Your Future Self
This
exercise will change the way you think about the smoking habit.
Have you
every experienced the situation where you have an important day the next day and
you decide to go to bed early and have a good night's sleep? You get into bed
with the one thought in mind: "I must get rest; I must sleep!" But you
can't sleep. The more you worry about being awake, the more awake you seem to
be.
It's the same with anything we try to give up. The more you think about
the unwanted habit the more obsessed you can become by it. If you decide to give
up chocolate bars, the more you seem to think of chocolate bars, until you become
obsessed with chocolate bars and the inevitable happens - you go off to a sweet
shop and buy some. In fact, when you decided to give up a particular habit you
can end up being more strongly bound to it. Thinking of giving up an unwanted
habit can lead to binges involving that habit.
Why is this?
Basically
it's because our "thoughts are the father/mother to the deed". We do
nothing unless we are motivated by our thoughts.
So does this mean that
when we decide to give up cigarettes we are going to focus on them more and become
obsessed by them?
This is often the case and the reason why many people
find giving up smoking, or any other ingrained habit, difficult.
The good
news is that there is a solution.
(1) If we must think about the habit,
then we can change the way we think about the habit.
(2) What we should
want more than the habit itself is the benefit of giving it up. Once you learn
to want that benefit strongly enough you will become free of the "unwanted
habit".
Thoughts, as we experienced during the Instant Relaxation
exercise, can completely change the way we feel. Our thoughts are powerful; we
can be ruled by them unless we consciously decided to take control.
I am
going to give you a series of exercises to help you achieve this positive change.
Exercise
No. 2- Your Future Self *mp3
How do you feel after this exercise?
Why not go to the chat room and tell you fellow quitters about the benefits you
experienced
to Exercises No. 3 - The Internal
Representation of a Pleasant Experience
