I very recently shared in a blog post, my recent concerns and anxiety about my own aging. I’m 49 and facing that
terrifying milestone….
I’ve never been good at ageing
the worst thing about this particular milestone is, while I reflect on my current situation and make shifts professionally, emotionally and spiritually
I hear the whispers…
You know the ones….you must have heard them….even applied them to someone else
who made a big change in their lives…
That’s out character: ‘What a Lamborghini!’ ‘A photo shoot with your clothes off!’ ‘A penis extension!’
‘midlife crisis!’
Oh the shame! The shame of believing that your decision making has been reduced to this hormonal imbalance in your psyche, the implication that rather than your experience and maturity crystalising into a blue sky clarity of life purpose – it’s merely a biological retraction.
Fuck off!
How undermining is that…
Anyway, back to the midlife crisis…so not only are you (by ‘you’ of course I mean, me) less attractive, disposable, obsolete, boring…but the choices you make are no doubt a result of this inevitable
Midlife wasteland you’ve arrived at. Why are you even considering stopping smoking with hypnosis or otherwise. Why wouldn’t you just kill yourself and save yourself from the glum years…or for the sake of this post let’s call them the nicotine gum years?
Now you may ask, what on earth has this blog about my aging crisis got to do with using hypnosis to stop smoking or using hypnosis to quit smoking or searching into Google quit smoking hypnosis near me.
And the answer is:
Quite a lot actually. At least I think so. It is today anyway and when it comes to stopping smoking with hypnosis or quitting smoking with hypnotherapy, I’m only really concerned about today.
You see, I was already middle aged when I decided to stop smoking and used hypnosis to stop smoking cigarettes.
I’d already spent a life time smoking before I realised I wanted to stop altogether and a lot of the clients I see who come to me to ask about how to quit smoking with hypnosis are in their late forties or older.
“Aren’t you dead yet?” That’s what the Jewish Glaswegian comic Jerry Sadowitz would be saying to me, if it wasn’t for the fact that thankfully when he made that joke, he was a young man and as far as I remember he was older than me.
Of course sometimes the smokers who come to me to help them quit smoking with hypnosis are a lot younger, younger people are choosing vaping over smoking.
What annoys me about the middle age crisis thing is, nobody would question the validity of a person enquiring about the benefits of hypnosis to quit smoking.
You wouldn’t dream of saying to a 52 year old woman -let’s call her ‘Marlin Fags’ for fun – who has recently been diagnosed with COPD whose contacted a hypnotherapist to stop smoking…
“Are you sure about this Marlin? I mean this is a very big change you’re considering. Don’t you think that this sudden wish to stop smoking is just a result of your recent health diagnosis. Seems a bit suspect that one minute you were smoking thirty fags a day, happy on your path to slow excruciating death now all of a sudden, you hit 52 and you want to change things up, stop smoking and live a bit longer. Two words for you, my friend: “Midlife crisis.”
Why give the word crisis….a prefix like that???? Leave that ‘midlife’ reductionism off the crisis bit….PLEASE!
Is the word ‘crisis’ not enough? Do you really have to attach my crisis to an arbitrary time frame?
I don’t know about you but I’ve always had a crisis going on…
Because…..because….because (no not because I was off to see the wizard)
Because I’m a sensitive, intelligent, living human being who is continually changing and evolving and looking at my life.
and experiencing crisis is just a part of being alive…if you’re completely free from crisis, I think, there’s a very strong chance you’re just a walking, talking, vegetable.
Do you even know what the word crisis means? I mean where it came from.
Originally, it comes from the Greek word, meaning decision…or to choose…possibly even change.
And since when has choosing, decision-making, or change been a bad thing, something to be ashamed and wary of?
Yes, sometimes It does take something extreme to make us evaluate what we’re doing an how we are doing it. But what’s wrong with that?
For me, losing my dad was the catalyst to me using hypnosis to stop smoking cigarettes…and there is no doubt that losing him to cancer made me question how I wanted to prioritise my remaining years on this earth – however many that shall be.
So does that mean that because I made this decision to stop smoking while I was middle aged and after the crisis of losing my dad, that I stopped smoking because of a midlife crisis?
Yes.
I mean No.
I mean yes, I was middle-aged when I made the decision and I experienced a crisis but no, the decision can’t be reduced to an age…an implied biological inevitability.
The trouble is for me the language has become hypnotically bad.
‘Midlife’ has practically become a swearword. There is an implication that decisions made from ‘middle age’ are desperate rather than clear, reactive rather than proactive…and often it just isn’t the case.
Surely, your midlife is like standing on a hill and being able to see for miles into the expanse…all those years below when you climbed. One has hindsight…(yes, yes, yes, fears too of course)
All my life certain crisis’s have triggered change
and the clients that come to me come to me because they too are looking for change. They are often in the midst of a crisis…
Change can be good.
Change can be exhilarating.
And growth is impossible without it.
Did you see that recent art of Bansky? I’ve used it with this blog.
You can see a young person opening the curtains to welcome the new day.
I have no talent or experience with art. However, I am a practiced thinker and I take the picture to be a satire. It made me consider the current war in Ukraine…
Because globally and consciously we are not opening the curtains to a new day,
The picture seems to be one that urges humanity to do so.
Because in all of our lives, whatever age we are, each moment is new. Each day is new.
And to me, whatever crisis is going on in your life, if you are still smoking cigarettes, and are reading this, although as I write this I’m aware that it’s unlikely that anyone is likely to..
you are standing at a most exciting precipice, even amidst any crisis you may be experiencing, understand that you have a radical opportunity to effect huge transformation in your health, your perspective and well-being.
You have an opportunity to throw the curtains open, greet a new day and simply stop smoking, to change your habit and quit smoking with hypnosis today, use hypnosis to stop smoking easily and enjoyably.
Give yourself a gift of an extended life and improved health.
Change your life for the better, understanding that change is the only thing that’s certain so choose a positive one.