Forming a mental picture for self-help

In the deliberate employment of self-hypnosis for self-help, the most effective method is that of visual imagery. You use your conscious mind to form mental pictures of what you wish to accomplish.

These mental pictures are more easily transferred to the subconscious memory than are words. They are also more effective in the "play back" from the memory.

Motivation-which is how you act, feel and express your attitude toward things-is based on the sum total of experiences recorded in the memory. By giving yourself a new, clear, undistorted picture, free of self-doubt, showing how you wish to feel and act, you replace under self-hypnosis the old picture you have concerning yourself with the better one.

Dr. Edward W. Arluck and Dr. Benjamin Galinsky, both New York City psychologists, reported on an experiment involving hypnosis and visual imagery in which the subjects were told to picture themselves as being "more intelligent and more emotionally stable' The doctors declared that every person taking part in the experiment responded by becoming more optimistic and more self-confident.

Try this to help you get started, breathe in deeply and slowly, and feel the fresh air filling up your lungs until it just can’t take any more. Imagine the air encircling throughout your body and reaching every cell, literally basking it with oxygen. Now hold your breath for a few seconds and then very slowly exhale letting out all that toxic air.

While you are doing this breathing exercise and feeling all those cells perk up, just think for a minute about what happens when you’re inhaling the hot, fuming, toxic, carcinogenic smoke from a cigarette. Visualize the smoke circulating through your body and slowly killing all the cells that it comes in contact with.  Watch as it slowly but surely pollutes your entire body, and then see yourself finally succumbing to it one day.

I know this experiment is tough to deal with, but it’s important that you understand the hideous crime that you commit against your body each time you smoke a cigarette, compared to the good you do your body by inhaling clean, natural oxygen.

Finish the visualizing session by bringing yourself back to a positive state, the one where you're no longer a smoker and you are now feeling so much better, and have so much more energy! You are so glad you have finally kicked the habit! As an added bonus think of all the money you're saving by not buying cigarettes and can now be used for other things that you couldn't afford before!