I agree. There is no need to be afraid of craves. Preparation for cravings need not be born of fear.
Most people who relapse give into cravings because they do not have a plan for dealing with them. Therefore, understanding how cravings work in your brain and having a plan for dealing with those urges can be vital to success.
Your specific method of deep breathing and inner reflection is great plan for dealing with cravings. Your four-year Quit is testament to that! Congratulations!
I think the real key is understanding that the craves are the drug addiction's attempt to lure you into nibbling the cheese to slam the trap shut on you again. Once you see how the trap works and understand that the only way to make the craves go away is to not smoke, then you start to have incredible power over the addiction. You have even more power when you come to understand, really understand, that you never got any benefit from smoking at all except to relieve the stress of drug withdrawal for 30 minutes until it starts again.
Ideally, the crave doesn't even require a decision, because the decision to escape the trap and never take another puff has been made. But, if you do allow yourself to consider options, just consider the only two real options:
1) Smoke none of them
2) Smoke all of them, accepting that you are deciding to smoke all day, every day, probably for the rest of your life.
That's the preparation for craves that is super important. Being prepared to be honest about the situation, instead of letting your mind get distracted into thinking about some fantasy cigarette that doesn't even exist in the real world.
When I got those craves and I started "romancing" the smoke, I woul force myself to actually imagine what smoking a cigarette would really be like. Not the sophisticated, stress-relieving pleasure our addition promises -- Instead it would smell horrible, taste worse than horrible, make me cough my head off and lose my quit. That's a real buzz kill and it's hard to romanticize it after that awful image.
I love the idea of flipping it ! I just can't wait to see the day when the craves are over ! I want out of this trap for good !
Slipping up is not worth it ! Take it from someone who has slipped 5 or 6 times in my lifetime for that one cigarette !
Slip #1 then 15 more years of smoking
slip#2 then about 4 more years
slip#3 more years
slip# 4 more years
slip#5 more years Now this quit which is the best and hopefully my final forever quit ! All those wasted years ruining my health ,my pocketbook , my self esteem, my disobedience to my God all because of a slip for that one cigarette ! You see how i even lost track of the quits and the time in between ?
If you are new in your quit take all the advice from the good people here and stick with your quit don't waste years and ruin your health !
I don't think you have to be afraid of craves. They are the perfect opportunity to enjoy a few deep cool breathes of clean air drawing deeply into the lungs and give a little fist pump celebration of finally breaking free of the ball and chain of the smoking trap.
Turn the crave on its head. Instead of thinking about some fantasy cigarette, use the crave as a moment of reflection about what smoking was really like before you quit. Trying to trick yourself into not thinking about cigarettes is probably not going to work, anyway. So use the craves as a way of reinforcing the reasons you made a personal commitment to never take another puff.
What happens, over time, is that smoking triggers stop being moments that make you want to smoke. Instead, they become trigger moments that trigger celebrations of not smoking. You flip it completely around. Instead of brainwashing yourself to believe that you enjoy smoking, you "brainwash" yourself to believe that you despise smoking and what it did to you.