Slide 2:
On a sheet of paper write down all of your reasons why you want to stop smoking. State these reasons in the positive, as your mind will always give you what you focus on. This is very similar to what would happen if I asked you not to start thinking of blue, by trying not to think about blue makes you think about it. For example:
Negative Reasons: “I don’t want my clothes smelling of cigarettes”. “I don’t want to get ill”.
Positive Reasons: “I want my clothes to smell clean and fresh”. “I want to stay healthy”.
Slide 3:
Read through the positive reasons why you want to be a non-smoker daily and imagine having these benefits in you life now. This exercise will help you to do this.
Find a nice quiet place where you can relax, close your eyes and take a deep breath in. As you slowly exhale mentally say the word relax and imagine a wonderful wave of relaxation washing over your entire body. Repeat this process until you feel relaxed and then mentally say this suggestion to yourself;
“I am a non-smoker and I am going to remain a non-smoker for the rest of my life”
Once you have said the suggestion, imagine yourself in a situation feeling the benefits of this positive change. So if one of your reasons for stopping smoking is to save money you could imagine putting the money that you used to spend on cigarettes into a jar which is full.
Once you have played out this mental image inside your mind you would then repeat the suggestion to yourself again and create a new mental image. Once you have gone through all of your positive benefits you will then count upwards from 1 to 3 and open your eyes.
Slide 4:
Don’t tell yourself that stopping smoking is tough because doing that only makes quitting much more difficult. One of the real keys to change is to focus on what it is you want. Stop telling yourself that stopping smoking is difficult and start telling yourself that stopping smoking is easy.
If the urge to smoke strikes, close your eyes, take a deep breath in and as you exhale imagine that urge leaving your body in a cloud of black smoke. Repeat this exercise until the urge as vanished and then use it as a when is required.
Purchase a stop smoking hypnosis CD and listen to it at least three times per week.
Slide 5:
Nicotine is a drug that naturally occurs in tobacco. When you puff on a cigarette, you inhale nicotine in the smoke and it then spreads through your body. Nicotine interferes with communication between nerve cells. The result is a relaxing, pleasant feeling that makes you want to smoke more.
As you continue to smoke, your body adapts and becomes tolerant to nicotine. You have to smoke more cigarettes in order to achieve the same pleasant feeling. Because your body metabolizes nicotine quickly, the level of nicotine in your blood drops within a couple of hours and you find yourself needing to smoke repeatedly throughout the day to refresh the drug’s effect. At some point, enough nicotine may accumulate in your system that you may need only a certain number of cigarettes each day to keep the level stable.