How to grow to a happy non-smoker
suddenly my bell rings I
opened the door and I seemed a colorful well-dressed lady really classy Melissa
who is a single mother of two and a very successful lawyer came to me desperate
to quit smoking by the time we met she had been smoking for 36 years up to 25 packs
a day and she had developed lung cancer because of smoking and she was on the
list for a transplant but her
Doctors wouldn't operate
on her because she was still smoking and Melissa had tried to quit with every
method out there from nicotine gums and patches to smoking pills and even
vaping but she couldn't stay away from her cigarettes every time she managed to
quit for a few weeks she fell into depression gained weight and even had
suicidal thoughts at this point you might say how is it
possible to have a
terminal disease because of smoking and not quit let me
tell you Melissa was wondering - in our first conversation she told me I know that every cigarette I smoke brings me closer to death I don't want to die but I still smoke what's wrong with me so you understand that being in that position Melissa was afraid of dying and on top
bad one when you're stressed you smoke to relax and feel better that's an escape when you're having a drink you smoke to enjoy your drink even more that's a boost in any case the motive for smoking is to feel good in fact that's what all self-destructive behaviors have in common they're driven emotions when you do repeatedly something that hurts you it's not
because you're insane it's because it gives you an immediate emotional reward that's why Melissa's need for a pleasure
was greater and he need to survive so I thought if a smoker can feel the same pleasure without smoking then quitting will be easy so the question is how can we stimulate this mental high in non destructive ways professor Martha burns found that learning something new and exciting activates the same reward areas of the brain as do drugs and gambling when you have an aha moment when you hear something inspirational when you meet someone new or when you learn
something new about yourself when your consciousness expands in general your brain releases dopamine and you feel happy and the most consistent way to feel happy when quitting smoking is by learning something about yourself while quitting smoking so it is through self-development that we can stimulate dopamine in our brain so we can literally outgrow our addictions and after digging deep and modeling the psychology of addiction mean my team in
the smoking cessation formula found the exact mental and behavioral stages that take you through the spectrum of change and cause this mental high of self development these stages are the forces system and I'm going to walk you through them but I'm going to come back to stage the one at the end because it's the most important one and people don't forget this stage so they fail every time so what is the second see the source of every transformation is your personal
potential but no
transformation can be made if your potential remains potential so in this stage
you have to cultivate your potential so you can start growing into a nonsmoker
and your potential is the sum of your identity your emotions and your beliefs
you can't grow if you don't tackle all three elements think about it if you
want to change your body and lose 20 pounds you first have to be able to see
the slimmer version of you
and identify with it then this slimmer version of you has to make you feel good and third you have to believe that you can do it I remember I asked Melissa do
you want to quit smoking she told me yes of course and then I paused I looked at her and I asked her again do you believe you can quit smoking and she kept staring at me because desire manifests in words but beliefs manifest in behavior the way you behave around smokers the way you behave around cigarettes when you're alone all depend on whether or not you believe you can become a nonsmoker so before you quit you have to be able to see yourself as a nonsmoker then the
idea of being a nonsmoker has to make you feel good and most importantly you have to believe that it's possible to quit even more you have to believe that you specifically can quit the next stage c3 is where you eliminate your smoking behavior and to do that you have to change your smoking pattern most smokers thing but all they have to do to quit is resist cigarettes with willpower until the desire to smoke fades away but that's the hard way to quit because your smoking behavior which is the action of taking a cigarette putting it in your mouth and lighting it up is just the tip of the iceberg every cigarette you light
up is preceded by your
thought of smoking and your emotional state our
thoughts affect our emotions and our emotions affect our behaviors for example someone who thinks of themselves as weak they will feel weak and if they feel weak they will show weakness in their behavior or someone who thinks of themselves as attractive they will feel attractive and when you feel attractive you behave differently you hold yourself differently you speak differently the same way having positive thoughts wife smoking like I feel so good now or so
enjoy the cigarette lead
to positive emotions about smoking and positive
emotions about smoking
reinforce your smoking behavior so you will stop
picking up a cigarette
only when you change how you feel while smoking and to do that you first have
to change what your mind thinks while smoking
so let's see what happens inside the smokers mind during a craving when you're
trying to quit you have an internal dialogue that
go something like that I want a cigarette don't smoke but I want a cigarette you can't have a cigarette don't do
