Articles
April is Not the Cruellest Month!
April 11th, 2012
It’s funny, isn’t it, how sometimes a line of poetry will penetrate the national consciousness. People will know a line of poetry but will very often have little or no idea as to what it means or implies.
Here’s one such famous line: O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Most people know who wrote that line and where it comes from. Most people also think that the character who speaks that line is asking where Romeo is. But what Juliet is really asking is not where Romeo is but why he is who he is. She is saying: why does the stranger I have fallen in love with have to be Romeo Montague, a scion of the enemy household?
The line April is the cruellest month is perhaps slightly less well known. Its source and author are not common knowledge, but every year it pops up like a bad penny. This year, according to various media commentators, April is the cruellest month because of the drought, or the economic climate, or the fact that the weather over Easter 2012 was so bad while the weather leading up to Easter was so good. Five minutes on Google is enough to inform me that this year April is the cruellest month for certain couples who are no longer eligible for tax credit, for the people of Mumbai because of rising food prices and for the users of Windows Vista because they will cease to receive security updates from Microsoft as from April 2012! But why does this line stick in peoples’ minds and why do they reach for it every year with depressing regularity? And is April really the cruellest month and, if so, why?
The line in question is the opening line of T S Eliot’s long poem The Waste Land. Let’s take a look at it in context:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
April is the cruellest month because it brings things back to life, it destroys the safe and protecting oblivion of winter. In The Waste Land this is seen as something dangerous and undesirable. But in The Waste Land, Eliot creates a dark and chaotic universe in which values are turned on their heads and nothing is as it seems. The opening of this poem presents stark contrasts and contradictions. Until Eliot wrote The Waste Land, April was not generally regarded as cruel. The idea of April as being “cruel” is intended to shock. Likewise, winter is usually regarded as a cold season rather than a source of warmth, and “dead land” does not usually bring forth lilacs. To a modern reader, this opening might invoke ominous forebodings of climate change and global warming. But the point is that the opening of The Waste Land is a gateway into a frightening and abnormal universe. It goes without saying that the first line of this poem was never intended to serve as a banal cultural cliché.
But outside of the context of The Waste Land, is there a sense in which April is indeed a cruel month? April is certainly different from the months which precede it. As I wend my way through the maze of West Sussex footpaths the air is suddenly rich with perfume from bluebells and wild garlic. The tiny crocuses and pale daffodils have had their season and the rhododendrons are showing forth their stronger colours. Change is in the air. And, yes, there is a sense in which Eliot is quite right. There is something comforting about the grey quietness of January and February which is torn away by April. It is time to stop hiding and start living again.
As a hypnotherapist I often think about the appropriate time for change. I will often tell my clients that maybe just before Christmas is not the best time to try to quit smoking or that just before a major family celebration is perhaps not the best time to begin a strict diet. The traditional time for change and the formulation of resolutions is New Year. But maybe April is a better time, because it is a time of transition between winter and summer, a time of awakening and renewal, a time of colour, energy and optimism.
April is not the cruellest month. April is April. It is whatever you want it to be.
Horsham Hypnotherapy: serving clients from Horsham, Crawley, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Guildford, Redhill and all parts of West Sussex, East Sussex and Surrey. Contact us today.
The Art of Possibility: A Response from the Author.
March 6th, 2012
As a gesture of courtesy, I sent my article on the book The Art of Possibility to the two
authors. I did this simply to give the authors the opportunity to respond to, and comment on, any aspect of my review. I was delighted to receive the following response from Roz Zander which picks up on a number of points I raise in my article and which I therefore felt appropriate to post here.
Many thanks Roz and Ben!
Dear Neil,
I am honored that you took the time to write about the practices in the Art of P., and pleased to tell you that Ben has just recorded a magnificent Mahler 2, after having scrapped the first recording of the symphony two or three years ago. He will finish the series, I am certain.
Because you raise the point about the relatively comfortable middle-class point of view, I hope you won’t mind my jumping in to suggest how you can give an “A” to someone who has raped your child, and continue to see that it’s all invented at the news that you have three months to live, and how you can practice being the Board as the marauding armies advance. It’s important to me that the practices themselves are seen as applicable no matter what circumstances befall us.
