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We cunning pupils called this spot "the bank", and, of course, it was out of bounds. This was a place where we were not allowed to tread, but I and the other cool kids would gather there before and after school for our smokes. This was the forbidden territory in which to be seen by your peers as one of the daring "in crowd".
I was not too sure of the reasons why I joined in this illicit practice. Perhaps the fat boy in me wanted to be accepted as cool and that ambition led me down the path to the bank and provided the overture to years of smoking. Or maybe I chose this brand of sin just because I wasn’t allowed down the bank. Maybe there was a rebellious part of my personality that didn’t like being told not to do something. This quirk was to surface years later as a fascination with human excellence, achievement and success. Maybe that rebellion triggered what was to become a 20-year love-hate relationship with tobacco.
Although I don’t actually remember why I started the unhealthy habit, I do know that, years later, when all my school friends were gone, when school was a distant memory, when the building was leveled and the land covered by a housing estate, I was four stone overweight and puffing my way through 40 cigarettes every day.
One day that fascination with human excellence, achievement and success resurfaced with a vengeance. I went into overdrive, devouring hundreds of books on personal development and listening to audio programs on human potential. I quickly learnt and understood that our Creator gave us an amazing powerful tool in the human mind and that we can do absolutely anything that any other human being has already succeeded in doing. After all, we all have similar neurology and DNA. As I delved deeper in my thirst for knowledge with my sights set on harnessing and using the power of the mind, it became clear to me that all human beings can change the embedded patterns and habits they have learnt, developed and practiced over a lifetime. And I discovered that this can be done easily and permanently.
With continued passion I applied what I learnt and observed what worked and what didn’t. I combined various techniques and found ways to make them work even better. I honed this process down to the very core to create an incredible method for controlling weight. This was something of a revolution as it involved changing the principles of how we think. Gradually all this mind activity paid off. I lost four stone and became a competitive body-builder. I had hit my target.
Then I switched the focus to my 40-a-day smoking habit. I had stopped counting the times I had tried to ditch those cigarettes. Once I stopped for eight hours and that wasn’t even while I was sleeping! Another time I congratulated myself because I actually abstained for a week. However, soon enough I always gave myself another excuse to start again and so the struggle went on. I started to evaluate my smoking habit closely, discovering what was happening to me and why I did not find it easy to stop. I read hundreds of technical papers on tobacco and the effects of smoking as well as studying endless research papers and statistics on stopping. I wrote down what I was experiencing and started to engineer piece by piece a method to overcome every obstacle as it arose. I continued to read more self-development and psychology books by the ton, listened to thousands of hours of audio programs, and travelled the world learning from the most eminent teachers on human potential. Then in 1996 came the summing-up. I combined all that I had discovered about smoking with the tools and techniques I had created to break the smoking cycle and produced a method to stop myself smoking, and indeed I stopped. And, surprise, surprise, I couldn’t start smoking again because this time I had no desire to smoke, no desire for that old smoldering weed. It was easy. I had created a method that changed for ever the way I thought about smoking and, believe it or not, I enjoyed the stopping experience and the accomplishment itself.
It showed too. Friends noticed I was no longer smoking and was happy about it. They asked how I had kicked the cigarettes. So I showed them the method and they stopped too. The whole thing became contagious. Before long I was teaching others how to deliver the method. And they achieved the same amazing results. More and more people sought me out, asking me to teach them the process so that they could help others to stop. Even better news was to come. The EasyStop method was born, an easy and permanent way to stop smoking had been created and the EasyStop network of smoking cessation centres began to mushroom.
The consultants I trained soon gathered that I had once been four stone overweight and that I had shed the flab and kept it off. They asked how I did this. They asked me to teach them to help others to achieve the same great results, and the pattern we had established when people asked about beating smoking was repeated. They started helping people to lose weight with outstanding results.
And now as I commit all this to paper, EasyStop Consultants can be found successfully operating across the UK, the Philippines and down under in Australia. This network of professional consultants, helping smokers and weight clients to achieve their personal goals is the incredible reward that I enjoy every day. I know that thousands of people are breaking free from smoking or losing their excess pounds, thanks to a method that works. Like me, they have proved its effectiveness and are enjoying its benefits.
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