“I Can’t Smoke in Here! Wonderful!”
These days smokers are always hearing or reading “No.” Whether it’s in the workplace, a favorite restaurant, or the smoker’s own house, “Not in here!” is getting more and more frequent.
But even though these smokers know that smoking indoors is hazardous to their health and others’, many of America’s estimated 4.5 million adult smokers can’t help feeling like a bad child who’s always being punished. Maybe you’re one of them.
But wait! Aren’t you at least thinking about quitting? Then maybe it’s time to re-program this “deprivation” into an opportunity.
This is not some New-Age mumbo-jumbo suggestion. On the contrary, it’s derived from a scientific study just published in the American Journal of Public Health. The researchers found that workers whose employers enforced a non-smoking policy at work doubled their likelihood of successfully quitting.
And on a more personal level, those smokers who decided not to smoke in their homes were almost 10 times as likely to be successful quitters as smokers in homes where smoking was permitted.
So, choosing not to smoke in your own home not only decreases the amount you smoke and the hazardous effects on others around you, it will help you quit!
That’s what we mean about changing your thinking. If you think of not smoking at home as an opportunity, you’ve changed two major aspects in progress toward becoming a non-smoker: you’ve changed your behavior and you’ve changed your thinking.
Changing your thinking from the negative to the positive feels a whole lot better too. Instead of focusing on “I can’t smoke here,” and all the similar “I can’t”s, you’ll be thinking “I am choosing to make my home smoke-free.”
In effect, you’ll be positively re-programming your mind. After all, you spent many years as a non-smoker; you had to be programmed to smoke. So now you can re-program positively not to smoke—at least in certain places at the beginning.
One of the most effective ways to de-program the smoking mindset and re-program the non-smoker back into your mind is through clinical hypnosis. Again, I’m not pushing any magic on you. Clinical hypnosis is not the stuff of silly stage shows.
Clinical hypnosis has been recognized as a valuable technique for helping change your mindset and your behavior by both the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association since the 1950s.
Moreover, hypnosis is not only a mainstream method for altering your mindset, it’s extremely effective for quitting smoking. In fact, multi-session hypnosis has about a 66% success rate, far higher than any other method!
So, start by doing some self-hypnosis on your own. Begin thinking, “I want a smoke-free home; I like how much cleaner and healthier it is now that I don’t smoke in here.” I bet you’ll next be saying, “Look what I’ve accomplished! I thought I’d never be able to stand not smoking in the house, but I achieved it—and it wasn’t at all as hard as I thought it’d be!”
And once you’re ready to quit for good, consider the effectiveness of hypnosis. I urge you to ensure that you have a reputable hypnotherapist, but if you can’t locate one that’s affordable, consider audio hypnosis as an alternative.
Hands-down, the best audio hypnosis program is The Non-Smokers Edge by Dr. Gary Gilchrist. Dr. Gilchrist is a leading expert in smoking cessation through hypnotherapy. He’s a licensed psychologist in private practice in California and holds a doctoral degree in psychology and extensive credentials in clinical hypnotherapy.
The Non-Smoker’s Edge is published by The Hypnosis Network, the only audio hypnosis provider to earn the Health on the Net seal. The Hypnosis Network works only with licensed professionals like Dr. Gilchrist.
I have personally used their products with great success and recommend them to friends, family, clients and perfect strangers on a regular basis. Anyone who has followed through has been pleasantly surprised, if not astounded by how quickly and deeply they work. One literally just has to find a quiet place, be in an alert state, listen and let their mind and other than conscious mind do the rest.
They have such high confidence in their products that they give you a one-year money-back guarantee. Get more information at http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com/hypnosis/quit_smoking.php
* Chung-won Lee and Jennifer Kahende, “Factors Associated with Successful Smoking Cessation in the United States, 2000,” American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 97, No. 8, August 2007.
A few years back, I took an eight week course on Nonviolent Communication, also known as NVC.
It was a life transforming experience that really opened up my eyes and heart to how misdirected, confrontational and sometimes brutal our communication styles can be.
In trying to get our needs met, we often cause division…
NVC is a clear and effective model for communicating in a way that is cooperative, conscious, and compassionate.
Learning to use NVC was like learning to speak all over again but the results I experience when using it are often miraculous.
