The Stage 1 of the program requires five consecutive days of training. For Stage 1 of the live Zoom training, it is best to leave two hours per day for the first two days and an hour and a half for the rest of the five days. More time is needed for the interactions that take place. The video course takes approximately one hour each of the five consecutive days with the first two days being the longest. We realize that clients may want to replay sections, so we recommend setting aside 1.5 to 2 hours a day so that you can view each day’s training and review key sections.

Yes, this is a crucial part of how the program works, and to receive the maximum benefit, you should follow the program as directed. Each day’s training builds on the previous day, and the program is designed to build positive momentum as each day passes. This is true for both courses.

In Stage 1 you learn this unique approach to bodily get free from nicotine. In Stage 2 you will need to reinforce this approach mentally to break your psychological dependency. After all, if left untreated, your addicted brain pathways would you tell you that cigarettes are the answer to life’s challenges. So, in Stage 2 Choose a Smokefree Life offers Follow-Up support to help you build new pathways in your brain that reinforce positive choices towards health and freedom vs short-term relief. We provide one-on-one phone and email support as well as access to a private Facebook group composed of other successful CSFL ex-smokers and ex-vapers. You may also receive individual or small group meetings on Zoom, depending on the level of support that you want. The Follow-Up support portion of the program (Stage 2) is personalized to meet your wants, needs, and particular life’s challenges. Those who avail themselves to the Follow-Up increase their chances of success to greater than 80%, measured at the end of the first year. That is why we strongly recommend it.

The fourth and fifth sessions will provide you with vital support as you are weaning off nicotine. We walk alongside you as you apply the newly acquired foundational tools to deal with your urges. We help you recognize the saboteurs your own mind will throw at you, and we help you integrate the training as you go through each day. On day 5 we encourage you to participate in the future follow-up support.

Choose a Smokefree Life offers Follow-Up support in the form of calls and emails as well as access to a private Facebook group composed of other successful CSFL ex-smokers and ex-vapers. You may also receive small group meetings on Zoom, depending on the level of support that you want. The Follow-Up support portion of the program (Phase Two) is personalized to meet your wants and needs.

While Stage 2 is optional (everything is still your choice), we highly recommend it as it greatly increases the chances of long-term success. Knowing your own personal “coach” is going to be contacting you on a regular basis by phone and email, and knowing there is a support group of like-minded peers who are walking the same path keep you motivated. It takes about 90 days for the dendrites in your brain to build new patterns, so we structure the Follow-Up support to help you through those initial 90 days.

No. While we recommend it and hope you accept that complete recovery will require 90 days, you don’t have to sign up for the Follow-Up when you buy. You can always sign up after you complete the five-day video course (at a slightly higher rate). A word of caution: Most people do not understand the cunning, powerful, and baffling nature of addiction and therefore tend to minimize their need for ongoing support. We have noticed a correlation between the amount of Follow-up and one’s success rate. Those who receive Follow-up have built in their accountability as well as insurance against isolation which can sabotage one’s success over time. There is a saying in recovery communities that we are “as sick as our secrets.” When you can share with someone who has walked in your shoes the challenges, feelings, and thoughts you encounter in the initial stage of staying off nicotine, you bring to light the obstacles that present themselves and, in doing so, illuminate your path. Getting off nicotine becomes a nurturing experience in place of a struggle that you shoulder alone.

If you are like me, I think of myself as a “quick study” and therefore don’t want to waste time. But you will not help yourself by trying to cut corners in this way. In fact, you most likely will only make the process more challenging. The CSFL course is designed for each day to build on the last, and you will need time in between each day’s training to apply the tools given at each day’s training. When you attempt to accelerate the process, you cut off your own ability to integrate the tools into your behavior. So, give yourself the gift of the program as it is designed. You will be so glad you did!

Each day is critical to your success, and each day is required for the process to work towards your success. If you miss a day, you may need to go back to the beginning to start the process again. Make sure you take each of the five days in consecutive order. It will become clear to you why this is recommended.

The course is not designed to share with others for several reasons. Unlike many free and paid programs, this course is revolutionary in its approach and highly individualized, particularly because of the Follow-up. Your friend will not be able to receive the Follow-up without having purchased the course from the beginning. That greatly decreases their chance of long-term success. Our research indicates that those who have the highest rate of success are those who make an investment in their own recovery that is meaningful. When we make things free, we tend to curtail that investment for others.

If you blow it, stop the course where you are and let yourself alone. Don’t beat yourself up. Once you have unleashed the monster, you will be smoking! After a few days of having returned to nicotine, you may want to review what happened. Take some time to reflect on what took you back to smoking or vaping. Did you isolate? Were you holding on to negative feelings of deprivation, or fighting your urges? Were you hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? Did you substitute? Did you think you were “cured” and could control your use after having been off nicotine for a while? What was your living circumstance? Did things change? Were you bored? Did you have a crisis? What knocked you off your course? You may want to share with your special Facebook group what happened and what you learned from what others have to say. But stay in touch! Don’t get lost in the “I’m going to stop again” group that never finds the time. When you are ready, you may begin the process again from the beginning. No shame! We learn from our mistakes.

This is the closely held wish of every addicted ex-smoker or ex-vaper. Unfortunately, that is not the way addiction works. We are not capable of controlling our addictions. We have lost the ability to control our intake. We are powerless! This issue will be addressed in more depth during the training. Most of us struggle with this fact. We don’t want to be addicts! We want to be restored to having the ability to smoke or vape in the way we imagine. But unfortunately, that is a fantasy. Not accepting that I am a nicotine addict is what led me back to smoking eight times before I was finally successful. I thought surely, I would be able to control my use after I had accumulated time. But my addiction kicked in every time. Don’t fall for it like I did!

