If the urge ever returns, you can eradicate it quickly and easily with self-suggestion. If you "slip" and do happen to smoke a cigarette or two, that need not be the signal to start burning them up again at the rate of a pack or two a day. All it means is that you'll want to spend a few minutes a night for the next few nights reinforcing the sound decision you did make and did successfully carry out for a while.

But the odds are that you won't slip. You're going to enjoy your new self. And the nicest thing is this: when you give up smoking, you are no longer committing suicide on die installment plan.
 
Special Instructions for the One Reader in Ten Who
Cannot Achieve Easy Relaxation
 
If you're one of the few who "just can't relax," what can you do about it?

The technique usually associated with the induction of hypnosis is actually instruction on how to relax. It serves no other purpose than to get the body relaxed so that the conscious mind will be relaxed.

If you can relax, if you can "let yourself go" and feel limp all over—skip the following instructions on how
to relax.

And forget about any tests. Give yourself the positive, powerful suggestions needed to enable you to break the cigarette habit, and they will start at once forming a new attitude and habit in the subconscious.

However, if you are one of those folks who has trouble going to sleep within a short time after going to bed, if you get leg cramps, neck aches and itches that keep you awake, then you will need to practice a method to get your body relaxed.

Don't worry about it. Relaxing is a habit and can be acquired, and it will respond to stimuli, through practice. It shouldn't take you long to acquire a habit of relaxing so that you will be able to induce self-hypnosis quickly. And as a bonus, you will be through with insomnia forever.

The first thing to do, after you are in bed and ready to induce self-hypnosis, is to check over your body and see where you are holding yourself taut.
One readily recognizable checkpoint is your hands and arms.

If there is any rigidity there, you'll know you aren't relaxed. You shouldn't be "hugging" the pillow and you should not have your fists clenched. When the arm is relaxed, there's a slight crook at the elbow and wrists, and the palm of the hand is slightly cupped. The fingers are slightly curled.

The way to relax any part of the body is to concentrate your attention upon it. By this time, you should be aware of the reason. The conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time. If it is concentrated upon relaxing the muscles, it can't be concerned with anything else. As the muscles relax, the mind relaxes.

It is impossible to be physically tense and mentally relaxed, or mentally relaxed and physically tense. Relaxation and tension work in unison between the mind and the tissue.

For example, if you wish to relax the right arm begin by concentrating your attention upon the hand. Picture it in your mind, if you can, and say to yourself: "The fingers of my right hand are relaxing . . . going limp . . . relaxed . . . becoming more limp . . . more relaxed." Let the muscles go. Let the hand rest heavily.

Special Instructions for the One Reader in Ten Who Cannot Achieve Easy Relaxation

Say to yourself, "I feel my hand becoming completely limp . .. relaxed ... heavy ... more relaxed ... more limp . . . more heavy."

When your hand becomes limp, heavy and relaxed —and it will become limp, because you will accept your own self-suggestions—focus your attention upon the wrist. "My wrist is becoming relaxed .. . limp . . . heavy . .. more relaxed . . . more limp .. . more heavy . . . growing heavier and heavier . . . more limp . . . more relaxed."

Take your time. Do not hurry any phase of relaxing the muscles. Assist yourself in relaxing by occasionally taking three deep breaths, counting to yourself as you inhale, "One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six." Exhale, relaxing more, "One . . . two . . . three."

Bring your attention up to the forearm—the elbow —and finally all the way up to the shoulder. Suggest to yourself the feeling that your hand and arm are heavy —heavy as lead weights, so heavy and relaxed that you couldn't move them even if you wished to. Do not make the effort at this time to prove that they are so heavy you cannot move them.

Accept it as a fact. If you can keep from consciously challenging this feeling, you have taken a long step toward relaxation and self-suggestion under self-hypnosis.

If your legs feel cramped, your back taut or your neck stiff, use the same method of concentrating your attention upon that part of the body and suggesting relaxation until it becomes relaxed.

Leg cramps, stiff neck, or back pains that keep a person from relaxing or sleeping are sometimes caused by the conscious mind holding the muscles in readiness. When the muscles are overextended or exhausted, they signal pain, asking for relief. This alerts the conscious mind even more, for it now becomes concerned that it can't go to sleep, even though it needs and desires sleep. The anxiety creates more tension, and it becomes a vicious circle.

Concentrate the mind upon relaxing the muscles. The more the muscles relax, the more the mind relaxes.
Now, just to be certain that you understand the method of relaxing, let's go over it once again, this time with the right leg.