So you want to quit smoking?
What has got to change for you to do that?
You want to change your relationship with smoking, cigarettes, nicotine, the physical acts of buying, carrying, taking out, lighting, smoking, socializing, etc., using cigarettes.
Smokers have attached certain interpretations to cigarettes, etc. before they fully understand the ramifications of cigarettes, etc. Most of those interpretations are false. Therein lies the problem and therein lies the solutions.
For example, consider when you started smoking. What is your earliest memory? What values did you attach to smoking? Was it rebelliousness? Were you asserting your freedom? Were you trying to be ‘cool’? Join the ‘in crowd’? Peer pressure? Trying to be ‘tough’? Did you think smoking was relaxing? Did you think it made a person think better? What else? What else?
These are ‘lies’ and that is what the Healing Codes helps heal.
What are the truths?
Smoking is being a sheep rather than a rebel?
It wasn’t freedom but economic and habit slavery?
Is it freedom when you have to light a cigarette before you can start your car?
That you MUST have a cigarette after a meal?
That you MUST have a cigarette if you have an alcoholic beverage?
It wasn’t so cool after all?
That is was a fake way of acting tough?
That the relaxation was a temporary squelching of the clamoring of your body for the poison you trained it to expect?
That suffocating your cells isn’t really relaxing?
That buying cigarettes is a lousy way to spend money and smoking is a lousy way to spend your time?
That the cigarette advertising forgot to mention you get a chance to smell like an ashtray no matter how often you shower, wash your hair, or dry clean your clothes?
Nicotine is addictive and that is the way cigarette companies like it. It guarantees them profits. Imagine cows in the field being given processed vegetation and then being milked out of their health and their wealth.
The physical behaviors become habits and they tend to keep you doing the same physical behaviors. That is why people who quit smoking don’t know what to do with their hands and mouth. Their hands are now ‘unemployed’ and start to fidget. Mouths ‘look’ for chewing gum, sweets, etc. in order to stay occupied.
Underneath the ‘lies’ listed above are other more foundational lies usually connected to the fulfillment of Needs. The discussion of what needs are can go on for years but for simplicity’s sake, I consider Needs to be Survival, Freedom, Usefulness, Love, Identity, Need to Be Right, and the Need for Approval/to Look Good. These connections are really what need to be healed.
For example, I talked to a person yesterday with Multiple Sclerosis. He smokes! His smoking is based on “Screw you, you can’t tell me what to do! No matter what you say, I am going to do what I want!” He expected to get Disapproval so he walked around with self-destructive ‘chip-on-his-shoulder’ (is this a slang expression used in Oz?) attitude thinking he was showing them who was boss! His lack of self-care for his body in other ways has come back to him now.
Who or what are you trying to survive by smoking? Get another viewpoint. You don’t have to ‘fight’ or ‘run away’ from others. You also don’t have to fight or run away from cigarettes! You simply have to recognize that they are things that are heavily marketed, addictive, expensive, stinky, and you don’t need to have them control your life anymore. This is not about willpower. This is about seeing them for what they are and seeing why you have been using them for what it is. Choose another viewpoint of how your life is to be.
Good luck.
Tom
E. Thomas Costello
Certified Healing Codes Practitioner
www.coachingyouworks.com
239-598-2717