The Makings of a Tobacco Habit
Imagine you wanted to start a habit. A strong, automatic way of thinking and acting. How do you start a habit like this? There are three basic ways; emotions, authority figures, and repetition.
Example:
Now, let’s pick a person for our example. How about you when you were 10-14 years old. And for this example, let’s use the habit of smoking.
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.
Kids that age sometimes feel self-conscious, dependent on others, powerless, not good enough, or??. We’ll call this feeling “bad”. This is not saying you felt miserable, but maybe didn’t feel “good” as you thought you should feel? Did you feel as “good” as you thought other people felt?
Possibly, (probably) not. Which would mean you wanted to feel better, or at least as good as you thought other people feel. What would make you feel better? That depends on the influences in your life to that point.
Maybe you had authority figures in your young life that smoked, like parents, relatives, friends, advertisements, role models. At this point in your life, smoking would have been seen as tough, strong, independent, self-assured, unique, “good”. Repetitively exposed to the thing you felt your life lacked.
This would create a desire (craving) in you to do this thing. A belief that smoking is what your life is missing. And not just in a “knowing” way, but a “feeling” way as well, which is much more powerful.
Then you tried your first cigarette, and chances are that you weren’t so good at smoking. That would come with practice.
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 a lot easier to quit smoking with the same methods you started smoking with. A “hypnotized” state of mind combined with emotions, authority figures and repetition. Often called modern hypnosis.
Quit smoking hypnotherapy programs available for fast download from Quick Hypnosis!
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