"The impossible we can do today. The miraculous takes a little longer." Signs carrying that message became popular during World War II, and the message is equally appropriate for your private war with the cigarette habit.
With our almost-absurdly simple but highly effective method of self-suggestion, you will be able to change your attitude toward smoking. You will be able to do the impossible; you will be able to quit. The "visual image" technique does part of the job; the new habit you learn in this chapter does the rest. You strengthen both by "talking back."
Now you will discover a new way to give yourself frequent, meaningful "concentration breaks." They must eradicate tension, satisfactorily and swiftly. They must also be powerful enough to replace immediately the quick-release-from-pressure sensation that you developed during your years of smoking when you paused to light a cigarette. And finally, these new "concentration breaks" must be able to conquer temptation.
That's the "miraculous," and it will "take a little longer." And that's why I've been asking you not to stop smoking immediately, but to set a target date a week or ten days in the future.
Realize, please, that some of your best friends will not want you to stop smoking. Your achievement, they will unconsciously feel, belittles them. You have the "will power," they’ll decide, which they apparently lack. And so they'll be tempting you-perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously-to start smoking again.
For a While, You'll Be Tempted
You'll still live in a world of cigarettes. My book and your decision aren't going to stop the barrage of advertising; there are millions of smokers, and most of them will continue to smoke. A best-seller sells from 50,000 to 100,000 copies.
And, being human, you'll have crises. Domestic problems. Job problems. Difficulties always arise, and sooner or later there'll be one that throws you so completely that you'll reach out for a crutch. And that crutch could quite easily be a cigarette. I've known people who stopped smoking for eight or nine years, and then began again as the result of outer conflict or inner turmoil, or both.
For all these reasons, then, you should perfect a new way to give yourself release from tension before you crush out your last cigarette and call it quits for good.
We begin with two interesting, opposing facts. The first is that neither of us can deny the feeling of relaxation and the respite from tension that comes from smoking. The second and contradictory fact is that not one of the many elements in a cigarette has the chemical qualities able to reduce tension or induce relaxation. Quite to the contrary: every cigarette contains irritants and at least one potentially dangerous stimulant.
If you can remember back to the very first time you smoked, you'll remember that your first cigarette didn't relax you. It probably made you dizzy and it quite possibly produced turning, churning sensations in your stomach.
If you've ever quit smoking for more than forty-eight hours, you probably experienced similar dizziness and slight nausea when you began to smoke again.
No Wonder You Become Dizzy!
The dizziness you feel from smoking-until you become accustomed to cigarettes, that is-results from the contraction of your blood vessels. The flow of blood to your brain is thereby diminished until your heart begins to beat faster and pump harder. If less blood reaches your brain, less oxygen reaches it. Dizziness is the first symptom of the desperate danger in this situation. The nausea comes from the strenuous-and life saving-effort your system is making to throw off the poisons you've just inhaled.
The release from tension you gain through smoking, then, is psychological and not physiological. It comes from the fact that you have interrupted one thought sequence with another that is "dependable." You've moved from unknowns to knowns. From a problem, perhaps, to a comfortable and habitual ritual. You've shifted your attention; the gears of your emotions are momentarily out of "drive" and are briefly in "neutral." Consequently and undeniably, there is release.
Fortunately, however, there are other ways to obtain release, relief, relaxation. Once you understand the dynamics and anatomy of tension, you recognize their virtues.
Have you ever had a "charley horse"? That terrible ache in your leg that temporarily immobilizes you? You undoubtedly know that this common condition is caused by overstretching a muscle. When the muscle is stretched too far, it compensates by over contracting, and it may not return to normal until a day or two of unpleasantness have been endured.
Tension is, technically speaking, a similar muscle spasm in which a skeletal muscle contracts and cannot be voluntarily relaxed. The condition can arise from physical causes-sitting in a draft, overwork, over-exercising, working in a continuously cramped position -or from mental causes. You’ve heard of people being "scared stiff," and often the phrase is precisely descriptive.
When Your Body Is Tense, You're Like a Coiled Spring
Fear and uncertainty and pressure are mental conditions, but they bring about physical results. When your mind foresees an actual or fancied harmful experience, your muscles are held in readiness for "fight or flight." The muscles of your body are taut. The tension, in short, is not just in your mind; your entire body tightens.
