Are you in or near Cape Town? Do you want to stop smoking? Are you often too busy to make an appointment for help with quitting?If this describes you or someone you care for, read on…

I often have to postpone a client’s appointment due to impossible business pressures. This person is a busy business person. They put business appointments on a higher priority than their stop-smoking appointments. But it does not end there. You see, most of us would put work as a priority, because there is too much at stake messing around with our work. With this type of person, they put business appointments so much first and foremost that instead of scheduling a new business appointment around their scheduled stop-smoking appointment, they panic and cancel their stop-smoking appointment. Maybe you are wondering why this person does not schedule an appointment after work or on a weekend. I have wondered this too, many a time. It seems, from the answers I get, that this busy person is so constantly stressed by work, that when their very long work-day finally finishes, they are not willing to sacrifice any of their me-time or time with their family, not even for a life-saving appointment. In other words, this person is so constantly stressed out that it is no wonder they need to take a drug like nicotine in order to cope with life.

The only way this person can give up smoking is to work out new strategies to reduce stress in their life. As long as they insist that they need to keep up these unnecessary stress levels, they will really struggle to quit smoking.

There may be limiting beliefs about hard work that underlie all this stressful lifestyle. For example, the principle of work hard and play hard may be so entrenched in the mind as the best way to live, that health and well-being are sacrificed. Perhaps they were brought up by parents who were too perfectionist, or maybe there was financial and material deprivation in childhood, to which the hard-working executive image feels like the perfect antidote. Or perhaps this business person has very low self-esteem. On the outside, they may appear confident and strong, whereas on the inside, they feel unworthy of good health. Maybe they only feel worthwhile in the boardroom, and so seek to re-create that sense of importance over and over again, to the detriment of their well-being. Or perhaps they are stuck in a high-paying job where they cannot go elsewhere, and need that job to pay for an excess of material wealth that they only feel worthwhile if they own. For example, downsizing their job to a less stressful one may mean giving up the five-bedroom house and three luxury cars, without which this person may feel worthless. And although one may not sympathize, after all there are people starving for lack of food, this person is actually in a lot of relentless pain. And they smoke to dull away the pain; of over-work, of such a rigid regime, of feeling worthless in themselves, and of impossible expectations.

EFT, short for emotional freedom techniques helps with all the emotional elements of such a stressful lifestyle. And when enough stress has been eliminated, the person will then no longer need cigarettes in order to cope, and they can easily quit. EFT involves the stimulation of special stress buttons on the face, hands, and body whilst saying releasing wording. The first step however, still needs to be that of making an appointment with a practitioner. And that is where this person is stuck right now. If that is you, please just for now, make that first step and stick to it. You can be pleasantly surprised how much stronger it can make you.