Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Do NOT stop smoking


 Oh really Jerin, you may think why should I say that. Hey, I am not saying it; rather the sub-conscious mind speaks this, to those who think of stop smoking. Okay, now you may wonder what this sub-conscious mind is! What it has to do with smoking?

Wait, wait, I will explain it very precisely to you. Let me start-off by sharing the purpose of this writing. My intention is to find a solution for those who 'try' quit smoking but can’t make it. They even end up in being more ‘professional’ smokers. After reading this, may be you could help yourself or someone else to really find a better ‘profession’ other than smoking :)

To easily quit smoking or quit any bad habit, you need to understand that your mind is divided in to two. And also you need to understand its functionality.
  • Conscious mind and
  • Sub-conscious mind
Conscious mind is controlling your feelings and other day-to-day activities, like smiling crying and speaking. Even though this is the case, your conscious mind has a very limited authority on your life journey.

On the other hand Sub-conscious mind has larger control on you. Sub-conscious mind is 100's of milliseconds faster compared to Conscious mind. Sub-conscious is the inner-core of you. Your behavior and your character is a reflection of your Sub-conscious mind. You are reading this article with the help of your Conscious mind, but the data you have read is stored and is processed by your Sub-conscious mind.

You must be asking yourself, why I should know these facts to quit any bad habit! Hey please hang in there. I am about to share a simple example so that you could understand both sub-conscious and conscious functionality easily. That will reveal a secret which will help you to quit almost any bad habit.

The metaphor/example:

I request you to imagine a cab driver as the Sub-conscious mind and the cab passenger as the Conscious mind. The passenger travels from Cochin to Bangalore every day in the same cab. One day he decided to go to New Delhi, there he could get a new business deal by that he can fulfill all his dreams. Before the journey he told all of his friends that he is going to New Delhi. He wrote about it in his dairy too. Next day, he got into the cab which he usually travels to Bangalore. This time he wanted to go to New Delhi, but he didn’t tell anything to the cab driver. Surely the driver would drive him to Bangalore until the passenger informs him that he wanted to go to New Delhi. The passenger may be fully excited and dedicated to reach New Delhi, but do you think he will reach New Delhi? The passenger could reach there unless and until he speaks to the cab driver where he wanted to go.

It is the same way your brain also works, the cab driver is your sub-conscious mind and the passenger is your conscious mind. If your sub-conscious mind is not convinced in anything, you can’t change anything in your life. Unless and until you have a new belief system in your sub-conscious mind you can’t get rid of any bad habits.

So when anyone who wants to stop smoking has to convince their ‘driver’ the sub-conscious mind first. In above cited scenario it may be easy to ask the driver to drive where the passenger wants to go. It’s a matter of speaking out what he wants. But as far as quit smoking is concerned, to convince your Sub-conscious mind is hard! Because over the past #10 to #15 years the sub-conscious mind has been enjoying smoking. It must have become a vital part in your daily activity.

But it is possible to reprogram your Sub-conscious mind, and people have been doing it. To do just that, first of all you need to go back to your past and analyze how did you pick this bad habit? Then only you can do a ‘reverse-engineering’.

Interestingly, most of the hard-core smokers started smoking because of their peer groups. He was being said that, to be like a macho man, one has to smoke. He was being said that to impress gals one has to smoke ;) The poor boy went home and he watched movies, there he found most of the macho film heroes’ smoke. Then he would certainly think why can't me! Yes, that was the beginning of an epic smoker.

Literally the words of the peers and the images from the movies on smoking were sub-conscious programming.

As you may know that your thoughts and imaginations are stored in your brain in the forms of images. Each word is converted into images before storing it into your brain. So when your friend says all Macho men smoke, it creates a picture in your brain. Since Sub-conscious mind can only understand images which becomes a direct instructions to the ‘driver’ of your life – the Sub-conscious mind.

This is the way you acquire bad habits, then what happens when you try to stop them!

For easy understanding of the situation, moving forward I am considering you as a hard-core smoker. Hope its okay with you :)

Let’s say you have decided to ‘Stop smoking’. When you decide on something, it travels to the brain as instruction. There your brain splits the instruction into each word, in this case one word is ‘Stop’ and the other is ‘Smoking’. Brain cannot have a pictorial representation to ‘Stop’ (‘Quit’ or ‘Do not’) so Sub-conscious mind ignores those words. But ‘Smoking’ can be represented as an image in your Sub-conscious mind. So when conscious brain decides to “Stop Smoking”. The sub-conscious brain stores the images of “Smoking” only. The images could be your favorite film star playing with a cigarette!

