Elements of a Smoking Habit
Pretend you or someone you know has a bad habit. A big bad monkey on your back. How did it get there? How did it start? Probably a combination of three things; 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.
When you were in that age range we can assume you were learning about your life and how you fit into it. You may not have felt as sure about yourself.
Maybe you felt self-conscious, dependent 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?
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.
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.
If you’ve tried to stop smoking before, you may have already thought of these things. And you’ve spent time thinking and analyzing your habit. But, you didn’t learn this habit by thinking and analyzing, so why would trying to quit smoking that way?
It makes a whole lot of sense to quit smoking using the same methods you started smoking with. A “hypnotized” state of mind combined with emotions, authority figures and repetition. Also known as: modern hypnosis.
