Like a Light Switch - Stopping Smoking

When Tom first reached out to me, smoking had become a daily frustration. He wasn’t just battling the cigarettes — he was battling himself. Every day brought the same cycle of intention and disappointment: “I should cut down,” followed by another cigarette, then another wave of self-criticism.

Family members were nagging him to stop. He was starting to feel the toll physically — shortness of breath, fatigue, and a general sense that his body was no longer cooperating. “I felt disappointed in myself,” he told me. “I just couldn’t seem to limit my smoking the way I wanted to.”

Our First Session: A Twist of Possibility

Tom came in without big expectations. “I don’t think I had specific expectations,” he said. Like many of my clients, he was curious — but cautious. Early in our first session, I guided him through what I call the twist demonstration — a simple exercise that shows, vividly, how the unconscious can open up possibilities that the conscious mind believes are fixed.

That moment was pivotal for Tom. “It made me a believer,” he said. “It got my subconscious on board.”

By the end of that first session, something fundamental had shifted. “After the hypnosis, it was like a light switch,” Tom recalled. “When I tell people about it, I snap my fingers — that’s what it felt like.”

The Three-Session Transformation

Over the course of three sessions, Tom’s relationship with smoking transformed. There was no struggle, no battle of willpower. Just a steady reprogramming of old patterns as we worked directly with his unconscious — the part of him that had been trying to protect him in its own way all along.

In the days that followed, he found himself reaching for cigarettes less and less. He used a few of the tools we introduced — tapping when urges appeared, listening to his session recording once or twice — but mostly, the need just faded away. “Not much of an urge now,” he said. “It’s not really something I think about anymore.”

No Willpower. No Fight.

When friends and other smokers ask about his experience, Tom tells them something that often stops them in their tracks: “There’s no willpower involved, no battle. That’s just not the way to think about it.”

He tells them that quitting can actually be easy — not because hypnosis magically erases cravings, but because it changes how your unconscious understands the habit itself. When that shift happens, there’s nothing left to fight.

“It’s the easy way to quit,” Tom said.

What Comes Next

Now free from smoking, Tom is noticing other areas of his life he wants to bring into balance — like alcohol and weight. That’s often how it goes. Once you’ve experienced real change, it’s natural to want more of it. Transformation builds on itself.

If you’ve been trying to quit and nothing seems to stick, maybe it’s not about trying harder — maybe it’s about engaging the part of you that already knows how to let go.

👉 Schedule a free phone or Zoom consultation to learn how this process could work for you: https://calendly.com/donald-pelles/phone-consultation-for-smoking-cessation.