effects of tobacco can also help us prevent smoking.
On the other hand, beyond obtaining the information for oneself, the fact of facilitating and promoting awareness and prevention campaigns aimed at the youngest, in relation to the negative consequences of tobacco, can help prevent this toxic habit.
Although most of us know that “smoking is bad”, knowing specifically its negative effects can be an incentive that motivates us not to try it. In addition, if the information is accompanied by visual resources, the campaigns tend to be more effective, because they impact more.
Do not smoke in front of others
Another way to prevent smoking, not in yourself, but in others (especially the youngest), is to lead by example and not smoke in front of them.
Models have a great influence at these ages (although each adolescent feels like models some people, and not others), that is why not doing this harmful action in front of them can help. It would not make sense to tell our son or our student: ” Don’t smoke, smoking is bad “, with a lit cigarette in hand, right?
Work assertiveness
According to Wolpe (1980), assertiveness is the direct and open expression of all feelings other than anxiety. Other authors, such as Ferseheim and Baer (1975), define this concept as an active approach to life in which feelings and emotions are directly expressed. Finally, there are authors who synthesize more and who summarize this concept as the ability to say “no” and to defend our rights and wishes.
In adolescence, assertiveness has yet to work and many adolescents can take actions that they really do not want due to social or group pressure. In this sense, teaching them (or learning) assertiveness skills can help them (and help us) to prevent smoking, so that we can all learn to say “no” when they offer us a cigarette that we really do not want to try.
In addition, assertiveness will be useful to avoid falling into smoking, but also for many other things in life.
Encourage other activities
Another trick to prevent smoking is to encourage other types of activities, either by cultivating them yourself, or promoting them in the youngest, so that the person has a wide range of pleasant activities and alternatives to tobacco.
The idea is that the more ways we have to relax and disconnect, the less likely we are to fall into the networks of smoking. In this sense, many people go to tobacco looking for new sensations, pleasure, disconnection … and the reality is that we can obtain all this in many other ways and in healthy ways.
Promote critical thinking
Critical reasoning can help us make better decisions. This type of reasoning allows us to reflect on the consequences of our actions and on why we choose certain options, it helps us to weigh pros and cons, to decide more clearly, etc.
If this reasoning is fed, it will be more likely that we will not indulge in unhealthy acts, such as smoking. In this sense, becoming aware of the consequences of smoking and why we would like to start this habit or not can also help.
