Let's pretend you wanted form a habit. And not just some wimpy habit, but a major, mind controlling, and life changing habit behavior. Where do you start to make it a really strong habit that will feel impossible to break? There are three basic ways we learn habits; emotions, authority figures, and repetition.
An example will help explain this.
Let's just use a younger you for the example, 10-14 years old. And for this example, let's use the habit of smoking. If you don't smoke.... replace the word "smoking" with any craving you get, or just pretend you smoke? It is an article about smoking after all.
While in that age range, we'll assume you were learning about life and how you fit in it. You may not have felt as sure about yourself as you would later in life.
Maybe you felt self-conscious, dependant on others, powerless, not good enough, or something like these. We'll refer to this as feeling "bad". Now, this does not necessarily mean you felt miserable, but did you feel as "good" as you wanted to feel? Did you feel as "good" as you believed other people felt?
Maybe, maybe not. If you sometimes felt "bad" you probably wanted to feel better, you wanted to feel "good". What your mind would see as an answer to this problem would depend upon your experiences and life lessons up to that point. Right?
Experiences that teach you smoking is strong, capable, tough, independent, self-assured, unique, and feels "good". Experiences that involve emotions, authority figures and repetition. Of course advertisements do this, so do parents and family members. Are these experiences repeated? Of course.
Your mind would develop a craving for the very thing it believes is in your best interest. The thing that will make you feel better. A craving that is a "feeling", separate from a "knowing".
Eventually you smoked your first cigarette, and DID feel better, sort of. You weren't too good at smoking the first time. You had to practice to get good at it. And you did.
Time passes and you continue to reinforce the emotional associations with your triggers. If you feel tired, stressed or angry, you want to smoke to get that refreshing "ahhhh" feeling.
A lot of people working to quit smoking have thought of these things. A lot have not. But, all of the people that have tried to quit smoking have used a lot of time thinking and analyzing their habit. Trying to argue themselves into quitting. But, you didn't learn this habit by thinking and analyzing. Why would trying to quit smoking that way work?
It is common sense to quit smoking using the same elements that created the habit. A "hypnotized" mind, along with emotions, authority figures and repetition. These are the elements of modern hypnosis.
Patrick Glancy, NGH Board Certified Hypnotist with a focus on
behavior modification to Quit Smoking with Hypnosis
Quick Hypnosis - Self-Help Hypnosis on CD and MP3 Download Click here to get your own unique version of this article.
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