My Hypnotic Secret To Busting Bad Habits

When you're a Hypnotist like me, you get calls every day from those wanting to break their bad habits.

Smoking, drinking, overeating sugar, nail-biting, negative thinking—you name it. I even got a call last week from a woman asking for help breaking her milk addiction.

Many believe their bad habits are a form of weakness, which is false. Bad habits and addiction result more from behavioral programming than character flaws.

Since the unconscious mind's prime objective is survival, it tends instinctively to move away from pain and toward pleasure.

Habits form when your brain heavily associates pleasure with a substance or behavior, like thumb sucking or pulling at your hair, and pain to not engaging in that behavior.

Smoking, for example, is both a habit and a physiological dependency. The majority of smokers declare they are 'addicted' to cigarettes.

Yet, I've found that if you break the emotional habit, the physiological portion dissolves rapidly.

Let's break this down.

Yes, your brain associates comfort with nicotine. But when you ask someone why they started smoking, the answer is almost always, "Everyone did it when I started, so I picked it up." That's the need to fit in, which is pleasurable.

Others say, "It calms my nerves," which is comparable to doing cocaine to sleep better.

Yet, the idea that smoking will help you feel better in the moment is so compelling to the brain that it will override the fact that you are ingesting poison.

Whatever habit you want to improve, the principles are the same. If you want to create lasting change, you've got to rewire your brain.

So I help clients flip the script, making cigarettes represent pain in the brain. Then, we install healthier behaviors that produce pleasure and emotional freedom by upgrading one's beliefs and subconscious identity.

Over the 30 years I've been doing this, the results have been remarkable and consistent: 60% of my clients quit smoking entirely after just one 30-minute hypnosis session. Another 30% cut back dramatically after the first session and stopped after the second.

How is that possible?

Once you change how your brain perceives the habit, it's no longer a battle in your mind. When you associate pleasure and pain with something ("I love sweets, but it's giving me diabetes"), it creates a compulsion that is difficult to resist.

Instead of trying to resist your cravings, we erase them by removing the compulsion. That is accomplished by getting "both sides of your brain" moving in the same direction and wanting the same thing—the joy produced from healthier actions.

Mary came to me after smoking for 35 years, saying cigarettes were "like a best friend." I asked her, "What kind of friend takes your money, destroys your health, and steals your future?"

That question triggered an aha moment, and Mary replied, "I had never thought of it that way before."

One session later, she stopped smoking and hasn't touched them since. I've got a thousand success stories like hers. But you never stop with one session, a classic mistake too many hypnotists make.

In the second session, I taught her powerful mental exercises—quick, simple tools that turn stress and cravings into calm and control. It's not about willpower; it's about empowerment.

So, whether it's smoking, sugar, or 2%, the solution is the same: Rewire your brain through upgrading beliefs, shifting the associations of pleasure and pain, and providing alternative solutions that satisfy the same subconscious needs.

It's like having a locked safe with only two of the three numbers for the combination. With that missing number, it will feel impossible to open the door.

Yet, with the third number, that door will freely swing open so you can access the treasure inside.

Use these insights to free yourself from bad habits and unlock the treasure in your life.

:) Tim Shurr

PS. If you need help, I'm a phone call away.