In news that will surprise no one, smoking is really, really, bad for you.

It is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. It kills millions of people, globally, every year. This information isn’t surprising to anyone that smokes. If you approach a smoker and ask them if they understand that smoking is bad for them, they will say yes. We’ve done a wonderful job making that information clear and available.

If you ask them if they know that they should quit, they will also agree that quitting would be a good health choice for them. The clear and rational choice is not to smoke — it is expensive and damaging to your health.

Everyone who is smoking knows that they should stop smoking. But they don’t. Why?

The simple truth is that knowing you should is a lot different than committing to do it. We know we should eat better. We know we should exercise. Be kinder. Forgive easier. Love more.

The knowing isn’t the battle.

When I was a smoker, I knew I should quit. I just didn’t want to. We are all gifted at rationalizing our way through questionable decisions. When I was young I needed smoking, or at least I thought I needed smoking, socially. I quit when I was 22. Seventeen years later in life, when I thought couldn’t handle the pressures of my failing relationship I came back to smoking, knowing it was a terrible decision and doing it anyway. I rationalized needing it psychologically and emotionally.

I quit when I decided I was no longer going to be a smoker. Not because I had finally stumbled upon the tidbit about smoking being bad for my health that finally provided the objective evidence I needed to make a decision. Not because I finally found the cessation tool that filled the hole that smoking left behind. Not because I had pressure from someone else in my family who, out of love for me, wanted me to make healthy decisions. And not because I’d finally run out of rationalizations, believe me I could have kept them coming.

I stopped. Cold turkey. No tools. No lookbacks. It wasn’t comfortable. But it really wasn’t difficult.

How?

How can one person find something like this to be so manageable while so many other people struggle?

It was all a matter of perspective. One important mental shift. I used to see myself as a smoker. Particularly a Camel type of guy with the occasional Lucky Strike or Parliament sprinkled in for variety. Smoking was part of who I was. I knew I should quit. I didn’t like what it was doing to my body. Deep down though, I didn’t want to quit. Even though doing it was stupid. Knowing it was a bad idea in the long run wasn’t a strong deterrent.

I knew at some point I was going to need to quit. That I could not and should not continue to smoke, but at the end of each pack now didn’t feel like the time. Then one day I really looked at myself. At my identify. Who I was. What smoking, honestly, brought to my life. All the situations where it was present and how it made me feel. Where my ego, and how I wanted to appear, got involved with smoking. Where my self pity, and ‘woe is me,’ intersected with cigarettes. I looked at how my life would be different if I removed smoking for the hundred little situations where it was present.

I wanted that life instead.

At one point in my life I wanted to be a smoker because the identity of me, as a smoker, seemed like it would give me things I wanted in my life that I did not have. It would make me feel good. Give me status. Regard. Acceptance. Then I realized it was taking things I no longer wanted to give. Health. Time. Money. That I didn’t want to smell, look, and feel the way that I did.

I didn’t decide to quit smoking. I decided to change who I was. I was a smoker. I decided to change to be a nonsmoker. I did not seek to change my habits. I sought to change my lifestyle.

In the weeks that followed, where the routine of my life would have included a cigarette on the way to work, or stepping outside of the bar with a friend for a smoke, did I feel like I wanted one? Was I tempted? Absolutely. But I wasn’t that man anymore. My identity had shifted. From smoker to nonsmoker.

When you get married, or get into a serious relationship, you’ve made a decision to be a different person. You’re not going to go on a date with a new woman, you have a great woman in your life and you are committed to her. You have decided to be someone different than you were when you were single. Who you’ve decided that you want to be shows up in your actions, where you put your attention, and your responses to life’s opportunities.

Life doesn’t respond to things you think. You can think all you’d like about quitting smoking, but if the person you have decided to be is a smoker and that is the man you show up as with all of your family, friends, and colleagues. That man will find it very difficult to quit. The universe will respond to who you decide to be — who you are — not what you think. To me, this is a big reason why less than 1 in 10 attempts to quit smoking are successful and why many smokers try 30 or more times to quit.

We know we should quit smoking because it is really bad for us. People who love us give us a hard time about smoking. Our partners don’t love the way we smell, but tolerate it, because they love us. These frictions add up. They accumulate to a place where is is really bothersome. Where you feel the social pressure to do something.

So you try quitting.

You are responding to a whole bunch of pressure to do something, that you know you intellectually you should do, but you are not psychologically and emotionally committed to doing. You’re trying it on. Seeing how it goes. Hoping for the best. You figure once I have a good replacement for smoking in the form of a cessation tool, I can still be a smoker but not smoke. Or you think you can be a smoker and do all the things, in all the places, with all the people, who you smoked with but this time you are just not going to smoke instead.

You think you can be the exact same person, just without the cigarette.

You’re going to fail.

Being a smoker is part of who you are. It connects with how you cope with stress. It involves how and where you socialize with people. It infiltrates your drive to work, coffee, lunch break, golf outing, fishing, and another hundred mundane moments of your everyday life.

To me smoking is not about the nicotine, even though the nicotine feels really good. The few weeks it takes to overcome dependence on the substance isn’t creating a 90%+ failure rate in quitting attempts. Quitting is difficult because the activities of smoking are so deeply integrated into who you are that removing smoking from the equation makes you a different person. To quit smoking you must die one of life’s little deaths. The you that is a smoker must die. A new you must rise.

Dying? Rebirth? Seems a little melodramatic?

Maybe. Maybe not.

When you decide you are not a smoker anymore your life changes in such a large number of small ways that, when they all add up, look like a different life. Those hundred mundane moments where you’d fill the time with a smoke now look different. Your drive to work looks different. Your hobbies look different. How and where you socialize with people is different. As a result, the people you are socializing with might be different. Your breaks at work, where they happen, and who they happen with start to look different.

If you are reading this because you smoke and you’ve been flirting with idea of kicking the habit I would encourage you to come at it with an adjustment in perspective. Mindset matters. Don’t think of it as a habit. Don’t look at quitting as a challenge in adjusting a behavior or establishing some new discipline. Don’t see it as a battle between you and dependence on nicotine.

Instead, think deeper about why you want to quit.

Check yourself on your motivation. Are you succumbing to social pressure? Are you looking to get people off your back? Are you just hoping to put forth enough effort to appease the people in your life that are pressuring you to quit?

Or are you wanting, for real, to be a different person?

The path to quitting smoking isn’t found in the right cessation tool. You won’t get it in this quick fix. Or that hack. The path to quitting smoking successfully, cold turkey, no lookbacks is about looking inside. Not outside. It is about understanding why you smoke. It is about debunking the bullshit crutches that you’ll find there. Honestly assessing your motives for smoking and deciding that you are no longer motivated by those things. It is about looking at yourself as a smoker, objectively, and not liking what you see. Looking at a different version of you, as a nonsmoker, and liking that guy better.

Quitting smoking isn’t about changing a habit.

It is about changing identity.

It is about deciding you are never going to buy a pack of cigarettes again, because the person you are now doesn’t do that. It is about choosing not to leave for the smoke break with people anymore, and staying inside with the nonsmokers, because you don’t smoke. It is about responding to any offers for a smoke, or a vape, with a quick, comfortable, smooth “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

When your identity has changed, your motivation has changed. You don’t have to fight your impulse to smoke anymore. You don’t have to awkwardly bow out of one social circumstance or another. You don’t have to stumble over awkwardly declining a smoke.

Because the guy you are, now, doesn’t do that.

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