New Year is the time when many smokers swear they’ll quit for good. Then within a couple of days are straight back to smoking feeling disappointed but strangely glad to be back with their cigarettes.

According the research recently published by the Department of Health over 1.2 million smokers will try to quit over this New Year Period. Unfortunately over half will be smokers again very soon.

Why do so many fail to quit?
Well it’s a long story, but if you want to get the quick answer it’s all to do with where you focus your mind.

Most people come up to the New Year and say to themselves ‘I am not going to smoke. Period.’ This puts the mental focus in the wrong place. Let me explain:

For the mind to compute the order: ‘I am not smoking anymore;’ it has to first go to the smoking part of the sentence and then cut it out. So you in fact you’re having to focus on smoking and then say no smoking.

It’s like the lights suddenly being switched off when you’re in big, dark and cold building. All you can see is the dark and you feel lost.

Use Your Mind to Help you Succeed
To have more success it’s far better to let your mind do more of the work. You have an imagination - otherwise how would you be able to decide what you like to eat, or where you love to holiday?

Here’s the first step to using your fantastic mind to help in your quest to quit.

Imagine yourself in the future having been a non-smoker for some time. Let your mind really fill in the details. What would be doing, what would you be enjoying who would you be showing off to? Enjoy this new found freedom with all your senses.

Now whilst you’re there in this future place, turn around and look back to now and contemplate the things you did that helped you make the changes. Wait a moment or two for the ideas and insights to come through. They usually will.

Make a note of anything and notice how you begin to feel differently about you’re chances of success.

During an interview today A BBC radio reporter asked me for my five top tips to quit. Here they are:

If you’ve tried to quit, what are your top tips? Or what you would avoid doing this time round?