Relaxation Can Help you Stop Smoking

Many people say they need to smoke a cigarette to help them relax, but the truth is they just need to learn another way to relax!

Here are some tips to help you learn how to relax so you can stop smoking and still not be stressed out.

You say "But I can't relax," "I feel all tied up and jittery." That's because you are trying too hard. Relaxation is the result of no effort. Just let yourself go. If you are expecting something to happen, you are going to make yourself tense, waiting for it to happen.

Expectation has a powerful influence on the conscious mind. If you expect something to happen, you don't question it when it does happen because it takes place as expected. If you expect to achieve self-hypnosis and its benefits, you will surely receive them. If you concentrate your expectation upon receiving "sensations," then your expectation is being focused in the wrong direction.

When you stretch out on the couch to watch television, you relax. You are only expecting to be relaxed and entertained. Nevertheless, the suggestions in the commercials get through to you. Expect to relax, and nothing more.

Many of us have been preconditioned to the idea that we can only be successful in an effort if we "will" ourselves to do it. This, of course, is a fallacy. The more skillful a person becomes in any endeavor, the more automatic it is and the less conscious attention is needed to direct it. Conscious effort (will power) is applied only in the initial stage to practice imitation.

Proof of this can be had from almost any effort from using a typewriter or playing golf to the surgeon's skill with a scalpel. When skill is acquired, conscious attention to the actions involved are no longer required. The conscious mind only directs the skill along the line desired.

If you can examine any of your personal skills- such as dancing, playing golf or driving a car-you will recall that as long as you were "trying hard" (exerting will power) you were tense and possibly nervous.

Make a direct application of this to self-hypnosis and you will see that there is no way you can "will" yourself to relax. The use of will power requires conscious attention and creates muscle tension. If you are probing, doubting, worrying, questioning and examining-you will defeat yourself in achieving self-hypnosis, just as the tense golfer fails and just as the self-conscious dancer has difficulty following the rhythm of the music.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE TROUBLE RELAXING

If you're one of those folks who can't loosen up ever, odds are that you're also a very heavy smoker. The chances also are that you mentally chastise yourself for excessive smoking, and that this too is just another one of the many things that acts to make you increasingly tense and increasingly unable to relax. Your case, you will be glad to know, is far from hopeless.

All it means is that you'll have to do a little more work than the next fellow. You'll have to talk yourself to sleep, so to speak, for several nights in a row; you'll have to learn almost muscle by muscle to relax your body. Most of us don't need to do this.

With eyes closed and your body relaxed, you see yourself as being healthier, happier ... and even a bit wealthier, because you do not smoke. You visualize yourself with a new, keener sense of taste and smell. You have the image of yourself with a new zest for living and better vision because you do not smoke.

You can see yourself as living longer, less likely to succumb to painful disease or crippling illnesses due to your smoking habit. See yourself in a crowd. The others are smoking, but you are not. You tell yourself that you do not need a cigarette to occupy your hands or your mind. You don't need a smouldering crutch to lean upon. You feel a little proud, and know that the others secretly admire you for doing what they have failed to do.

You know that you smoked previously for a concentration break ... for relaxation. You also know that there is nothing in the smoke of tobacco that will relax the tissues physiologically. You have a warm, pleasant sensation and a feeling of well-being-because you have stop smoking forever.

Go over this new mental picture of yourself a number of times. Add to it those things you know about yourself which will be improved; give yourself a feeling of self-satisfaction from your ability to resist the tobacco habit.

Play the new role you have created for yourself as you would if you were acting it out in a play. Visualize yourself telling others how easy it is to stop smoking, without the "big jitters" or constant craving. Portray yourself as you would like to be, free from smoking forever.

The suggestions you give yourself under hypnosis should be carefully planned beforehand. You should know exactly what is to go into your subconscious mind. Tell yourself why you are stopping. Tell yourself, without any doubt, that you would rather believe in the integrity and ethics of the medical researchers than in the "double talk" of the cigarette industry's advertising.

Make it plain to yourself why you are never going to smoke again. Tell yourself that you aren't afraid this time. You know you've got it licked. You know you've got it licked because this time you understand what is involved in the habit, and what it requires to break a habit.

Tell yourself forcefully that you will not become nervous, tense or irritable because there's just no need for it. You know that your mind controls your nerves, and you are perfectly capable of controlling your own mind.