Let’s face it we all now know that smoking is not good for us from a health point of view. One of the things that doesn’t help is that the effect of smoking cigarettes on your health only starts to become apparent from your mid 30’s onward.
This often means that you can smoke for 10 to 15 years without thinking that smoking is destroying your health. Most people that come to me to quit smoking are 35 and over. They can feel the effect that smoking is having on their health and they worry about what it will do to their future health.
Even though we have all the evidence and can see that smoking cigarettes is not good for our future health we still go ahead and smoke. Why do we do it?
The answer is that smoking cigarettes has tricked the unconscious mind into associating smoking with safety and survival. The unconscious is the most powerful part of your mind and if it does not want to change then no matter what you consciously want to do, it will not happen.
As human beings, we want to be part of a group. The reason for this that your chances of safety and survival are greater in a group. This has been wired into us from the past. Just about everyone starts smoking to fit in. People that you admire, friends and family are smoking so you decide to try smoking a cigarette. Your conscious mind goes, wow I’m fitting in so I’ll transfer this habit to the unconscious mind. It goes; by fitting in there is a higher chance of safety and survival and therefore smoking now becomes associated with safety and survival in the unconscious mind.
If you want to quit smoking then you have to break this association of safety and survival in the unconscious mind. There are many ways to stop smoking but the most successful way is with hypnosis. The reason for this is that hypnosis allows you to give suggestions directly to the unconscious to break the habit of smoking.