Smoking Facts : “Smoking kills almost six times as many people as road and other accidents, suicide, murder, manslaughter, poisoning, overdoses and HIV all put together!”

In the old days, smoking was considered to be fashionable, stylish and manly. It was popular and encouraged even by family members. Going for a smoke or two was a trend accepted by many.  This holds true even today, although awareness about the drastic effects caused by smoking has stopped many youngsters from making it habit. Some places have even banned smoking in public enclosed spaces due to the alarming increase in numbers of passive smokers.

Active smoking is a killer, let’s face it, especially when it becomes a habit. First one puff, feels good, then another, feels even better and the journey of a smoker begins. Then it forms a habit that is not only difficult, but nearly impossible to break, without expert help.

It is not just active smoking that is dangerous, but even passive smokers are at a risk of certain cancers, and heart disease, serious lung illness and a host of other ailments if exposed to active smokers, since they breathe in the smoke let out by the puffers.  It is nearly as bad a health risks as for active smokers.

The health hazards of smoking are many. To point out a few:

Smoking damages your heart and blood circulation, increasing risks of

• Coronary heart disease
• Heart attack and stroke
• Peripheral vascular disease (damaged blood vessels)
• Cerebrovascular disease (damaged arteries that supply blood to your brain)
• Damages lungs, leading to conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), in layman language – bronchitis and emphysema and causes pneumonia
• In men, smoking is known to cause impotence and can reduce the fertility of both men and women
• Smoking is the cause of almost 7 out of every 10 cases of lung cancer (70%).  It also causes cancer of various other internal body parts

Knowing the health hazards, many of which are life-threatening, why do so many people take up smoking and continue to smoke in spite of the hazards?

Maybe they didn’t start with the intention of making it a habit.  Maybe it was a dare, peer pressure, a temporary stress buster, wanting to look cool or fit in with friends.  Anything could have been the reason.  Then as the consumption increased, it became very difficult to let go.  Many might have even tried to stop the habit, but the withdrawal symptoms were so intense, they would find no choice but go back to it.  It became a type of dependency, that if you give up one habit it gets replaced by some other habit like drinking or binge eating, which are also life-threatening.

How can an expert help a person to quit smoking?

Since habits are formed, first in the mind and then takes a physical form, NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) tools are a sure-fire way used to stop the craving for smoking.  A therapy using a combination of Clinical Hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) can change the way you think about smoking. This therapy has enabled people to stop smoking in one single session and get rid of this debilitating habit, FOREVER!  The best part is, it is a drug-free, painless way of getting rid of a habit without any physical or mentaltrauma associated with quitting.  Quitting smoking or any other habits has never been easier.

The process in brief

1. Creating Pictures – Building Awareness

Know that smoking is bad for your health. Be aware of the statistics that shows that smoking causes over 400,000 deaths every year in the US alone, from cancers, chronic lung diseases, and coronary conditions. Cigarette/beedi/weed/tobacco smoking can shorten your life by 14 minutes.  With every smoke, you are 14 minutes closer to your death.

Picture yourself  finishing one cigarette and a short while later, you are feeling distracted and agitated and you reach for one more – and another – and another. Picture it slowly starting to take a toll on your health – physical and mental. Hear yourself developing a hacking cough, see yellow nicotine stains on your fingers and teeth, see a shaggy swollen face, see the faces of others as they experience the foul smell of your breath, see yourself breathing badly, coughing, feeling chest pain, see the cancer and other diseases attacking and spread through your body and then dying at a young age.

Have you ever lived a full, successful and happy life? Or has smoking eaten up all your years and then given you death?  What would you prefer?

• Imagine a Smoke Free Life

Keep making pictures in your mind of how your life could be by giving up smoking. Picture yourself regaining your health, wealth, self-esteem and power. Create a picture of how healthy you feel every day if you were no longer smoking, and inhaling all the deadly poisons into your body. How much younger you would feel, how much fitter, attractive and confident you would be. Imagine your family’s smiling faces when they interact with a healthy you. Imagine the amount of money you would be saving and putting to a better use, on things which would actually improve the quality of your life, and not destroy it.

• Using Anchoring Tool in NLP –A ‘Quit Smoking’ timeline

This is a very effective tool used by NLP experts to help and heal suffocating and deadly habits. Anchoring requires you to create images and sound you would hear given your habit – like wheezing and coughing. Create vivid images of your suffering.  See yourself get weaker and weaker.  See the extent of damage you have caused, feel it to the extent you get repulsed and sick at the sight of yourself.Keep replaying it, making it larger and larger, and more vivid with each imagining.

Slowly, as the revulsion you feel for yourself, reaches its peak, press the thumb and forefinger of your left hand together and anchor that bad feeling. Repeat the exercise several times. The next time you feel like a smoke and reach for a cigarette, do this exercise – press your thumb and forefinger together. It will revive that feeling of revulsion and you will put the cigarette away.Ensure you keep practicing this technique till the habit leaves you completely free.  The timeline therapy is effective when it practice it.

• Draw on your Inner Strength

Quitting smoking will make you look and feel better and healthier too. The anchoring technique is so strong that, in twenty minutes after you quit, your blood pressure will drop and the temperature of your hands and feet will return to normal. In three to four days, all the accumulated nicotine will leave your body completely.  This will also help your body regain its health.  Because smoking is a habit that is controlled by the unconscious mind, hypnosis and NLP works on developing your inner strength to directly help the unconscious mind to help you effortlessly make that transition into a non-smoker and lead the healthy lifestyle you are meant to lead. There would be challenges along the way but if your decision is to stop smoking, contact an NLP practitioner today and never look back.

NLP Training Dubai (www.nlptrainingdubai.com) – powered by UV Consultants, is a global NLP training & coaching platform which offers quality NLP training and coaching certification programs in Dubai and other locations across the middle east. To know more about our NLP & Coaching programs, please write to nlptraining@uvconsultants.com or call +971 4 8525752 | +971 50 670 5615.