Using Pleasure to Quit Smoking – Chris Minor

I use pleasure to transform.

Pleasure can be any number of feelings.

Pleasure can just be physical sexual pleasure, or it can be just a really good feeling of confidence.

It could be a feeling of completion,
It could be a combination of those things.

Pleasure is subjective to the person.


Let’s take smoking cessation as an example.

So old school hypnosis was all about creating aversion anchors. Saying something like “each and every time that you smoke a cigarette, you’re going to feel nauseous and you’re going to feel like crap, you get to have that taste of ash in your mouth,” you get the idea.

This is what’s called negative reinforcement.

Negative reinforcement works really really well for a very short time, because eventually you’re gonna be like, “fuck this I I’m an adult, I work, I pay taxes. I’m stressed out and I want to have a cigarette, I’m gonna have a cigarette screw what that guy says.”

You’re gonna self sabotage, because you have no filter against yourself and you will convince yourself that this behavior is okay, even if other parts of you know it’s not great for you.

Which means all the work that your hypnosis has done goes right out the window. That’s negative reinforcement.


Now if I say “every single time that you want to have that cigarette and you say, No, no, no, we’re not, we’re not going to do that. We don’t do that anymore. You’re going to get this wonderful rush of pleasure right up your spine. It’s just going to hit your brain. It’s just gonna create a beautiful shower of chemicals. Good feeling chemicals. Like you’re gonna get goose pimples all over. It’s like whoo!!! That’s gonna be incredible”. You think they’re going to go for that cigarette?

No!

It works because we’re fulfilling what they need. Because the cigarette can’t give that to them. They give it to the cigarette so the cigarette can give it back to them. Really what’s happening is the cigarette has now become an anchor. Anchors are very, very powerful.

For example, when I was quitting smoking, I had a half a pencil and I would sit and I would like pretend to smoke on the pencil and it would relax me. I would feel that same sense of peace and calm that was there and in the cigarette smoking. It let me keep the ritual without the bad habit. Eventually I realized it was silly and I could just feel good because I wanted to, it wasn’t about the cigarette or the pencil.

That cigarette is not going to give them what they just felt. They gave it to themselves. The feeling is the thing that they’re looking for. Whether it’s the relaxation, the pleasure, the sense of connection to body and self. You can get that without the cigarette. The pleasure, it’s right there. It’s available. They don’t need the cigarettes to find those things anymore. You’ve returned their power to them.

We are constantly making these anchors for ourselves and most of the time it’s unconscious.

What behaviors do you do, just to find pleasure? What could be possible if you understood (as you do now) that you can create that pleasure at will?