The fact is most people are not successful the first time they try to quit. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you give in to the urge one day and smoke a cigarette. You could use it as an excuse to become a full-time smoker again. Or you could accept that mistakes happen, and try again the next day. Having one or two cigarettes while you’re trying to quit doesn’t negate all of your good efforts.

If you fall off the bandwagon, pull out your list of reasons to quit and re-motivate yourself. Take the time to think about why you smoked and how you could avoid it in the future. If you don’t succeed in quitting the first time and go back to smoking, remember that every day is an opportunity to become a nonsmoker. When you finally succeed in quitting, all those other times will have contributed by giving you practice and reminding you of the benefits of quitting.

Now that you have your list of reasons why you want to quit, also make a companion list of goals both smoking and nonsmoking related to motivate yourself. Maybe you’ve tried to quit before and had a relapse after one month; therefore, making it past one month this time would be a significant accomplishment. If you are quitting in hopes of achieving better physical fitness, your goals might be finishing a 5k race or playing with your child for an hour without getting tired.

Your goals can be anything, as long as looking at them reminds you of why you wanted to quit in the first place, and motivates you to stick with it.