A few have said, "Who cares?" They deliberately closed their minds to the consequences, and are the type of people who are afraid to entertain the thought of failure.

In every case where there has been a failure (and again I emphasize that they have been few), it was caused, I feel, by a hurry to stop smoking before the preconditioning process with self-hypnosis had been completed. Actually, one can hardly argue with this since the stronger preconditioning will take precedence in any circumstance.

Just remember, as you begin, that the only known way to rid oneself of an unwanted habit is to substitute a new habit in the place of the old one. The nail-biter who fails once, and finds himself nibbling at his nails, doesn't have to give up his resolve to quit. You don't stop driving if you happened to have an accident. And the golfer with a slice in his drive needn't feel his game is ruined forever. Practice will improve any habit or skill.

I'd like you to succeed on the first time you try, and establish once and for all that you can whip the cigarette habit. Unfortunately, I cannot tell how diligently you may practice, or how strongly you desire to quit smoking. I don't know how susceptible to self-suggestion you are. I don't even know your age, or whether you are male or female (not that it makes much difference ).

POSSIBLY YOU'LL STOP THIS WEEKEND

I have arbitrarily set a target date between a week and ten days. Maybe, if you find it difficult to relax and accept your own self-suggestions, it may take a while longer than that. On the other hand, you may have pretty well sold yourself, even before you picked up this book, that you were going to quit. You may be ready by tomorrow night.

But there is one thing I am sure of. I am sure of it because it is proved in every law of psychology. When you have established your new mental habit pattern with self-hypnosis, and when you have practiced the three deep breaths to stimulate it—nothing can defeat you. You've got to succeed, because the primary law of psychology, beginning with the most primitive urges of survival, is that a stimulus to the deepest preconditioning must take precedence over any other habit pattern.

CHAPTER TEN

Well, there you have it.

The rest is up to you. You now know how to change your attitude toward smoking. And you know how to substitute the habit of relaxation for the habit of smoking. And that's all you need to know.

You can now set a date. Give yourself a week or ten days in which to practice the principles of self-hypnosis —and practice, please. Just reading the material isn't enough. You can't repair something simply by reading the directions—you have to carry them out.

Learn how to take a "three-second breathing break," and try it frequently.

BUT DO NOT STOP SMOKING UNTIL TARGET DATE. Don't even cut down. For reasons that we've examined and understood, most methods of breaking the cigarette habit do not work and cannot work because they do not and cannot get to that level of your mind where patterns of habit operate automatically. If you try to stop two minutes from now, you're almost certain to fail again. Failure breeds failure. You’ll make it just that much harder ever to break the tobacco habit.

Set the date—and make it an ordinary day. Not a special holiday, not a day when there'll be parties and whoop-de-do.

Don't discuss your plans with anyone else. If you do, they'll be coming at you from all sides. They haven't been able to shake the habit, and unconsciously they won't want you to beat it either.

Your target date is a private affair, and if you are not sure that you've mastered the techniques of self-suggestion, you ought to be able to delay "target day" for another day or two (but no more than that!).