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Proactive Action for Session Six |
1. If you think about having a cigarette and become obsessive about it, the thought will start building up into a pressure front. Of course you cannot help it if a thought just crops up and appears in your head. At a moment like that you think 'cigarette'. That's fine, but don't indulge in it because you have a choice. You can either become obsessed and allow the thought to reach colossal proportions and drive you insane, or say the magic words 'this too shall pass' to yourself. Then you smile and wait. If this is your chosen attitude it will take just a couple of minutes and a different thought will come in, pushing the idea of the cigarette out of the way. This is exactly how it works, but you have to experiment with this attitude and see if it works for you.
Remember to stay calm, to recall the attitude 'this too shall pass', and to smile. And then just wait and see … it will happen and this process will alleviate the craving.
2. At moments when this exercise doesn't work and you fear that addiction is getting its way, remember that you can rely on other tools. Please remember that you experience what you focus on. If you are craving a smoke and that's where you dwell, naturally that's what you will experience. The thought pops into your head but as mentioned many times before, addiction is a separate entity living in your head - it uses your thoughts and feelings and tries to manipulate you.
Remember that if Strategy 1 doesn't seem to work, you can employ Strategy 2, which is a shift in focus. In this case, rather than wait and see how the thought is replaced, do something else. Actively shift the focus to another thought or engage yourself in an activity that will force a change of focus. Get on the phone, get online, do something that will demand your attention and allow you to focus on something else. Once your focus is changed the smoking thought loses its strength. | |
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