Developing individualized strategies: ‘What's in Your Toolkit?’
All participants described developing a personalized set of strategies that they found helpful in reducing smoking, described as acquiring ‘a couple of tricks up your sleeve’ (Participant 10). These strategies included goal setting, setting a quit date, problem‐solving, removing access to cigarettes, communicating with others about quitting, positive self‐talk, distraction, breathing and mindfulness techniques and using smoking cessation resources such as apps. It seemed particularly important to develop ‘substitutes’ (Participant 12) that fulfilled the function of smoking (Table Practical strategies provided by the intervention appeared to make the quit attempt feel more manageable and enhance participants' sense of psychological capability (Table Although smoking cessation medication was not viewed as helpful by everyone, some participants found it to be an important tool (Table The strategy of communicating with others about quitting was viewed as important by several participants. They described being with others who were smoking as a trigger (Table 