It is so effective in fact, that I am now working with a gentleman to incorporate a NVC workshop into a meditation program at one of our state prisons. It is our intention that those particular inmates will become proficient in the language of NVC, take it back out to the rest of the prison population and staff and create a positive change in how at least some of them relate to one another.
One heart and mind stilled, one fight averted, one friendship saved, one friendship created, one important unmet need expressed, understood and met…
What is NVC…
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is sometimes referred to as compassionate communication. Its purpose is to:
1. Create human connections that empower compassionate giving and receiving.
2. Create governmental and corporate structures that support compassionate giving and receiving.NVC involves both communication skills that foster compassionate relating and consciousness of the interdependence of our well being and using power with others to work together to meet the needs of all concerned.
This approach to communication emphasizes compassion as the motivation for action rather than fear, guilt, shame, blame, coercion, threat or justification for punishment. In other words, it is about getting what you want for reasons you will not regret later. NVC is NOT about getting people to do what we want. It is about creating a quality of connection that gets everyone’s needs met through compassionate giving.
The process of NVC encourages us to focus on what we and others are observing separate from our interpretations and judgments, to connect our thoughts and feelings to underlying human needs/values (e.g. protection, support, love), and to be clear about what we would like towards meeting those needs. These skills give the ability to translate from a language of criticism, blame, and demand into a language of human needs — a language of life that consciously connects us to the universal qualities “alive in us” that sustain and enrich our well being, and focuses our attention on what actions we could take to manifest these qualities.
Nonviolent Communication skills will assist you in dealing with major blocks to communication such as demands, diagnoses and blaming. In CNVC trainings you will learn to express yourself honestly without attacking. This will help minimize the likelihood of facing defensive reactions in others. The skills will help you make clear requests. They will help you receive critical and hostile messages without taking them personally, giving in, or losing self-esteem. These skills are useful with family, friends, students, subordinates, supervisors, co-workers and clients, as well as with your own internal dialogues.
Nonviolent Communication Skills
NVC offers practical, concrete skills for manifesting the purpose of creating connections of compassionate giving and receiving based in a consciousness of interdependence and power with others. These skills include:
- Differentiating observation from evaluation, being able to carefully observe what is happening free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us;
- Differentiating feeling from thinking, being able to identify and express internal feeling states in a way that does not imply judgment, criticism, or blame/punishment;
- Connecting with the universal human needs/values (e.g. sustenance, trust, understanding) in us that are being met or not met in relation to what is happening and how we are feeling; and
- Requesting what we would like in a way that clearly and specifically states what we do want (rather than what we don’t want), and that is truly a request and not a demand (i.e. attempting to motivate, however subtly, out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation, etc. rather than out of willingness and compassionate giving).
These skills emphasize personal responsibility for our actions and the choices we make when we respond to others, as well as how to contribute to relationships based in cooperation and collaboration.
With NVC we learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others, and to identify and clearly articulate what “is alive in us”. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, needed, and wanted, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative.
Founded on consciousness, language, communication skills, and use of power that enable us to remain human, even under trying conditions, Nonviolent Communication contains nothing new: all that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries. The intent is to remind us about what we already know—about how we humans were meant to relate to one another—and to assist us in living in a way that concretely manifests this knowledge.
The use of NVC does not require that the persons with whom we are communicating be literate in NVC or even motivated to relate to us compassionately. If we stay with the principles of NVC, with the sole intention to give and receive compassionately, and do everything we can to let others know this is our only motive, they will join us in the process and eventually we will be able to respond compassionately to one another. While this may not happen quickly, it is our experience that compassion inevitably blossoms when we stay true to the principles and process of Nonviolent Communication.
NVC is a clear and effective model for communicating in a way that is cooperative conscious, and compassionate.
People say we live in crazy times. The truth is that we have always lived in crazy times because we have as humans always acted crazy and created our world and our lives from that space.
NVC is one of many tools that we have to live lives of peace, prosperity and love. All we have to do is wake up, refocus and take action!
Until next time…
Kind Regards,
A
Cindy
Lisa McLellan
Anthony
Darryl Pace
Keri Eagan
Vegas Boomer Dating Expert
Vicki
Michael D Walker
Peggy Larson
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