Sometimes I say to my clients: ‘If I gave you £3 million pounds (tax free) to stop smoking today, would you?’. Most quickly say yes. Some say they aren’t sure – some people just aren’t motivated by money. Sometimes I get the classic ‘I’ll promise you anything as long as you give me the money first’. (This wouldn’t work. I’ve attached a magic band to your wrist that will tell me if you ever smoke again, and if you do then you automatically lose the money and anything you’ve bought with it – no ifs or buts!).
But what do you think? Would you be able to? If you’re a smoker thinking about giving smoking hypnotherapy a try, then can you imagine it? Just try to imagine your world expanding from whatever it is right now in to something altogether larger, safer and much less limited. Go on! See your life becoming a carousel of comfort, abandon and expensive thrills…really, there’s nothing wrong with fantasizing. Research says there’s a high chance you regularly do this anyway. Go ahead and enjoy it.
Do you see cigarettes in whatever you’re imagining? Would you want them, need them, or even care about them if you lived this new, different life?
I’m going to speculate that the answer to this is ‘not really’. Those feelings, if lived constantly, would make the desire for something as small and silly as nicotine recede far in to the background. Isn’t it funny how a shift in perspective can change how we feel about things?
“Ok, I really did feel better for a second there. But you’re not actually going to give me £3m, so this is pointless.”
It’s true – I don’t have £3m to give you. But let me ask you another question.
Is there an amount of money that you would accept in exchange for your children’s happiness and health? Or if you don’t have children, your closest loved ones?
I’m confident that there isn’t.
But doesn’t your smoking deeply upset your children and loved ones, and don’t they all want you to stop? And hasn’t it been proven more likely that children with smoking parents are more likely to turn in to smoking adults?*
Nicotine’s games
You might now be worrying because you’ve realized that you’re actually a mercenary person who cares more about money than your children’s happiness. But before you freak out, let me explain why this probably isn’t true.
The above is a logical fallacy created by nicotine addiction. The actions of people who smoke cigarettes are the result of many logical fallacies, most of which they aren’t aware of. You feel the urge to smoke in order to calm down or to feel less hungry, but how much calmer and less hungry do you actually feel? Probably not significantly, if you’re really honest. So that doesn’t make sense either. Here’s another one: smoking cigarettes drains your bank account. It objectively isn’t worth it, and yet, a smoker continues doing it.
Maybe the problem is that nicotine addiction makes it very difficult for smokers to be objective.
Remember money can’t buy life, so strive to live as long and as well as possible.
Oh…so it was actually a trick question.
Sort of. But I prefer to think of it as an anti-trick question because it shines a light on the real trick: the trick that nicotine plays on smokers. It’s meaningless whether or not people think that £3m would be enough to stop them smoking. If they don’t happen to be caught up in that particular logical fallacy then they will be caught in another one.
My London hypnotherapy for smoking aims to really get underneath what’s causing and driving nicotine addiction and help free clients from it for good. They can then live much more congruently with their desires to love and look after those closest to them – as well as themselves. I won’t charge £3m for this either. Significantly less, in fact. Have a look at what some of my past clients have said, find out more about me, or book a Discovery call where we can discuss a stop smoking hypnotherapy London session. You can also read more about what hypnosis is and how it’s been used over the years, or find out why alcohol makes people want to smoke so much.
