Saying NO to Cigarettes

Thursday 12 SEPTEMBER 2002 (THE SUN)
by Julian Aloysius Leicester

Find it difficult to kick the smoking habit? Julian A. Leicester explains how the subconscious rukes our urges.

Some people say that smoking is a habit; some suggest it's a physical addiction. Even the scientific community is at loggerheads- half claim smoking is addictive, while the other half disagrees. Both sides offer 'proof'. It does not really matter because, with slef-hypnosis we can stop smoking in an hour if you really wanted to.

If you want to form a habit - say you want to ride a bike - you have to consciously think and practise putting your feet on the pedals, your hands on the handle bars and then try to balance. If you carry on doing that enough times, your subconscious mind will take it on board and you no longer have to think about what your feet and hands are doing. You are able to think about what is happening on the road and what is happening because your subconscious does the automatic stuff.

Nobody trains to get a bad habit, so smoking isn't a bad habit. It may be unhealthy, but it was not bad at the time you started doing it - because you wanted to do it. It was a cool thing to do, relaxing and fun.

You get into the habit of something when you practise it. Likewise, you can also get out of a habit by practising. That is why you have a problem - because your subconscious mind is preventing you from changing until it makes certain that you are ready to change.

As already mentioned, the subconscious does not make a judgement on whether a habit is good or bad. As far as the subconscious is concerned, its job is to hold on to the hait until a time when the conscious mind has practised you out of the habit. And that would be a lot of hard work, wouldn't it?

Now, with cigarette smokers who try to give up smoking, the subconscious is nudging them to carry on smoking. You have probably done it yourself; you have probably decided to stop, but when it is time for your next cigarette, the conscious mind then comes in and says that it is not good to smoke, it is dangerous and it will probably kill you.

The conscious mind is giving you reasons why you should stop smoking, whilst the subconscious nudges 'must smoke now' and continues with the urge for a cigarette. It is important to know that a habit can be formed at any time in life. Say for instance, tomorrow you decide to start eating chocolate bar before going to bed each night and you repeat that every night. Eventually it would become a habit and you would expect to have your chocolate bar every night.

One night, some time later suppose you went to the refrigerator and the chocolate box was empty, you would probably be alittle irratated because now the subconscious is providing the urge to have the chocolate bar. This is because the habit has now been formed.

In hypnosis, we go into the subconscious filing system and replace the satisfaction with something more beneficial to you. It could be something as simple as deep breathing for relaxation, exercising, hobbies or enriching your self confidence. The satisfaction has to be taken away from the cigarettes and transfered to something more advantageous, to remove the cigarettes without taking away anything that is enjoyable.

Once the reasons and the satisfaction has been removed from the cigarette, you can actually see the cigarette for what it really is - a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Previously, you had looked at the cigarette as something harmless. Now, you can see it in its true light as a poison or disease. In fact, the smell and taste of the cigarette is disgustingly different now. - Julian A. Leicester




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