Each of us has an extraordinary communications system in our bodies, but even our exceptional network has its limitations. Sometimes it cannot distinguish, for example, between types of concentration.
You are in a jungle, let us say. You hear a strange noise. You rivet your eyes on the spot where the leaves rustled and the twigs snapped. Your muscles tighten.
But let us say that you are at your desk, working on a business problem. Your attention is riveted on questions of profit and loss. Your muscles tighten.
Or you're playing a game of chess, and you think that if you advance your queen pawn, then on the next move take his knight, then on the next sacrifice your bishop, then move your queen to the fourth rank, you'll mate your opponent. Again your muscles tighten.
But here's an interesting point. Let's imagine that the jungle noise you heard was caused by nothing but a silly little frog. And let's assume that while you were working at your desk, you suddenly realized that the profits this year were going to be bigger than ever before-a walloping twenty percent after taxes. And, by golly, you did move your queen to the fourth rank, and you did checkmate your opponent.
In each case your mind would send out a message. "Hey, there, muscles-everything's jake. Relax!"
My serious point is this. What is popularly known as "tension" or "nerves" is the foreshortening of a muscle or muscles. The mind is holding that muscle or those muscles in readiness. And the only thing that will bring about muscle relaxation is a direct command from the mind.
You Cant Use Muscles to Relax Muscles
We can express this fact in another fashion: Nervousness and tension are conditions of the mind, not the body. So far as modern laboratory examination can discover, even the nervous systems of neurotics and psychotics are perfectly healthy, and are not starved or depleted or exhausted or altered in cell structure.
Tension, then, is an expression of emotion and concentration as well as a physical reaction to certain unusual physical conditions. When it is the result of emotion and concentration, tension will cease on command of the mind.
Sometimes, as a matter of fact, the mind doesn't even have to issue a specific command. Indeed, it usually does not. Our bodies employ signal systems of various sorts, systems that really aren't too different from the lights and blinkers and semaphores and symbols used by railroad men. You probably employ many "signals" in your daily living, shorthand ways to tell your body to relax. Perhaps you loosen your tie. Or kick off your shoes. Or open your belt. Or flop in a chair instead of sitting in a chair.
One signal which I know you use is lighting a cigarette.
But it's only one signal from among a great number of possibilities, isn't it? And since it sort of contradicts itself by robbing your brain of oxygen and blood, and making your heart work harder, and setting your stomach up against a deadly foe, it isn't necessarily the best possible signal, is it?
Here's a New Signal
When I was a kid, people were always telling me to "take a deep breath." The football coach would admit that a pile-up of squirming, flailing bodies was a somewhat frightening sight. "But," he'd say, "take a deep breath and plunge in."
When my father taught me to dive, he said: "Take a deep breath, and jump right in."
Many of my teachers used to say that, too. "Take a deep breath, and dive right in." And there I'd be, up to my ears in work.
As you know, a great many medical truths are to be found in folk sayings, and the value of a deep breath is one such truth. A deep breath gets additional oxygen into the lungs.
Not just one deep breath-but three deep breaths -constitute my substitute for smoking when I need a "concentration break."
Yes, I admit it. Deep breaths aren't exciting. No one will ever write a popular song about "Six Deep Breaths in the Dark."
But . . . they are the magic that will enable you to live instead of exist. When coupled with the power of self-hypnosis, they'll be a source of energy. Those pedestrian, dull, unexciting deep breaths will make it possible for you to quit smoking forever-painlessly!
And They Do More than Help You Stop Smoking
They're going to do more than that. They're going to relax you. They're going to eliminate grinding tension.
Throughout our day, we find ourselves in situations that must, physiologically, make us feel fatigued, tight, stale. If we're at a desk, we may bend over our work. If we're reading, we may slump in our chair. We may sit or stand in a stoop-shouldered posture. We may lean forward, gripping the steering-wheel of our car.
All these things indirectly diminish the amount of air we breathe into our lungs; they make it less comfortable for us to breathe deeply. Try it for yourself right now: when your shoulders go forward and your neck and head bend forward, you simply cannot breathe deeply without causing yourself discomfort.
If you don't get enough oxygen into those poor cramped lungs, then your body falters in its job of burning up waste materials. And if that happens, you must feel "stale," "achey," "cramped."
And so there is a sound physical reason for using three deep, deep breaths in our battle against the cigarette habit.