Even mentioning the 3 months-to-live scenario implies certain assumptions on your part of a tragic nature, but there are so many other ways of holding that news, which I actually experienced–(as you can see the prediction did not pan out.) I found myself extremely present and happy, to my great surprise. I didn’t tell people about it, because my thought was that they would become anxious and upset–but I wasn’t. My vision altered. I saw Cezanne in a row of trees down an alley in Boston (how middle-class) and then I saw the same trees as they were, in a way I had never seen them before. On passing a bin for the donation of Christmas toys to needy children, I understood at once why it was important–because they would feel that someone cared. I had to wait exactly three months for the final verdict and I have to say I did not experience a shred of anxiety, perhaps because i said to myself you are alive until you aren’t, and then it doesn’t matter (an invention.)
How can you give an “A” to someone who raped your child? The way you do to an axe murderer, by inventing that they have lost all their humanity under the impulse, and you invent that in some dark place they have the horror of knowing so. And how can you be the Board as the troops advance? You can perhaps ask yourself, “What was it that kept me from seeing things develop in this direction long ago? How is it that I have remained here so helplessly?
I gave a seminar for business leaders at the State of the World Forum the year it was held in NYC, and I got from them the same reservations that you had. They thought the model was elitist, and too intellectual. When I went back to my room in the hotel I walked in on the woman cleaning it. I told her that I had been teaching people that life is a story you tell, so you might as well tell stories that make you and others both kind and powerful. I told her that the business people thought that you had to have a graduate education to understand this. This woman shook her head. ” They don’t know because they have never been so poor that they couldn’t put lunch in their child’s lunchbox. It’s what you tell the children about themselves and the world that will make or break them” or something close to that. She felt it was the business people who were the ones who were unable to grasp what I was saying because they had never been forced to the extremities that call on human creativity.
When I was in South Africa a couple of years ago, a gentleman told me I had saved his life. It turned out that he had read the book and was sharing it with his wife, when later in the night some thieves broke into their house and tied them up in their beds, perhaps, as he thought, in preparation for killing them. He whispered to his wife “The Art of Possibility” and found himself making authentic eye contact with his persecutors. He motioned to one to take off the duct tape from his mouth and asked for a glass of water as though it would be granted out of the kindness of the man’s heart. He said he knew then that they would not be killed.
I accept his invention relative to the Art of P and am grateful for it.
Thanks so much for your responses.
Warmest Regards,
Roz Zander
Horsham Hypnotherapy: serving clients from Horsham, Crawley, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Guildford, Redhill and all parts of West Sussex, East Sussex and Surrey. Contact us today.
The Art of Possibility
March 1st, 2012
This book by Roz and Ben Zander is not a self-help book. It is better than that. The writers of self-help books usually make certain assumptions about their readership. They assume that their readers have certain issues, or are unhappy underachievers. This book doesn’t. This book doesn’t require any fundamental change in your beliefs about yourself and the world around you. It doesn’t ask you to take on board any philosophical or psychological body of doctrine. This book doesn’t seek disciples. It is that rarest of objects – a book which can really make a difference to the lives of those who read it.
I came across this book purely by chance. I was searching for Benjamin Zander on the Internet. For quite a number of years now Mr. Zander has been making recordings of the Mahler symphonies but his Mahler cycle appears to have ground to a halt. I was looking for new Mahler recordings by Zander when I came across this book.
Ben Zander is a conductor with a difference. For many people, music is essentially the expression of emotion through sound. For Zander it is something more – it is a medium of communication. That is why a Zander recording will usually come with an extra disc in which Zander himself talks about the work he has recorded. Even for the seasoned music lover, these talks are always compelling and enlightening. So is his music making. Some conductors seem to be performing for their own satisfaction alone. But you always feel that a Zander performance is communicating with you – addressing you.
There is something else about Zander with which I was less comfortable. For many years Ben Zander has been working with businesses and corporations, giving talks and holding workshops on a range of topics from people management through to motivation through to the theory and practice of effective leadership. There’s nothing wrong with that in principle, but it did seem a very odd thing for a conductor – a classical musician – to be doing. Surely it is the business side of the music industry which has brought the whole world of Classical music into decline? Music has become commodified – a product to sell in order to make money. If it don’t sell by the shed load it aint important. So, no more studio recordings of opera – it doesn’t make enough money. The big companies no longer have any time for “minority” tastes and interests. Mahler might not be a “minority” taste at the moment – but that could all change. Why is Ben Zander getting his hands dirty?
