Why is it so hard?
You’ve made the decision to quit. But still, you’re fighting that urge to smoke.
First of all, you didn’t wake up one morning and consciously decide to become addicted to nicotine. At some point, you learned that using nicotine did something for you. At the time, you may or may not have consciously known how dangerous tobacco was. Your subconscious mind wasn’t concerned with the ill effects on your health, the disgusting smell on your breath and clothes, the concerns of your husband, wife, kids or whoever. It just knew nicotine was fulfilling a need.
That’s why using the brute force of conscious will power is the least effective method for letting go of that nasty habit. It’s possible. It’s just difficult. But what if there’s another way? What if you could, rather than consciously “quitting” smoking, convince your subconscious mind that you are a nonsmoker?
That’s exactly what we aim to do with hypnosis.
Here’s how it works.
Let’s start with our unconscious mind. This is the mind that regulates and governs all of our basic life processes: breathing, circulation, digestion, etc. When you stop and think about it, when was the last time you ever had to consciously make the decision to breathe? It’s automatic and continuous. From the moment of your birth all the way through your life. Every minute of every day, your unconscious mind is working for your benefit. Keeping you alive in this incredibly loving and caring way. Take a moment to just appreciate that-the most basic part of who you are is ALWAYS taking care of you, wanting you to be happy, healthy, and in balance.
The next part is the subconscious. Now this is a very interesting part of your mind. This is the mind that is like a computer hard drive except it has unlimited space and is very powerful. This part of your mind collects and stores all of your learning and experience.
The subconscious mind governs things like language, motor skills, tying your shoelaces, and riding a bike. Once it learns and masters something, it gets kind of written in code. And the thing is, the subconscious mind doesn’t like to change things once it’s written them down and learned them. There’s a good reason for that. What would life be like if you had to learn the ABC’s every morning? Or your name, how to ride that bike, etc. So it’s very efficient and functional. Which is great. It’s very useful to be that way.
The problem is that the subconscious is non-judgmental. It’s quite gullible actually. It takes everything both literally and personally. As a result, it’s possible for the subconscious mind to internalize habits, behaviors, and beliefs that are either flawed from the beginning or become outmoded later in life. And because the subconscious doesn’t like to change, outmoded patterns of behavior can stick with us long after they’ve stopped benefiting us in the way they originally did.
Do you see where we might be going here?
Like we said before, your subconscious mind decided along the way that smoking was fulfilling a need. It was a strategy that worked and as long as it worked, there wasn’t any need to change it.
The best way to make that change now is to work with the subconscious mind directly. In the relaxed state of hypnosis, your subconscious mind can learn new things. In fact it is very good at learning. As we’ve seen, once it learns something it does a great job at just taking over the new behavior and doing it on its own. What you are be able to do in hypnosis is show your subconscious mind that using nicotine no longer serves you and that a new, healthier way of life is the way to go to meet your true needs.
