THE HABIT

The unconscious mind is the automatic mind. It is where the associations to smoking are stored and from where the craving to smoke is generated. Smokers feel they NEED to smoke because they have physical unconscious urges or cravings. The craving to smoke is what prevents most smokers, that really want to stop smoking, from being able to do so easily.

The conscious mind is the thinking mind. It is where a smoker’s perception of smoking is held, the belief that smoking is enjoyable and that there is some kind of benefit to it, and is from where the motivation, or WANT to smoke, is generated.

Another way to describe this, which is quite easy to relate to, is that when a teenager starts smoking they don’t yet have a craving or NEED to smoke. And that is because the smoking habit has not yet been trained in at the unconscious level of mind.

What a teenager does have when they start smoking, is a very strong conscious motivation or WANT to smoke, based on beliefs, among others, that smoking is cool and that they will be cool if they smoke. And that motivation is so strong that they force themselves through the unpleasant experience of starting smoking.

And so smokers that have smoked for some time have both an unconscious NEED to smoke, based on cravings that have been trained in over time, as well as a conscious motivation or WANT to smoke, based on beliefs that smoking is enjoyable or beneficial in some way.

In order to stop smoking permanently one has to change one’s unconscious habit of smoking, and the resulting craving, as well as one’s positive perception of smoking, and the resulting motivation to smoke. When a person that has successfully stopped smoking relapses after some time, it is a result of a conscious decision to smoke again, because they had not yet completely changed their perception that smoking is enjoyable or beneficial in some way.