How to grow to a happy non-smoker

it was a closer to the afternoon and it was about to leave my office when

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

 of that she felt guilty for smoking but she kept on smoking why smoking activates the reward areas of your brain like the nucleus accumbens that cause you to release feel-good chemicals like dopamine so you smoke again and again to replicate the pleasurable effects of dopamine it's something nicotine that make smoking real addictive it's the instant change in Briggs your emotional state so I asked

 Melissa what do you need to feel in your life like now at first her face was clouded she was puzzled and then she raised her head and looked at me like someone had turned on a switch in her brain she told me certainty and you could see it in her face her eyes were wide open she couldn't believe what she'd said you see in the face of the uncertainty of death smoking was offering her a sense of certainty because she knew she could get an instant fix of pleasure at anytime and all smokers smoke either to boost a good emotional state or to escape from a

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