How to Stop Smoking - Mental tricks to end the Habit
by Dr Andrew Dobson, Hypnotherapist & Life Coach

There is without a doubt an addictive element to smoking that comes in the form of Nicotine in the tobacco, as well as the other chemicals added to cigarettes that enhance the absorption within your body. What is overstated is the intensity of addictiveness.

For example you can and do go without smoking while you sleep, you are not woken by a craving to have a cigarette during the middle of the night. Granted if you wake up you can choose to have a smoke – but you are not so strongly addicted that it controls or interferes with your life to the point where you are woken in the middle of the night just to have a smoke. No doubt there have been times when the only reason you decide to have a smoke is because you have noticed your so pre-occupied with something else you have simply forgotten to remember to have a smoke.

The reality is, that nicotine is removed from the body pretty quickly, in fact a person is able to smoke 3-4 cigarettes a day without the body having too much trouble removing the poison's from your system. Within 2-3 days after stopping smoking the nicotine has been removed from your system and almost immediately the effects begin to reduce and are almost completely gone within a week or just a little longer.

Cravings - what are they really?

We are told and tend to believe that nicotine cravings are akin to much harder drugs – but lets examine this myth and be honest with ourselves.

Usually you know it is time to have a smoke because you notice the 'feeling' or craving in your stomach and begin to feel agitated. The feeling is not that much different to a feeling of hunger. Be honest, there is no pain, no intense physical sensations, just a nagging feeling like you get when your hungry. The agitation is about the same as you feel if someone's car alarm has gone off and you have noticed that it has somehow disturbed your peace of mind. You have consistently throughout your life managed to avoid eating when hungry and have lived through the few minutes of someones annoying car alarm. So the truth is, you can handle this situation, you always have before - just when it relates to smoking you have been convinced that somehow you can't manage the slight 3 minutes of discomfort.

And as you know – if your unable to act on this sensation of craving – it goes away pretty quickly. If you do not take the time to act on your 'addiction' you tend to forget about it with no consequence until it occurs again and your able to have a smoke. As we have already established – you can go all through the night or during a long plane trip without the cravings bothering you too much at all.

Smoking is mostly mental

If your honest with yourself, the obvious answer to stopping smoking is to enhance your mental skills to combat what has become a habit. Over time your brain has changed it's structure to maintain your belief that you are a smoker. One aspect of this is your sub conscious mind, which does it's best to provide for you answers to the types of questions you ask yourself and the types of beliefs you hold about who you are. If you ask yourself "why can't I give up smoking"? your sub conscious will do it's best to answer this question for you, creating automatic thoughts such as "it's addictive I have no control" or 'I just don't have the willpower" or worst of all "Why give up something I enjoy doing". The bottom line is – for a while you are going to have to challenge this automatic response and start to dictate to your unconscious how you want to be instead. The good news is that it does not take very long for your sub conscious to start providing you with automatic responses that support being a non smoker.

First, Reframe what you are doing.

You are not giving up anything! When you use the words give up it implies a loss - when the reality is your gaining so much more. Your gaining health and energy, your graining money, your graining self control, your gaining the self respect that comes with creating your own reality and not being a slave to advertising or mass opinion. So stop saying I am giving up smoking, instead remind yourself that you are gaining health or control

Do not give into the temptation to smoke. Most of the time we tell ourselves "It's time for a smoke" or "I'll just take a rest and have a smoke" but we are not really responding to a need to smoke. Smoking does not relax you, it is taking the time to take slow long deep breathes and allow your mind to mentally drift off from the task at hand that relaxes you. You can do this without the smoking - Billions of people already do, and so can you.

Second, Expect the craving.

It is going to happen, your body is going to notice the lack of nicotine and remind you it is time to have a smoke. You already know you can handle the craving, you can handle a couple of minutes of feeling hungry and being slightly annoyed. Tell yourself 'if I really need one I can do it in an hours time" because you know you can always choose to have a cigarette you just choose to have it a little later on, and you repeat telling yourself this.

The good news is that on day 2 or 3 as a non smoker the cravings become less frequent and less annoying. Most people find that after 4-7 days they hardly even give a second thought to smoking. If the thought pops into your mind you are already with your standard answer 'later' and can continue with what your doing

Third, Something to do when your eating/resting,taking a break

Most of us have formed the habit of having a smoke after a meal or while drinking or even as a reward after we have done some work. Lets examine this aspect. Paying good money to slowly kill yourself is not a reward. You already know this – and now you understand that this is just a automatic response from your sub conscious mind to answer questions you can actively change your response by challenging what your thinking. When you notice your having this thought you say to yourself "Self, that's not like me, what I want to think instead is …." And fill in the type of thought you would rather have.

Having a smoke while your drinking or after dinner is just a habit. Plenty of people manage to do these activities without this habit. Again you make yourself conscious of what you want and challenge any automatic thoughts from the old pattern of behavior. It really is this easy

Fourth, reframe what smoking means to you.

You will see other people smoking, and in the past this may have been an automatic trigger for you to reach for your pack and lite up. You need to create new automatic thoughts that occur when you see this external sight. You might like to say to yourself "wow, beat that guy could have brought a boat or car by now" or "My kids are so lucky I am their role model and not that guy". You can create a few lines for yourself so that you are prepared to create the brain structure that supports your decision to be a non smoker.

To stop smoking, you are going to have to work on the most difficult aspect of being a smoker and that is the automatic thoughts and behavior you have created to support the illusion you are a smoker. The addiction and cravings are the easy part, you noticing and challenging your thoughts and fleeting feelings is not that much more difficult, it just takes a little longer to reprogram your sub conscious mind.

You can of course use a therapy modality that specializes in changing your sub conscious mind such as hypnosis or NLP. Using such an approach is not always necessary but can provide a big jump in your journey towards being a non smoker. But you are also able to take responsibility for the retraining of your mind to move you in the direction of being a healthy non smoker by reminding yourself of the steps listed above.

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