I Started smoking at 15 years of age, just for curiosity, I quickly developed addiction and the toll to pay for being a smoker immediately revealed huge.
Slowly but constantly the physical activity became more of a burden to drop rather than a pleasure to pursue and I completely quitted sport in a matter of few years, I was somewhat coughing pretty much all the time regardless of whether I was sick or not, I was less resilient during periods of stress because number of cigarettes were skyrocketing to the point of making me randomly gag from time to time during day, and various other “minor” inconveniences, not to mention the overall economic cost.
Despite all of that it was only after several years, during my university study that I made a point in quitting.
In my first attempt everything was looking fine (note: at the time I developed and applied just by instinct the core part the protocol for quitting smoking that I propose to my customers even now), I was in fact able to quit, resisted to any temptation, just after few weeks had a clear feeling that my craving for smoking had naturally diminished and I naively thought it was over.
Unfortunately, it was not, in fact after about one year I was back on track with my problem.
It started as a “light” wish? The story I was telling myself was sounding more or less like this: “OK Marco, you learned to quit smoking and more than one year is passed so far, but smoking is indeed one of the pleasure of life, the point is that you have to learn to enjoy it with moderation, there are even professional athletes and dancers that do smoke, if they can do that why can’t you?”.
So, with the idea of “normalizing” smoking habits, improving my overall quality of life and self confidence, I decided to put a cigarette in my mouth.
In a matter of one week I was back to my “usual” consumption of cigarettes, that was by the way something less than a box of 20 by day, all related problems started again including psychological addiction, self confidence was over, and it took a while before I gathered my strength again to retrace my steps.
Finally did I quit smoking again, and now while I am writing this article, after more than 25+ years I am still a nonsmoker.
The lessons I learned in my personal grow path, and as a future Coach and therapist are the following:
1) When quitting an addiction like smoking one has to assume there will be will be some boycott/setback attempts, the way the unconscious mind try to boycott can widely vary from person to person, in my case for smoking it’s was a sneaky attractive idea that I could “control the monster”, that I was strong enough to do it, and enjoy the benefits, for other person can be something completely different.
The point is: Better you speak about this to your customer since the very beginning, customizing a possible mindset of “never letting your guard down”, being prepared for a possible random “ambush” in the future.
2) I would not recommend suggesting the customer that dealing with his/her addiction is “easy” and one single session will be probably enough, on the contrary, propose to schedule some sessions far away in time, and use those session to reinforce the new positive habits (reinforce the anchor if you used that technique) and make the benefits of quitting the addiction even more visible.
3) Always remember one of my favourite Bruce Lee quotes: “Never underestimate your opponent”, if this was valid for him about fighting, it can well be valid for each and every coach in the planet!
And you? Have you ever faced a similar problem? Please share if you like
Special thanks in advance for feedback from Coaches/Hipnotherapist/healers for their sharing.
