a much greater satisfaction with life

One of the benefits of quitting smoking which many people underestimate is the positive impact it will have on your happiness! Obviously good health and quality of life are linked so it should seem pretty obvious that quitting smoking would make you happy but one new study actually documented this!

The study which was done by assessing over 1,500 people in America concluded that people who manage to quit smoking end up becoming more satisfied with the way their lives are going. The researchers looked at the quality of life of the volunteers at a one year point and a three year point after they had attempted to quit smoking. It was seen that those who managed to stay smoke free had a much greater satisfaction with life than those started smoking again.

There is often this perception that smoking is a fun thing to do and that by quitting you will be missing out on a satisfying social activity but in fact according to this study the opposite applies. Many smokers will say that they believe that when they quit they will lose out on relationships with friends who smoke, their daily smoking routines will be upset and they will not have an outlet for stress. 

The researchers said that in fact those people who manage to quit actually did not experience many of the problems that they believed quitting smoking might bring on and that instead they greatly appreciated the quality of life benefits of being smoke free. Most of the successful quitters actually said that they were experiencing less stress by the third year of being smoke free and were generally happier with their lives.

The research which was published by the medical journal, Annals of Behavioral Medicine could be a powerful motivation for people who are trying to quit. Unfortunately when doctors warn people about the health risks of smoking it often does not have a big enough impact to make them quit, but giving people an immediate positive benefit in quality of life as a motivation never to smoke again could really help.