Even if you did nothing else after reading this book . . . even if you continued to inhale and exhale all those irritants and poisons ... even if you continued to smoke excessively-you'd nevertheless feel a lot better if you could teach yourself to punctuate your day with deep breaths. But let's hope that you won't settle for that. It's not just that you don't want to become another statistic that will someday convince someone else that the cigarette habit is not exactly healthy. The big point is that not smoking will make you a new person-more energetic, far healthier, a more effective worker, a brighter personality.
You have learned to "plant impressions" in your subconscious mind-images of yourself as happier, healthier, and now able to resist the old, harmful urge to smoke. You must also teach your subconscious mind that the "three deep breath" technique will enable you to ignore a momentary desire to hold a cigarette and puff on it.
Before you go to sleep, relax your body from top to bottom. See yourself walking into a room where many people are smoking; suddenly you feel the urge to smoke, too. Instead, you quietly take three deep breaths. You smile and shake your head. "No cigarette for me, thanks."
Think to yourself: "When habit makes me want to reach for a cigarette, I'll take three deep breaths instead. I won't want that cigarette. I won't be breathing poisons into my lungs, because the three deep breaths relax me and ease my tensions."
Think about those deep breaths as you fall asleep. Get into the habit of an occasional "deep breath countdown." It might go this way:
"As I count from ten to zero, I'm going to relax . . . and review . . . and understand-why three deep breaths will help me whip the cigarette habit. Ten-three deep breaths give me vigor . . . I breathe deeply and feel stronger ... I don't need a crutch . . . Nine ... a deep breath gets me over worry and tension . . . I'm relaxed ... a cigarette would harm me, not help me . . . each time I breathe deeply I feel stronger, more at ease . . . Eight . . . three deep breaths make me lose any desire to smoke . . . Seven . . . I'm breathing deeply, and I don't want a cigarette ... Six ... if I ever want to smoke again, I'll take three deep breaths instead ... then I won't want to smoke .. . I'll never want to smoke again . . . I'm going to feel better and be better . . . I'm going to think better and sleep better . . . breathing deeply, like this . . . Five . . . deep breaths make my feelings of tension disappear . . . Four ... I feel more relaxed now, just breathing deeply . . . Three . . . I'll sleep well tonight, because I breathe deeply ... Two ... deep, deep breaths ... feel better ... don't want to smoke . . . One . . . deep breaths take away any desire to smoke . . . Zero . . . I'm relaxed ... at ease . . . feel no tensions . . . just breathing deeply."
Do this frequently, and it will become almost as powerful as a reflex reaction; indeed, it will become a reflex after a while. It is your most important new technique.
How, then, do we use our new technique? It will become our response to all those things that used to stimulate the then-irresistible desire to smoke. There are times when it will be necessary for you to fight the old compulsion to reach for a cigarette. When you have the urge, stop for just a moment:
Remind yourself that it's a concentration break that you need . . .
Remind yourself that there are better ways to relieve tension . . .
Breathe deeply, three times. And shift your mental focus for a moment. Think of something else. Something pleasant. Something nice. Something good. Then, briskly, swing your mind right back to whatever you'd been doing before you took that three-second break.
The urge to smoke will have passed. And the good new oxygen in your lungs will have pepped you up.
Yes, the urge to smoke will have passed!
Eventually you’ll not feel that urge more than once in four or five months. In the first few weeks, however, you may feel it more often. When you do, take your "concentration break." No one notices a deep breath -no one, that is, except you; and you benefit from it.
You Follow the "Deep Breaths" with Post-Hypnotic Suggestions
When you’ve relaxed and completed your "deep-breathing countdown," be sure to give yourself this suggestion: "At any time I take three deep breaths I can, if I desire, place myself in a state of light hypnosis."
This is a post-hypnotic suggestion. You should give it to yourself every time you practice and induce self-hypnosis, for repetition establishes it as a stimulus for a preconditioned response.
The three deep breaths will stimulate a habit, which you can practice as "instantaneous hypnosis" in the three deep breaths for the concentration break. The breathing stimulates the response, just as the smell of coffee in the morning stimulates your desire for it-or more to the point, just as seeing and hearing about cigarettes now stimulate the habit of smoking. The three deep breaths are your substitute stimulus and the concentration break is your substitute habit.