I was mistaken. Business and commerce is part of life, not something you can simply ignore. Some of the greatest creative artists have been those who really understood the nature of the demand for their work and the business of marketing and selling their artistic creations. Perhaps if Mozart and Schubert had understood the music business as well as, say, Beethoven and Verdi did then their creative lives might have been both happier and longer.
The Art of Possibility is published by the Harvard Business School Press. The book is about the transformation of professional and personal life but the book doesn’t really draw any hard and fast distinction between these two areas. The book essentially consists of a series of “practices” which, if adopted, can help, enhance, transform both personal and professional live. Ben Zander is the co-author of this book. His name appears after Rosamund Stone Zander. Roz Zander is a therapist and an artist. As a therapist myself I recognize certain theories and techniques employed in the course of this book. Much, of not most, of this will, I imagine, have come from Roz Zander.
Each chapter of the book is devoted to a “practice” or technique which, if adopted, can help to transform personal and professional life because these practices can help to free us from some of the assumptions we have which block achievement and limit possibility. What follows is a very condensed summary of these practices. In the book they are elaborated at much greater length and illustrated by examples and anecdotes drawn from the personal and professional lives of both authors.
1. It’s all invented. The brain is hard-wired to perceive the world, the reality around us, in a certain way. Reality, as we perceive it, is a product of the human brain. But this practice does not require you to behave as if the world around us were not real, or were some kind of a dream. “Invented” or not, if you jump off a tall building, you will die. If you wander across a busy motorway you will get run over. This practice is trying to raise our awareness of the fact that much of our interpretation of what we experience is indeed invented by ourselves. We are, in fact, free to jettison what we have invented, or to invent something new and more helpful.
2. Stepping into a universe of possibility. This short chapter draws a distinction between “the world of measurement” and the world of possibility. Two plus two will always equal four. No car would move, no plane become airborne, without exact measurement. But something exists beyond the mechanics of materialism. The “world of measurement” can see no connection whatsoever between a teenage girl and a burning blob of gas floating in space some 94,000,000 miles from earth. But when Shakespeare says “Juliet is the sun” we grasp the truth of it immediately. Possibility is a type of artistic creation, one in which we can indulge every day of our lives.
3. Giving an A. This practice involved giving people “top marks” not for what they do but for what they are. This is something which we therapists would call “unconditional positive regard”. It doesn’t mean assuming that everyone is perfect. It doesn’t mean overlooking the faults and misdeeds of others. It does mean recognizing that every single person you encounter had more potential in them than either you or they could ever imagine. As a teacher, I have employed this practice myself, with astonishing results.
4. Being a contribution. Or, as the authors say, throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference. Or, as I would say, give yourself an “A” for a change.
5. Leading from any chair. You don’t have to be formally “in charge” to make a difference. The previous two practices lead naturally to this one.
6. Rule number 6. Rule number 6 is: don’t take yourself too seriously. This might seem pretty self explanatory, but this chapter draws a distinction similar to the one implied in Practice number 2. The distinction here is between the “calculating” self and the “central” self. The calculating self is at the mercy of the world of measurement, fixed and trapped. The central self, in which nothing is fixed and everything is possible, belongs to the world of change and transformation.
7. The way things are. Or, as Johann Strauss would say: Glűclich ist, wer vergisst / Was doch nicht zu ȁndern ist – “Happy is he who accepts what cannot be changed”. Sometimes bad events, accidents or disasters can be turned into something better that what would have happened if those misfortunes had nor occurred. I dealt with this in my earlier article about Sophie Morgan.
8. Giving way to passion. Let passion flow through you. Don’t hold back. Harness its energy.
9. Lighting a spark. “Enrolment” is the key concept here – to generate “a spark of possibility” for others to share. Again, this is a natural continuation of practices three, four and five.
