A New Beginning

Hold onto this new awareness, cherish it. Remember the important point is in accepting that this is who you are. From now on you must make the effort to always think of yourself as a non-smoker. As of now you are a non-smoker.

It doesn't matter how much evidence there is to the contrary. It doesn't even matter if you can perceive yourself actually physically smoking a cigarette at the time, you must still think of yourself as a new non-smoking person, I am now a non-smoker. The fact that I am physically smoking a cigarette is irrelevant, completely unimportant, my external material aspects of self will come into line eventually as long as I remember that I am a non-smoker and that this person who is smoking is no longer me but a shadow, a hangover from the past.

What we are doing is a bit like painting a new design on the inside of the house. We have made the decision to change and made the initial stroke with the paint brush. However most of the house is still living from the old design. Every hour that we remember ourselves as a non-smoker is like painting some more of the walls of the house. Eventually the house will be fully repainted, as eventually we will be wholly a non-smoker. The amount of time it takes us to reach our goal depends on the constancy of our effort and the size of our house. It is important to paint the basement and sub-basement cellars as well.

Remember you, as a human being, are quite a complicated system, and as with all systems it takes time for changes made at the centre to propagate throughout the system. Unlike computer systems however, in your mind there will be aspects of your self, or psyche that will unconsciously, though often vigorously, resist any changes. However by patient quiet insistence that you are now a non-smoker you will bring them around, or wear them down eventually.

There will be times when you and your new self will probably feel as if you are being attacked within your own mind, particularly at times of stress. Your thoughts will, with varying degrees of vehemence, ridicule you for taking such a ludicrous and obviously false stand. You may well feel that you are dealing with something that is plain stupid and recalcitrant. This is the nature of bad habits though, they appeal to, and relate to, the worst that is within us. The actual nature of the attacks will depend very much on who and what you have been in the past. However you will have the ability to live through them. They are only shadows of your former being.