I've seen no causative correlation between a client's "Hypnotizability" and their likelihood of remaining a nonsmoker for life. Real world long term success (with any change) is based on other factors such as: How was the decision made? Does the client "own" this decision? What physical actions will be used to create the change, and do those actions produce the desired result? Is the change properly motivated and reinforced? What's the defining attitude of the person making the change? Such topics are best pursued face to face through conversational and interactive techniques.

The anxiety symptoms many smokers experience when "Trying To Quit" are not caused by physical nicotine withdrawal. They are outcomes based on learned behavior, perception and attitude. Smokers get plenty of experience feeling punished whenever they can't get a cigarette. Easy then to imagine that never smoking at all must be constant deprivation. A smoker who is trying to quit says, "I want to smoke, but I can't." A nonsmoker says, "I could smoke, but I don't want to."

The dramatic emotional struggles that smokers call "cravings" are not symptoms of physical withdrawal, they are behavioral conflicts that come up when you feel you're being arbitrarily denied something you really want.

A junkie who can't get heroin may experience a medical emergency, but a smoker who can't have a cigarette doesn't need a hospital. Unhappy deprived smokers aren't having physical cravings, they are throwing temper tantrums!

Make a list of the things in life that you truly love -- people, sensations, flavors, experiences. Then try to figure out how to include smoking on that list. You'll quickly see there's a big difference.

If there is something you don't want to do, and you don't have to do it, you're not going to do it at all. Smokers seldom understand the actual behavioral factors that produce continued smoking, they flip back and forth between thinking that they want to do it (affection) and thinking that they have to do it (addiction). Neither is actually true, but both ideas are handy to preserve self-esteem.

Nicotine is a rapid onset, short duration minor stimulant. It immediately elevates heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. We created many pleasant associations between smoking and other behaviors that relieve stress, but nicotine doesn't produce physical relaxation, it actually competes against it. And being a smoker adds meta-stressors to anyone's life.

You're creating for yourself what's called a "False Dilemma" where you believe there are only two possible outcomes and you must choose, in this case, either smoking or obesity. This can be so confusing that many people end up achieving both. But there is certainly a third possible outcome, involving neither. Most nonsmokers have better health, fitness and BMI than most smokers.

Many of my clients who have previously beaten serious drug and alcohol addictions often say that quitting smoking is harder than it was for them to quit (_______). On the physical level, it's nonsense to compare the tantrums of nicotine cessation with the the neurological trauma of Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome. Nicotine is actually the easiest drug to kick, physically, and the fastest to achieve complete detox. Whenever I ask former hard drug users how they successfully beat the hard stuff, the answer is always "cold turkey" followed by complete abstinence (Accompanied by increased self-esteem and self-efficacy.) When I ask what methods they've tried for quitting smoking, they will report that they've tried everything BUT immediate cessation and total abstinence, the proven formula that they already know how to use successfully.

The odds are in your favor. There are now more former smokers than current smokers in the US. Of all the people who have ever smoked, more than half no longer do. And teen smoking is at a record low, below 8%

Because we humans tend to favor information that supports pre-existing views, (and we tend to ignore or reject ideas that don't), smokers tend to collect only those ideas and experiences that support continued smoking and difficulty stopping. They are often surprised to discover that nonsmokers operate from a completely different set of ideas. Learning to understand smoking from the perspective of a nonsmoker makes it possible to leverage information you've long ignored and rejected. From a nonsmoker's pre-existing viewpoint you can see familiar information in completely different ways.

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Learn how to find and adopt more resourceful perspectives, to see challenge as opportunity, to dispel and replace fear with confidence.

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