it now while having an internal dialogue like that three things happen one the image that preoccupies your mind is that of a cigarette - your thoughts begin an end with a word cigarette so you read definitely three feel deprived and suffer during a craving if all you think about is that you can't have that cigarette and if you say to yourself don't smoke well that's a problem because your mind or better your unconscious mind cannot process negatives let me explain the thought actually there's an experiment together so now I want you not to think of a pink
elephant no matter what
you think do not think of a pink elephant no matter what you do please do not
think of a pink elephant to not think pink elephant what were you thinking of a
big elephant you see your mind cannot take negative orders and I didn't write
anything and I didn't show you any picture of a pink elephant because I wanted
you to see how powerful your thoughts can be even without visual stimulation
but in case
you were wondering that's why pink elephant would look like and the pink elephant principle applies to everything for instance what happens when you tell a kid
don't go there or don't do this usually if not always do the opposite because this is how you create in their mind the urgency to disobey and you do the same thing to yourself when you want to smoke and you say don't smoke or I can't smoke so to get to my point you create a feeling of urgency that's overwhelming you see nothing else you think of nothing else and you want nothing else other than smoking so how do you change your thinking during cravings the battery the charges our internal dialogue is the words we use the words
create images the words create thoughts and the words ultimately define how your mind and body will experience the craving imagine dragging your fingernails across the chalkboard what happens you didn't touch a chalkboard yet your fault somehow affected your body the same way when you say the word cigarette in your inner talk all your mental processes will revolve around cigarettes so you will physically experience the craving of more intense so what you have to do is replace the word cigarette with another one what works is replacing the word cigarette
with air so instead of thinking I want a cigarette think I want air I need air give me some air you're not going to picture feel and do the same things if you use the word cigarette and air so you will experience your craving in a completely different way so next time you have a craving say and say it out loud I want air freedom popcorn seriously use any word or phrase that resonates with you for example Melissa used the names of her children and the more you practice you're creating world the more vividly and
effortlessly it will
come to your mind the next time so I encourage you to try it because if you
know you can control your cravings for a cigarette
you will quit smoking and you can use the same technique to overcome food cravings alcohol cravings and negative thinking now the next stage determines if you will relapse have you ever learned a new skill like a foreign
language a musical instrument or even a card and as the time passed without practicing that skill you totally forgot it if that has happened to you is simply because you didn't condition that skill conditioning something you have learned is as important as learning it so the fourth thing is condition your smoke-free life because becoming a nonsmoker is like any skill you first have to learn it and then you have to condition it that's how you can forget
your smoking pattern and the best way to forget is to replace so what you have to do this time is replace smoking altogether with a new beneficial and healthy habit a habit that will help you satisfy the same emotional needs that you used to meet by smoking melissa chose to replace smoking with journalism and the process of learning and developing a new skill helped her brain find new means to really stop me and it still does that's how Melissa quit had a
successful surgery and
remains a happy nonsmoker up to this day and I will have one thing left I told
you I'm going to leave this till the end because all of the previous stages
wouldn't mean as much without this so before doing
anything else you have to choose to quit everything starts with a decision everything you have ever done that has made you the person here today is because you made a decision or failed to make one but even not making a decision about how you want your health and your life to be in the future then this is a decision to write the mistake Melissa
was making was putting down the facts and then expecting to feel motivated to quit because it's the logical thing to do but her logic couldn't overpower the emotional connection she had with smoking smoking is an emotional behavior so the decision to quit should also emotional and it was when Melissa focused only on how her death would affect her children that she was able to
get leverage on herself and choose to change and you have you ever said about anything that's it I've had enough this has to change in your family in your relationships in your career anywhere and immediately you stepped up and these things you never thought you could you see the problem is not that you're too weak to stuck or to addicted the problem is that you have never used your
emotions to make a real firm decision to change and if you choose then cultivate change and then condition you will see yourself transforming before your eyes and I'm telling you this because no matter where you live what lifestyle you have or how long you've been smoking over eating drinking or holding your true self back in any way the force is self development system works because the psychology of addiction works under the same principles for all humans and you are greater than your addiction you