That means, when you decide and dedicate yourself to “Stop smoking”, on a sub-conscious level more addiction happens. Because as per the images generated in your brain is literally programming your brain for more smoking.

Don't you believe it’s true? Okay, and then let me prove it to you…

Read the following sentence very carefully…
And do exactly what it says…  
By closing your eyes… read it!

STOP THINKING ABOUT A WHITE CAR”

Have you tried it?
But you have still seen a car's image in your mind, right?

Oh Jerin, yes I still see a car… yes you will, because your Sub-conscious cannot understand ‘Stop’ or ‘Don’t’. It understands only images which can be refereed to a situation or an object. This is the perfect proof of the whole story :)

So the solution is you need to work yourself in a way that your brain will store images of a new habit or an image of a completely charming personality who do not smoke. May be as of the the image below :)

In this point of time, let me tell you that, It is perfectly possible to stop a bad habit - in this case smoking - completely on a day and can stay as a non-smoker forever. But almost all experts on de-addiction say, never stop any bad habit suddenly it can affect your body system worst. 




I have jotted down some steps for you, use it:

Step 0: Don’t take it seriously, that you are going to stop smoking. Have fun with the whole process.

Step 1: Speak yourself “I have a new habit of …” (may be reading transformational books, eating chocolate, dancing etc.) Never speak to anybody that you stop smoking rather tell others and yourself that you are acquiring new good habits. Do just that.

Step 2: Whenever you have a temptation to smoke, do go out to the shop you regularly buys cigarette, but don’t buy one. Buy something else (not another alcoholic material:) ) - buy a Candy or a Bubble gum. That is ridiculous, hah? Do you really want change then just do it :)

Step 3: It takes #21 consecutive days to acquire or break a habit. So every time you successfully complete a day without smoking, count down, or mark it in your calender. 
 
Step 4: You still feel like buying Cigarette, then its fine to Buy #1 Cigarette a day, then gradually shift it to Buy #1 Cigarette a week, then to Buy #1 a month and them #0 Cigarette for the whole year and forever. Or you can consider #1 puff of Cigarette or whatever you feel like comfortable for a day so on and so forth.

Step 4.1: Even then you partially smoked, you can take it as a successful day and mark it in your calender.

Step 5: Then the hardest thing to practice, change the people you hang out with! That is tough, nah? Okay, if you are really serious about quit smoking, then you should choose the people you hang around. Who are your six closest friends? They were just strangers before #5 to #10 years ago, then why can’t you choose to create better friends now; it hurts but the pain would be much less than the regret you make in your death bed.

Step 5.1: No! You can’t leave your friends? Okay then you keep the friends but don’t roam around the place your people do social smoking. It is all testing phases, if you really want to get rid of this bad habit; you have to do all these things. Once you acquired new habits, when you feel okay to hang around the places, then do that. But you should be aware that programming for smoking can happen again, it’s your choice what to do then!

Step 6: Smile big :)

Still you say “Oh Jerin, you can’t understand my life, it is very frustrating and you don’t know my girl friend has left me, my job is irritating. No other choice for me, I have to smoke :)

It’s a common response and natural tendency to hesitate change; then ask yourself, really ask this man! 
 
Does smoking help me in anyway?
Does smoking bring closer to my dreams or life purpose?

Oh What? You don’t have a dream or a life purpose? Then let me help you to figure it out :) Think this way, your life is about to an end and you have only 24 Hours left in your life! Then what all things would you do in this 24 Hrs? What all things you would feel like, you would have done? If you can really answer this, then you will have found-out your life purpose :) Go ahead.

I leave you by sharing,

The Wikipedia facts which reflect the instant changes after stop smoking.

+ Within 20 minutes after quitting, blood pressure and heart rate decrease
+ Within 12 hours, carbon monoxide levels in the blood decrease to normal
+ Within 3 months, circulation and lung function improve
+ Within 9 months, there are decreases in cough and shortness of breath

Within 1 year your life transforms :)



P.S Hope this article has helped you some way or the other. Please comment your feed back below.

P.S.S If you have loved this article, you probably would love my short-eBook, download it now from Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/How-achieve-your-goals-ebook/dp/B00AKJMRIO/)
 
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