Most other programs and products teach you to run from your urges by replacing them with another substance or the same substance in another form. The hope is that as time goes on your urges will “blow over” and then you will be “cured”. But what will you do when the urges come back, and you have no skills to deal with them? The Choose a Smokefree Life approach is not a shell game where we fool you into believing that the urges have vanished only to have them pop up somewhere else. We will not teach you to transfer your dependency from cigarettes or e-cigarettes to another form of nicotine or to food, such as celery sticks, donuts, coffee, or any other substance. We therefore, will not be teaching you to get rid of your urges or to satisfy them in another way. You will learn that wanting to smoke or vape is an inevitable part of the process of stopping, so you will learn to allow the urges to move through you. That way, they lose their power. The urges to smoke or vape will eventually go away permanently as you learn to befriend them as part of the process, not by running from them or fighting them. You will come to see the problem hasn’t been the urges themselves. Your struggle has only increased as you have fought them and tried unsuccessfully to block them out.

You will not gain weight unless you smoke food! That is in fact what a lot of methods teach you. They teach you to substitute something in place of the cigarette or e-cigarette. But with the Choose a Smokefree Life method you won’t be replacing the use of nicotine with nicotine in another form or with other substances. Your dependency on cigarettes or e-cigarettes will not be transferred onto other activities or substances. We advocate that everything you normally eat or drink should stay the same while you are stopping smoking or vaping so that you do not deprive yourself of the lifestyle you enjoy.

That won’t be necessary. Perhaps the difficulties you have had in the past in dealing with withdrawal were due to the approach you were encouraged to take. Conventional wisdom tells you to fight the discomfort and to run from it. But what you resist, persists! Instead, the Choose a Smokefree Life method will give you tools for dealing with your urges that will eliminate the struggle. This will be explored in depth during the training. In all the years of working with smokers and vapers, we have never yet encountered anyone who needed medical treatment for their withdrawal. If you were to have unusual physical symptoms, we would certainly encourage you to consult your doctor, as it is outside of our domain to evaluate your medical condition.

No, this is not hypnosis. We do use guided imagery and certain relaxation techniques. But we don’t put you “under a spell” or magically take away your urges to smoke or vape. We are not doing it to you or for you. Rather, our purpose is to support and empower you to regain the control over the life you once had before you developed your addiction to nicotine. We believe the magic that most smokers and vapers are looking for comes from within. So, we help you regain awareness of that power to make positive choices as you face life’s challenges.

This approach is not religion based, nor is it affiliated with any spiritual practice. It is not necessary that you have any religious or spiritual beliefs to be successful with this approach. Having said that, many of our clients have experienced a “transformation of self” that can happen as the result of stepping outside of one’s old ideas about oneself. And if you are a believer in God, we can help you use your faith in very concrete ways to invoke the God of your understanding’s help.

The sessions and classes are trainings, not therapy. The process is therapeutic, insofar as it helps you restore the quality of your life, but it is not therapy per se. We are not psychologists and therapists. We do not look for “underlying causes” to your smoking or vaping. When stopping smoking or vaping, we do not find it relevant why you want to smoke or vape; rather it is relevant that you want to smoke or vape. We teach you to deal with the urges when they happen as you go about your life. We teach and guide you how to stop and stay off for life.

Most smokers never feel entirely ready to stop. In fact, the nature of addiction doesn’t allow for that to happen. At best, you probably feel deeply ambivalent about stopping: one part of you wants to stop, but the addicted side of you does not want to part with your “best friend”, and that is what cigarettes or e-cigarettes have become for you. So, don’t waste valuable time waiting for the day when you are entirely convinced you want to stop. Feeling ambivalent or fearful doesn’t have to prevent you from taking the challenge. You can succeed despite these feelings. You just need a small degree of willingness to take the first step. That is the essential ingredient in this Choose a Smokefree Life recipe.

It is entirely up to you. It is just the quality of your life that is at stake. We have designed the video course to make it convenient for you to stop within your busy schedule. Consider this: It took time to develop your addiction to nicotine, and you will need time and attention to stop. However, we want to reassure you that you will be able to stop while living the life you know. We will encourage you to continue your same routines and living habits, just as you would as a smoker or vaper (except that you won’t need to step outside to light up or take a hit anymore)! We believe the Choose a Smokefree Life approach needs to be applied to each person’s unique life if it is going to work at all. This is a simple process for people who have full, and sometimes complicated lives.

We will do our best to contact you across countries and time zones. Of course, we are only as effective at reaching you as you make yourself reachable. I can think of many instances where we provided support across countries over the years. It is cool to know you can make positive choices anywhere in the world!

You can purchase it here. To help you commit to the Follow-up we provide a discount when you sign up both stages of the training at once. You may choose the Basic Follow-Up Plan or the Premium Follow-Up Plan. You will be asked a variety of questions about your smoking or vaping behavior, how to reach you, the best time to reach you, and anything you feel is important for us to know about you. The day after day five of the Stage 1 training you will receive your first support phone call. Support will continue for ninety days from your stop date. You will also receive ongoing emails and a link to the Private Facebook group after you have stopped, and as needed Zoom follow-up sessions.