Now, can you see why from the very start I have insisted that you do not hurry your resolve to break the smoking habit? And why I have asked that you set a target date at least a week or ten days in advance? It is because this preconditioning for "instant hypnosis" in the concentration break must be thoroughly established as a habit that will respond automatically to the three deep breaths.
When you take the three deep breaths for "instantaneous hypnosis" in the concentration break, all the things you have implanted in the subconscious mind will not respond in complete detail. They will have been formed into an "attitude response" to die stimulus.
You might be surprised as to how many of these attitudes you now have, of which you are unaware, that respond to stimuli. And how effective they are in controlling your reactions and emotions. Without elaborating or attaching any particular significance to the words, what is your automatic response to such words as, Democrat . . . Republican . . . Communist . . . left . . . right . . . red . . . pink . . . sex . . . liquor . . . drugs. Depending upon the preconditioning, various persons will have a variety of reactions to the words.
Unless you are aware of the functioning of the subconscious mind, of how habit patterns are formed, and how they respond automatically to certain stimuli-it might be pretty difficult to believe that you could substitute the habit of taking three deep breaths for the cigarette habit and receive the same-or more- satisfaction from it.
But you know now that one physical part of smoking is the "concentration break" it provides. Three deep breaths do this better, and without harmful aftereffects.
You know that you may have been influenced and possibly "hypnotized" by the glittering generalities of cigarette advertisements. Now you can effectively combat these by asking: How come? Says who? So what?
You know all these things-but knowing them is not enough, until you have practiced. You didn't score well immediately after knowing the rules of golf, and you didn't drive a car confidently after having been told how it was done. You gain skill and establish a habit through practice.
A week or ten days isn't very long to establish a new attitude and a new habit to replace the habit you've practiced as long as the smoking habit. With the use of self-hypnosis, it can be done quickly because you are going directly to the subconscious where you can rid your mind of the old habit and attitude and implant the new habit and attitude by the most effective and quickest known means.
Set your target date and begin practicing. This means a session of self-hypnosis every night to establish the new attitude. It means talking back to every form of cigarette advertising you see. It means examining yourself and your motives each time you light up a cigarette.
Only one thing can defeat you-and that's failure to practice.
Why Have There Been a Few Failures?
Of those who have failed (and the percentage is small) one complaint has been that they didn't know what to do with the time or the physical action previously used in lighting and smoking a cigarette. They failed to understand the importance of the concentration break.
Others have said that in a crowd, and particularly after only a few days' trial, they missed smoking. They failed in understanding the pseudo-prestige of smoking.
Some have said that the smell of cigarette smoke tempted them back to smoking. They hadn't sufficiently established the stimulus of clean, sweet air as a response to the habit of not smoking.
A few have said, "Who cares?" They deliberately closed their minds to the consequences, and are the type of people who are afraid to entertain the thought of failure.
In every case where there has been a failure (and again I emphasize that they have been few), it was caused, I feel, by a hurry to stop smoking before the preconditioning process with self-hypnosis had been completed. Actually, one can hardly argue with this since the stronger preconditioning will take precedence in any circumstance.
Just remember, as you begin, that the only known way to rid oneself of an unwanted habit is to substitute a new habit in the place of the old one. The nail-biter who fails once, and finds himself nibbling at his nails, doesn't have to give up his resolve to quit. You don't stop driving if you happened to have an accident. And the golfer with a slice in his drive needn't feel his game is ruined forever. Practice will improve any habit or skill.
I'd like you to succeed on the first time you try, and establish once and for all that you can whip the cigarette habit. Unfortunately, I cannot tell how diligently you may practice, or how strongly you desire to quit smoking. I don't know how susceptible to self-suggestion you are. I don't even know your age, or whether you are male or female (not that it makes much difference ).
Possibly You'll Stop This Weekend
I have arbitrarily set a target date between a week and ten days. Maybe, if you find it difficult to relax and accept your own self-suggestions, it may take a while longer than that. On the other hand, you may have pretty well sold yourself, even before you picked up this book, that you were going to quit. You may be ready by tomorrow night.
But there is one thing I am sure of. I am sure of it because it is proved in every law of psychology. When you have established your new mental habit pattern with self-hypnosis, and when you have practiced the three deep breaths to stimulate it-nothing can defeat you. You've got to succeed, because the primary law of psychology, beginning with the most primitive urges of survival, is that a stimulus to the deepest preconditioning must take precedence over any other habit pattern.
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