10. Being the board. This is really the key practice of the whole book. All the other practices, in one way or another, relate directly to this one. At the heart of the practice is a compelling metaphor: life can be conceived of as a board game, such as chess. Normally we think of ourselves as one of the protagonists on the board – whether king, pawn or something in between. But there are times in the course of our lives when the piece on the board which represents us runs into trouble, menaced by some other piece, in peril of a checkmate, or trapped in some way. When such crises occur, we tend to view them in terms of conflict – us against the enemy, us against a hostile destiny. “Being the board” requires a radical change of perspective. It requires you to think of yourself not as a protagonist on the board but as the board itself – to start to see yourself not as an actor in your own drama but as the actual framework, or stage, in which the drama of your life is played out. So, when a crisis occurs, one’s response should not be to blame or to attack, but rather to ask how that crisis appeared in the first place. Or, as the authors themselves put it: “If I cannot be present without resistance to the way things are and act effectively, if I feel myself to be wronged, a loser, or a victim, I will tell myself that some assumption I have made is the source of my difficulty”. (Chapter 10 p 143, emphasis mine).
11. Creating frameworks for possibility. Essentially this is about re-framing, to restructure a situation so that the situation can be seen as positive and helpful. One of the examples offered in the book is that of an imaginative and courageous teacher, one of whose pupils had lost her hair though cancer treatment. The teacher shaved her own head and, instantly, what had seemed threatening and abnormal suddenly became the desired norm. All the other children in the class had their heads shaved.
12. Telling the WE story. John Donne once said that no man is an island. And yet, in modern western culture, the emphasis is so often upon “me”. Professional life is about the acquisition of money for me as a consumer to spend, relationships are all about the pleasure and satisfaction “I” can get from them, pop culture and celebrity fetishism are overwhelmingly fixated upon the individual. What happened to “we”? Well, “we” haven’t gone away! Even the most greedy and voracious corporations appreciate the value of the “team”. And only the most egotistical or narcissistic of us can fail to realize, at least at some points in our lives, that we need others, that we belong to something bigger. Even Mahler, often thought of as the most neurotically self-obsessed of creative artists, was not simply laying bare his own soul – he was creating a world in which all of us, without exception, can share if we wish. He was telling the WE story.
Any summary requires omission, and therefore runs the risk of distortion. The above summary is not intended as a substitute for reading the Zanders’ book. The book itself describes the practices as simply and as clearly as possible and proceeds to illustrate them by means of compelling, usually anecdotal, illustrations and examples. It is a very easy book to read – but that doesn’t mean that it is saying something simple.
What of criticisms? I suppose one could complain that the authors do little to link their practices together in an overarching theoretical framework. But the purpose of the book is not to foist any theory or doctrine on the reader but simply to offer him or her some ways of making life more enjoyable and fulfilling. A more serious criticism might be that this book is very much aimed at its readership, and that readership is very likely to be educated and, for want of a better word, middle-class. In spite of 21st century economic woes, the world does present near endless possibilities for the educated and (reasonably) affluent Westerner. But to what extent is it possible to “become the board” if the town in which you live is about to be flattened by a hostile armed force? It is possible to “give an A” to the person who has raped your child? Can you tell yourself that “it’s all invented” if you have only been given three months to live? To include such situations would require a much larger book – maybe one which the Zanders will go on to write.
In the meantime I sincerely hope that Ben Zander is able to apply practice number 9 and enrol some sponsors for his as yet unfinished Mahler cycle. I await the next instalment with impatience!
Zander, R. S., Zander, B. The Art of Possibility, Harvard Business School Press 2000
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On St. David’s Day: Some Verses from a Great Welshman.
March 1st, 2012
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
These are the first two verses of a poem which Dylan Thomas published when he was 20. They are full of youthful exuberance and vitality. But what do they mean? What is Thomas getting at here?
What exactly is this “force”? The force which runs through the black and white “fuse” of these words seems to be both a negative and a positive force. Positive, because it is the life force itself, the force which drives the energy of youth. Negative, because this is a force which will push us all on to destruction. It bends the rose, dries the mountain streams, blasts the roots of trees and drives youth on to old age and destruction.
Commentators on this poem have been very preoccupied as to the nature of the “force” mentioned in the very first line and deliberately likened to electricity. Bryan Magee even goes as far as to suggest that the “force” can, at some level, be equated with Schopenhauer’s concept of the “Will”. This is an intriguing suggestion, though I am very doubtful that Thomas would have ever had much time for the gloomy Sage of Frankfurt.
