Quit smoking and win the national lottery life!

When I was eleven years old, I was handed a small plastic soap container with my name written on it with a Biro pen. The container was blue and had three cigarettes inside. I had just arrived at a notorious children’s home known as Bryn Alyn Community - it was 1968 and the day I started smoking.

I estimate that I have since smoked more than 140,000 individual cigarettes. Today, this amount of cigarettes would cost me around 39,000 GBP. How I wish I had saved all that money over the years.

I hold the officials in charge at Bryn Alyn Community responsible for getting me started on this particular life-threatening addiction.

What where they thinking when handing out cigarettes to children? Actually, I do know their logic. It was considered a safer option of 'fire' control than allowing cigarettes to become a hidden currency amongst young boy’s incarcerated in a closed environment. Utter nonsense, but considered logical in 1968.

Over the subsequent forty-one years, I have tried giving up many times. On one occasion, when experiencing a ‘born-again tsunami’ within a Pentecostal church, I asked God to heal me from smoking and subsequently gave up for around ten years. However, when the tsunami of Christian fervour ended, and I re-found my atheistic viewpoint – I eventually started smoking again. This was foolish, but my ‘reason’ for not smoking had vanished along with my desire to be accepted in a church environment.

Recently, having been smoking again for around two-years, I decided that I had to give up. I really wanted to give up and I knew I had to break the habit, no matter how hard it was going to be. One thought that I had going around in my mind for a number of weeks was that I wanted to be alive for the day my youngest child, Aimee, gets married or receives her degree. I know she would want me there on those special days and I knew for sure that I did not want to be just a memory, or even worse, the embarrassing old bloke in the wheelchair with a wet patch and an oxygen tank strapped to it.

I spent a few weeks thinking about stopping and generally, ‘talking to myself’ about how stupid, expensive, and death threatening my addiction had become. I knew the facts about smoking. I knew for example that in the UK alone more than 106,000 people die every year due to smoking.

For me, and you may be the same, simply knowing all the horrible facts did not provide sufficient reason to overcome the addiction.

In other areas of my life, I have always demonstrated high levels of determination and self-control, but the smoking habit has been something that has been harder to break.

If you are a smoker, who wants to give up, I can see you sitting there, reading this hub as fast as possible in the hope of discovering my ‘amazing’ method or ‘secret’ for stopping smoking. Unfortunately, I do not have such a solution; however, my unique approach may be just the thing that will work for you.

Here is what I have done to crack the habit and overcome the addiction.

The idea came to mind after someone asked if I would give up smoking for a million pounds. I thought that question through and especially focussed on the difference a million pounds would make to my life and those I love and yes!, I would give up smoking for a million pounds.

Of course, I realised that no one was about to offer me a million pounds to stop smoking, however, I devised an opportunity for myself to actually get a million pounds for stopping smoking.

This is what I have done – AND IT IS WORKING FOR ME!

I worked out how much I was spending on cigarettes per day -the figure was £.2.60.

I stopped smoking without announcing it to anyone and I set up an on-line account with the National Lottery.

I started to avoid any place where I would usually smoke.

I used the money I was saving to buy lottery tickets – buying two a day, every day.

I set up an excel spread sheet to record each day I did not smoke, the amount of money I had saved, and the lottery numbers I had purchased, and of course a record of my WINS!

For me, this is providing sufficient motivation to keep going and to stay smoke-free.

Over the first forty-nine days, I saved £127.40 and spent £98 on Lucky Dip lottery tickets.

I have won three times. Not a million pounds yet! – but I believe that it will happen in the future.

Everyday, I remind myself that I will be getting a million pounds for not smoking and I remind myself that I have a chance to live a longer, healthier life.

The combined process of buying the tickets each day, checking the results, and regularly focussing on the special days in the future, not just with my daughter, but with all my children, is proving to be sufficient motivation to stay STOPPED!

Try this method for yourself - it may work for you.