Quit Smoking

Please help - I want to quit smoking!

Most of the information you require is in my book "Piece of Mind". It is really important to have a good understanding of how the brain works - so don't just skip the book and get to the part on quitting smoking. I have copied below a segment on this topic from Page 187. 

Quit Smoking Imagery. Quitting smoking is a good one but quite a difficult one for me because I've never smoked. There are two ways that one can go about this, either cold turkey or just a little bit at a time. I suggest that you do it a little bit at a time. So if you smoke 20 cigarettes a day then you need to come down to 15 and then to 10 and then to 5 and then to 1 and then to none. Remember, one thing not to say is: "I don't smoke", because what does that mean to your subconscious mind? It means: "I smoke, give me a cigarette". What you could picture is a scene of you having a cigarette, but feeling ill and vomiting because the cigarette tastes like .......... (the worst thing you can think of). Another way is to picture a scene where you normally have a cigarette and in that scene see yourself not having that cigarette. You see yourself congratulating yourself and saying "Well done" to yourself every time you don't have a cigarette. If you start hankering after a cigarette, then remind yourself what it tastes like. A good goal is "I have healthy lungs and a clean breath."

What you need to do now is to practise imagery or visualisation. The task is to know what scenes (or imagery) are right for you to represent the success of your aim or goal. You can do this in any way that you want. Take about five minutes and get that feeling, get that scene. I suggest that you use my tape A Peaceful Place No. 1 (Instrumental), with the Infinite Joy music. You could of course play the baroque music tapes. You could if you wish go to your Peaceful Place inside your mind and ask yourself for the imagery.

It is now important for you to continue to do your goal (using the 8 steps of getting goals faster), say 5 times a day. Go back to the section in the book on Setting Goals and write down your goal in Positive, Personal, Present Tense language. To expand what I have said above, it could be "I have healthy lungs, a fresh breath, and save money". Note that the word "smoke" is not mentioned in the wording of the goal. What we're trying to do here is establish a new habit of not smoking. You will always remember that you smoked before, and that's OK, because you can now congratulation yourself on not smoking.

There is no doubt that the stop smoking goal is quite a challenge to achieve - so Good Luck.

What self-talk or goal should I use to quit smoking

One thing not to say is "I don't smoke", because to your subconscious mind, that means "I smoke - give me a cigarette".  What you could picture is a scene of you having a cigarette but feeling ill and vomiting because the cigarette tastes awful.  Another way is to picture a scene where you normally have a cigarette and in that scene see yourself not having that cigarette.  You see yourself congratulating yourself and saying "Well done" to yourself every time you don't have a cigarette.  If you start hankering after a cigarette, then remind yourself what it tastes like.

It's also very important to work with goals.  A good goal is "I have healthy lungs and clean breath".