The chances are that when you first stop smoking you won't feel confident to begin with.
If you have been smoking, daily, for many years, not smoking will quite possibly feel very strange at first, even unnatural.
But the longer you stay off and the more situations you handle without smoking, the more confident you become.
Confidence is something you acquire, gradually.
The more effort you put into working with these quitting smoking tips, the more confident you will become not only that they work, but that you are capable of using them.
You learn to trust yourself that you will continue to use them, no matter what is going on in your life.
This is something you can only find out for yourself as you go along.
It's difficult to feel sure of it ahead of time.
Many smokers make the mistake of putting off learning how to quit smoking because they are waiting to feel confident.
They want to wait until they are sure they will succeed before making an attempt to stop.
They might be waiting for a very long time.
Don't wait for your fear of failure to go away.
Stopping smoking will always be somewhat frightening, because you never know how it will turn out.
It's much, much less frightening if you just do it moment by moment.
So far, so good, and wait and see what happens.
A friend of mine, Richard, says that he doesn't even call himself an ex-smoker because it sounds too final.
He says that he is a smoker who just isn't smoking right now.
He's been saying that for well over a year, so far.
Choosing for now keeps you in reality.
But what happens if, after perhaps a whole year of making choices not to smoke, you then make a choice to smoke? If you have the freedom to smoke, shouldn't you exercise it at least once in a while? That's the subject of a future article.