Written by: Jessica Betancourt, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Smoking is one of those habits that sort of starts off by accident, becomes ingrained in one's identity, and can feel difficult to quit even after one has decided that they would rather not smoke. There are many remedies available for quitting but even if someone finds short-term success with these methods, the tendency is to go back to it.
If you have a smoking habit that you'd like to be rid of once and for all, please read on for valuable insight on changing this health-damaging habit for good.
Cigarettes and vapes offer pleasure and comfort, reprieve, and release for those who use them. And this is of course necessary – we are designed to seek comfort and pleasure as a mechanism of our survival. The problem with smoking as a solution to this need, however, is, of course, the damage that it causes to your health. We might also casually mention: the financial cost, the investment of your time, the lingering small on your breath, hair and clothes, and the separation from intimacy with those who do not like to be around it.
But if you've been a smoker for some time, it can feel like nothing else is capable of giving the satisfaction of a drag or a toke. And that is the area that we are going to explore in this article – the longevity of the habit itself.
Think back to your very first drag of a cigarette. I remember mine. I was in 7th grade, hanging out in a parking lot with some older kids as lots of teens in suburbia tend to do. They had cigarettes. I was curious. I took a drag and thought that I was on fire! My throat hurt so bad, I was coughing and everyone laughed. Why would I do that again??
And yet, when I started working at 16, the visible and immediately obvious way that you got to take a break and go outside was if you were a smoker. I wanted to go outside. I wanted to have friends. I wanted to get up from my telemarketer desk. So I began smoking. I told myself that I would quit when I turned 18 but I didn't. I was able to quit for long periods, but eventually, I always went back to it.
I smoked fairly consistently until I was 40 when I discovered how to finally stop without ever looking back.
Here is the big secret in a nutshell. If you are a smoker and you wish to quit, you need to stop identifying yourself as being a smoker. Stop calling yourself that. Because every time you self-identify as a smoker, your subconscious beliefs – that you need to smoke or that smoking helps you – become reinforced. Our habits define us. We are the culmination of the things that we repeatedly do, significantly so by the seemingly little things that we do every day. We do what we do as a reflection of who we perceive ourselves to be. And so, to change a habit, we must first learn to see ourselves through a new lens, a lens that is more evolved or at least different than who we have been.
If you've been smoking for a long time, there is an older, former version of you that developed the attachment to the smoking habit. And the current version of you is partially attached to the former version of you, with beliefs about smoking that originated at that time.
Let's use an example. Say that you started smoking as a teen because it was a way to 'bond' with other kids. Every time you got into that smoking circle, your mind reinforced a belief that "I am in company. See, I am not alone. I am with others, we're doing the same thing, we're connected." Now as an adult, you may or may not still be in the literal smoking circle but your mind has an attached belief to the cigarette that it represents, 'company', 'comfort', 'acceptance', 'security', 'belonging' etc. So that even if you are smoking alone, you feel not alone, you feel like you have a 'friend', someone(thing) that understands you and doesn't judge you.
I have worked with many clients who consider and refer to cigarettes as being their companion, they keep them company.
The important thing to see here is that as an adult, you have a different mentality, a broader scope of life, and better resources than you did when you were even a young adult or a teen.
The action step to take then is this – consider what it is that you say to yourself about your smoking. Look objectively at this thought. Who owns this belief? Is it not, in fact, really resonant with a younger, former version of you? If you can answer 'Yes' to this question sequence, experiment assigning these beliefs to younger, former you. And then, play around with calling yourself a 'former smoker', even if you don't exactly have evidence for the truth of this statement yet, your mind will start to shift to help you perceive yourself as someone who 'used to smoke'. Because when you change your mind, you change your reality.
Are you ready to experience the rest of your life as someone who is a 'former smoker'?
I have successfully helped many people quit smoking overnight using hypnotherapy and Neuro-linguistic Programming techniques. I am quite confident that this method can help you as well. Book your private smoking cessation consultation with me right here.
Read more from Jessica!
Jessica Betancourt, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jessica Betancourt is an RTT trained hypnotherapist and Certified Transformational Life Coach specializing in addiction transformation with an emphasis for Alcohol Use Disorder. After having gotten clear that her own drinking habits had become problematic, she successfully re-trained her brain using meditation, hypnosis, spiritual practices and subconscious reprogramming to heal her relationship with alcohol. She now works helping others to do the same with their addictive tendencies, which may have also included but are certainly not limited to: smoking, food, cocaine, marijuana, and sugar. She is a mom of 4 and lives in her adopted country of Spain with her Spanish husband and she dies an ego death every day
