Are you a well-intentioned person whose New Year’s resolution was to finally give up smoking, only to find you’ve had difficulty standing your ground? Most of us make New Year’s resolutions and let them fizzle as we face challenges that trigger all of the reasons we have failed to quit in the past.

How can you overcome these challenges and maintain motivation to quit smoking for good? For some, it may be a simple decisive action, but for others, the solution requires behavior change on a much deeper level.

Over the past 16 years, we have worked with hundreds of individuals to help them stop smoking and understand what works and doesn’t work when trying to change this habit. If you are fed up with letting cigarettes control your life and are ready to be a non-smoker, consider the following as a guide to help you quit for good.

Reflect on why previous strategies have not worked

Many of the people we have worked with over the years say they have tried everything to quit smoking, but have had little or no success overcoming the habit.

Among these individuals, we find that they all seem to apply similar strategies in their attempts to quit. These include 1) going cold turkey, 2) addressing the nicotine addiction, or 3) attempting to convince themselves using rewards-based strategies (it’ll improve my health, save money, etc.).

While good intentioned, these efforts often fail because they attempt to deal with the habit of smoking on a conscious level. What we mean by conscious level is, using the part of the brain where logical, rational, reason-based thinking is derived. This is where your willpower lives – and is often why your confidence is shattered as yet another attempt to quit fails.

The problem with this approach is, in attempting to change through conscious, rational efforts, you only address about 10%[1] of what is driving your behavior. Unfortunately, even those with strong willpower often find that these attempts do not last, especially in moments of weakness, triggered by environmental or social situations.

For many smokers, the habit/pattern/behavior lives much deeper.

Address where habits form: the subconscious level

Habits, like smoking, are so deeply ingrained in the mind, that we often perform them automatically (or subconsciously). The key here is that when a habit becomes automatic, it is common to feel powerless in trying to break it.

It is therefore critical that you address not only the conscious, rational desire to change the habit, but also the part of the mind where the habit lives: the subconscious.

Given that the subconscious/unconscious mind drives the remaining 90% of behavior, it is no surprise that attempting to quit smoking just on a conscious level often ends in failure. The question then is how can you evoke change at the subconscious level?

Changing your subconscious mind using hypnosis

The subconscious operates as a memory bank. With the help of billions of tiny interconnected nerve cells, everything that we have ever experienced is stored. Here, a maze of memory patterns feed information to the conscious mind – whether good or bad.

Thus, when it comes to changing a bad habit, feeding your subconscious positive, compelling thoughts about what you desire will help to create and anchor change in the subconscious mind.

But many of us do not know how to or simply do not take the time to access this part of the mind, which is really unfortunate. Studies in meditation and hypnosis show that taking time to practice mindfulness or engage in guided relaxation has a profound impact on the success of goals and affirmations.

Because the subconscious directs our energy, it is ultimately responsible for the energy that drives us to achieve our goals. Techniques like hypnotherapy, which access the subconscious through relaxation and suggestion, offer enhanced focus on creating constructive responses to habitual triggers, leading to positive change in the body and behavior. Through direct and indirect suggestion, hypnosis helps create a system of positive habits that support the outcome you want.

It is our experience that by addressing the subconscious in your efforts to quit smoking, you will have a much better chance of achieving your goal. This is because with hypnosis, all of the functions of the mind work together to help you become a non-smoker for life.

If you would like to quit smoking, remember this: while old habits die hard, you only have to try hypnosis once. With our One-Session Stop Smoking Program, we can help you to change the way you think, feel and behave around smoking cigarettes for good.

To learn more about Rachel’s One-Session Stop Smoking Program, read more. For those outside of Colorado, Rachel offers FaceTime and Skype sessions for you to enjoy a relaxing hypnosis session from the comfort of your home.

[1] For more information on the conscious, subconscious or unconscious mind, see Sigmund Freud’s theories on the human mind.

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