I’m inclined to think that this is a blind alley. The actual nature of the “force” is not the real issue. I think that what the poet is really saying is that as we are all “driven” by the same “force” then, at some level, we are all connected, related, even identical. If the whole of animate life is driven by one force, whatever its positive or negative aspects, then it can be seen as a kind of unity. Yet that is not how we experience life. We cannot communicate with “nature” and we feel isolated.
Of course, we sometimes can and do empathize and identify with creatures other than our fellow men and women. We may relate to our dog, our cat, even our budgie or goldfish as being creatures somehow essentially similar to ourselves. But how far does this really extend? To the whole of the animal kingdom, or to creatures that are less cuddly, or to insects? What about trees and plants? Maybe during times of elation, or during other “peak” experiences, we may experience some fleeting sense of unity with all that lives. But it is something rare and passing.
But Thomas’ poem goes even further. What about streams and rocks? What about earth and matter? Is it possible to feel that sense of union and identity with the whole of nature?
In his brief, and compellingly readable, autobiography, the composer Arnold Bax describes an experience which perfectly illuminates the underlying meaning of Thomas’ poem.
Bax describes in some detail a spring morning in County Dublin. Unable to work, Bax goes for a bike ride. He describes the sights in some detail. He has a rest at a bridge over a river near Glendhu wood. Then he relates an experience which had occurred before and which can only be described as mystical:
“Whilst my vision became saturated with that aerial colour of Irish distances the two sounds of which I was alone aware were in a moment fused into one. My life’s blood it was that laughed and danced down the mountain, and that hill-stream coursed through my veins – was my very being. I was also that blue rim of earth held in the tangled net of the still naked birch-stems, and deep in that multicoloured pool of consciousness I sensed the images of all the beauty and pain in beauty that had ever illuminated or shadowed the race-memory of man.
It only lasted for a moment. “Who am I? Where am I?” came the question in a kind of panic, and instantly the dusky flames in that mirror within me broke up into shafts of diminishing light and went out altogether. My consciousness slid back into the rather delicate organism that was known as Arnold Bax.” (Farewell My Youth. p 96).
The similarity here – the mention of mountains, streams and veins – is very striking. Bax and Thomas were contemporaries – they died in the same year. Thomas would have known little or nothing of Bax, and yet here are two British artists who have both hit upon the same profound truth about the nature of human existence. Thomas expressed it through his poetry, Bax through his music.
We may stand dumb before the crooked rose but at least, through the medium of great art, we can communicate with each other.
Bax, A. 1992 Farewell My Youth ed. L. Foreman, Scolar Press.
Thomas, D. 1978 The Poems ed. D. Jones, J M Dent & Sons
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How Hard Is It to Quit Smoking?
February 28th, 2012
As a hypnotherapist, smoking cessation is an important part of my professional life. Over the past ten years I have had more clients for smoking than for any other issue. But unlike many of my colleagues, I have been a smoker myself. I know what it’s like. I know that giving up isn’t easy. But I also know that it can be done, that you can break the habit, consign it to the past and simply get on with the rest of your life without even thinking about the habit.
But I also think that it is useful to reflect upon my own experience as a smoker because, in doing so, I can empathize more deeply with those many thousands of people who feel trapped and rendered helpless by this dangerous habit. And I can give them hope. I am living proof that a one-time heavy smoker can quit smoking forever.
Why did I ever start smoking? Like most smokers I vividly remember my first cigarette. It was given to me by my grandmother. I was aged around nine or ten. Yes – this was a few decades ago, but just think how times have changed! When Nan gave me my first fag, no one thought it was a big deal. I didn’t know how to smoke it properly, I didn’t like the taste, and at the time I simply thought that having tried it and not enjoyed it I would never be a smoker.
But I became a smoker. Why?
I think that there were two reasons. Peer pressure was certainly one of them. I wanted to do what some, if not all, of my mates were doing. I wanted to take the lead over those who weren’t doing it yet because they were nervous at taking the plunge. But I think that there was another, deeper reason why I took it up.
Neither of my parents were smokers. But many relatives and family friends were. Dad used to smoke a cigar or two at Christmas or after a special meal out. Family gatherings, parties, weddings and other such special events were wreathed in cigarette smoke. So many of the good things in life became associated with cigarette smoke.
