Often, all it takes is a couple of professional hypnosis sessions followed by regular use of a good self-hypnosis CD for you to become smoke free for life. You can permanently change your behavior and regain your health by combining self-help and outside assistance.

With over a dozen techniques to choose from, there is no reason to choose just one NLP or hypnotherapy school. You can utilize these techniques to arrive at your ultimate goal of stopping smoking forever.

One very popular technique is hypnosis. It’s been used since the 19th century as a therapeutic technique. Despite being connected with charlatans in the old days, it is considered by modern experts to have a role in helping to alter many behaviors. Clearly, the physical addiction is only a part of the whole smoking habit. The mind must be changed for effective long term change.

Hypnosis operates by inserting suggestions into your subconscious. The hidden triggers which arouse the desire to smoke can be fought by putting in other triggers which counter them.

It can be just as helpful to work on your conscious mind. MLP for instance, concentrates on finding and figuring out the thoughts and ideas, which are in our control. When they are looked at carefully, they can be effected by referring to the truth and logic.

You can use that approach by making yourself a complete list of the things and events that trigger your decision to light up. Keep track of each time you want a cigarette, and describe why you wanted one at that time. Do you light a cigarette before you open your eyes in the morning? Do you want to light up right after your boss gives you some awful thing to do?

You can get those triggers under conscious control once you locate them and draw them out of the subconscious mind. The technique is very much like traditional psychoanalysis – pulling things up from the subconscious.

With NLP, it is believed that these subconscious beliefs are the result of your thought processes rather than past events and traumas. For this reason, you can replace those thoughts intentionally and consciously.

This process is neither unemotional nor automatic. This is completely wrong, feeling and thoughts must work together.

The secret to long term change is effort. If you know why you smoke, you are only halfway to quitting. It’s just as important to do something.

You can work to focus on other things to do than smoke.

Consider exercise as a possible surrogate for smoking. This is a double bonus for you! Every urge to smoke you refuse helps you break the habit that threatens your health. When you exercise, you are helping your body become healthy and strong. Perhaps fruit, chocolate or bread will go just as well with your beer or wine as would a cigarette.

In each situation, the technique is to change that choice to smoke a cigarette. Then it becomes an opportunity to avoid smoking and do something positive instead.

Changing habits will lead to changing overall behavior. Remember that time in the past when you were not a smoker? To get back to that time once more, come up with a plan then do it, one step at a time.

Wil Dieck is the founder of Total Mind Therapy, a highly successful method that helps people to stop smoking that uses two powerful transformation technologies, NLP and hypnosis. In fact, hundreds of people, just like you, have used Total Mind Therapy to help them quit smoking. His office is located in the middle of Mission valley in beautiful San Diego. Wil is also the author of the e-Course ““Quit Smoking Secrets the Tobacco Companies Don’t Want You to Know”” that you can have at absolutely no charge. CLICK HERE to receive your FREE copy of “Quit Smoking Secrets the Tobacco Companies Don’t Want You to Know”.