Hi, I’m Mike Reeves-McMillan, Registered Hypnotherapist (NZ) and health coach. I help a lot of people
who want to stop smoking, and the material in this ebook is based on what I tell them in my face-to-face
sessions.
Of course, information by itself isn’t going to enable you to stop
smoking. You already have plenty of information about the health
efects of smoking (it’s written on the packets in most countries, after
all). Yet you haven’t stopped yet. Why not?
There are a few reasons, and I’ll talk about them and address them
as we go through this ebook. More importantly, though, I’ll give you
tools, tips and techniques which, if you apply them and stick with it,
can make the diference you need to quit tobacco and overcome your
cigarette smoking habit. Information about smoking and its efects
and the beneits of giving up smoking is important, but motivation
to quit smoking, tips for giving up smoking and strategies to stop
smoking are vital if you’re going to succeed.
This ebook is part of an online course I created called Smokefree Life. The ebook is free, and you can distribute it however you like as long as you don’t change it in any way or charge for it. The course costs
a small amount of money, about the same as a couple of packs of cigarettes, and gives you a whole stack
of extra resources to make giving up smoking easier. The Resources section at the back tells you what
they are.
Smoking isn’t just a behaviour. It’s a set of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that cluster together and
support each other. Part of what we’ll be doing is challenging those feelings and thoughts so that you
can start to shift the behaviours.
Some people smoke as a ritual, others have a smoking habit. In both cases, it’s often a way of distracting
themselves from their lives – a way that doesn’t solve any of their problems and that causes them more
problems.
Some people smoke to manage their stress and emotions. But a study in the UK showed that, on average,
smokers were less happy and had a poorer quality of life than nonsmokers – and this improved after
they gave up. Smoking also keeps your body stressed and keyed-up – it’s a really bad way to manage
stress. In fact, there is no problem so terrible that poisoning yourself is a good solution.
Finally, some people smoke because trying to quit smoking gives them distressing feelings, and they
feel they can’t push past that to get all the beneits and lose all the negatives.
This ebook is here to help you with that, so that you can quit smoking and not only feel good but also
feel good about yourself.