On Saturday afternoons we used to get a cleaner in to help Mum out. There were three of us kids. Dad was a coalman. There was endless amounts of washing to do and Mum needed a helping hand on a Saturday afternoon. The lady who came to clean for us was a smoker. So, even today, the combined smell of wood polish and fag smoke evokes happy memories of long summer Saturdays, when school felt like it was a million miles away and there was still Dr Who and Sunday to look forward to…
These positive associations intensified as I got older. Cigarette smoke came to represent rebellion against an impossibly dull and restrictive school regime. It became associated with booze-ups and crazy nights out. And as an undergraduate, smoking was simply a natural part of our louche student lifestyle.
So – in one way or another – smoking was associated with all the good things in life. Holidays, Christmases, family gatherings, meals out, pub visits, parties – all of these things were associated in my mind with smoking. Added to which was the attraction of the habit itself. I got to like smoking. I used to like a fag and a pint with friends. I used to like a fag with a strong pot of tea when I was studying as an undergraduate. (My tutor, and later thesis supervisor, the eminent Descartes scholar Prof. John Cottingham, was also a smoker and was often ready to share a Silk Cut during tutorials). I used to like smoking.
So the question now arises – how and why did I quit?
I remember my first attempt at quitting. It came as quite a shock. I first tried to quit at the ripe old age of seventeen. I had been smoking for four years. I decided to stop one Sunday morning. I lasted the whole of Sunday – but it was hard. I spent the whole day feeling irritated and thinking about smoking. I was at work the next day. At that time I was an apprentice plumber. The day did not go well – I caused two leaks and broke my boss’s best drill. That was it – back to the fags for me!
The next time was more successful. My schooling had been an unmitigated disaster and I had ended up in the wrong job. I had to do something. And, as I always say, one change often leads to another. I signed up for some correspondence courses but found that I couldn’t study because I couldn’t concentrate. I started to explore yoga and meditation – and I came to appreciate what a dangerous and harmful habit smoking really is. I learned some meditation techniques and did some concentration exercises. I began to change. And I gave up smoking.
At university I made the usual fatal mistake. I started to have the “occasional” cigarette in the evenings. It soon became every evening. Then every afternoon and evening. Then I was back to square one. But only for a couple of years. I knew that I could do again what I had done before, and there was never any doubt that I would, at some time, stop smoking for good. After January 1990, that was it. No more cigarettes. Do I miss it? I don’t even think about it. I can honestly say that no matter what I’m doing – walking with the kids, or having a beer, or after a meal – I don’t even think about smoking. I know – with 100% certainty – that I will never be a habit smoker again.
All this happened before I trained in hypnotherapy. But I was using mediation and concentration exercises which, I think, are pretty much the same thing in a different guise. But what also helped was that at no point in my life did I ever say that I couldn’t quit or that I would remain a smoker forever. I always knew I would stop. I never once said “I can’t quit” or “I haven’t got the willpower”. I believe that people who say those things are using a kind of hypnosis against themselves. If you tell yourself something often enough you will end up believing it.
So – as a hypnotherapist, I know that it is not an easy thing to quit smoking. I also know that if you want to quit you can. Sometimes people come to me who don’t want to give up smoking but who nevertheless want to be non-smokers. They want me to wave hypnosis as a kind of magic wand and make the habit magically disappear. Well, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. People are people, not puppets or machines. The human brain is not a passive computer program. You need to want to quit. And if you want to, then – sooner or later – you will.
How do you maximize your chances of success? First of all, you need to choose your moment. If you’re going through a period of change and transition, if your relationship is going through a rocky patch or is breaking down, if things are particularly stressful at work, or if a load of celebrations, parties or other such events are on the near horizon then it is probably best to wait until things settle down. But it is also vitally important to “psyche-up” to it. Tell people that you’re giving up. That will do two things – it will give you an added incentive to stick to your word, and the words you say to others will have an effect upon you. When you say something, you give your words a certain reality. And you must make a promise to yourself, whatever happens, never to tell either yourself or anyone else that you cannot quit, or that you do not have the willpower.
If you want to stop, you can. Hypnotherapy is not a magic wand – it is a helping hand which can make the difference between success and failure.
The struggle against the smoking habit is a conflict which you must win. And even if you lose a battle, you can always win the war.
You have to. Your life depends upon it.
Horsham Hypnotherapy: serving clients from Horsham, Crawley, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Guildford, Redhill and all parts of West Sussex, East Sussex and Surrey. Contact us today.

