When you read the title of this article you may have thought, 30 days is a lot; with hypnosis, I should be able to stop smoking by the end of next week; shouldn’t hypnosis work a little faster?
Unfortunately, old habits are not that easy to change. You have programmed your conscious mind to want a cigarette at certain times.
Maybe you always have a cigarette when you are on the phone, or at break time, or when you are in the car, etc.
Then, when you decide to stop smoking, you feel like you are giving something up. At a weak moment, maybe in a time of stress or if something bad just happened, you decide that it is not worth giving up this thing that you used to like so much.
You had the willpower to quit, but the moment you decide to question your decision, your conscious mind gets out of sync with your subconscious mind, and in all that confusion, you are likely to decide to have a smoke.
There is a simple process you can use to get the two minds back together. You have to make your subconscious stronger by changing the way it feels about smoking.
That way, in weak moments your subconscious will immediately take over with the correct suggestions; and because hypnosis uses positive imagery and not just words, there are no longer thoughts of having given something up.
Your thoughts instead concentrate on how healthy you feel, or how good a glass of water would be right now, or in general, how good things taste these days.
You will naturally have more energy without the chemical addiction and this will help you exercise more, and reinforce the subconscious even more that what you are doing is a good thing and not just something you are being deprived of.
It works, but it does take time. A one-time hypnotic suggestion is usually not powerful enough to change your mind instantly.
That is why hypnosis tapes come in handy. You pay one small price and you can listen to them as many times as you need to make the urge go away.
You will probably want to listen to the tapes three times a week at first, and then when you feel like the suggestions are getting stronger, you can listen once a week, then once a month, etc.
Using a trained hypnotist is also an option, and may get the job done sooner, but it’s usually beneficial to have the security of a hypnosis tape — just in case.
