Articles

There are two states of mind that must be contented before a smoker will voluntarily quit smoking. These elements are called "Desire," and "Decision."

DESIRE: A want, crave or a wish for

DECISION: Making up of one's mind / a verdict or judgment

In order to quit smoking, a smoker must have a DESIRE to kick the habit. You probably want to quit smoking, at least some part of you does, or you wouldn't be reading this article.

In addition, in order to quit smoking, you have to DECIDE to quit. Since you haven't quit smoking, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to quit yet.

So what you need is to feel a compulsion to make a "DECISION" to quit.

MOTIVATION, we all want to have it. The foundation of each of our motivations is what we believe. Give it some thought, if you didn't have a belief that you could be injured if you walked in front of moving traffic, then you would not experience motivation to be alert. If you did not believe that the gnawing feeling in your stomach meant that you were hungry, you wouldn't feel motivated to eat.

When it comes to breaking the smoking habit, people need to feel a lot of of motivation to make the DECISION to break the smoking addiction. Motivation is based on the thoughts that we believe. So you will need to DECIDE exactly which ideas would motivate you if you believed them. Because when you feel a great deal of motivation, you will quit smoking.

Thanks to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis for motivation, it is a lot easier to learn how to believe these new ideas than you probably think it is. However, you don't believe the ideas that will motivate you to quit smoking at this point, or you would have already broken the habit.

For the purpose of this discussion, we need to define a few words.

DOUBT: Uncertain/distrustful/dubious - "maybe it's this way, and maybe it isn't."

BELIEF: Trust/faith/tenet - A state of mind free of all doubt. In other words, belief means, "this is the way that it is."

HIGHLY VALUED CRITERIA: What is most important to you, as an individual.

When you believe that if you continue to smoke cigarettes your highly valued criterion is in jeopardy, you will feel the motivation that you need to break your addiction to cigarettes. We call this is a negative motivator, because it is a belief that motivates you by providing you with dire feelings. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make changes.

When you believe that if you do quit, your highly valued criteria will become enhanced, you will also feel the motivation that you require to quit smoking. This is a positive motivator, because it motivates you by promising good sensations if you quit.

The first assignment is for you to DECIDE what the most essential aspects of your life are. Your most highly valued criteria are usually intangibles. For example: Money would not be highly valued criteria, but the freedom, fun, or security that money can buy could be. Write your list of highly valued criteria down on a piece of paper.

Next you need to conclude what you will need to believe to feel motivated to break the smoking habit. Here is the good news, sort of: Logic has nothing to do with belief. Things don't have to be logical for a person to believe them. As a matter of fact, they rarely are. So forget logic!

The format for your negative motivator beliefs will be: "I believe that if I continue to smoke cigarettes, something shocking will happen to my most highly valued criteria."

Make sure that you frame your motivators in the positive. In other words, always state what you want or what will happen. Never state what will not happen. Eliminate the "not" word from the beliefs.

In this example we will say that your children's health and welfare are your most highly valued criteria.

WRONG: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, I won't be doing my kid's health any good."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, my secondhand smoke will ruin my children's health."

Next, create a list of positive motivators. "I believe that if I quit smoking: (something very important will be enhanced)."

WRONG: "I believe that if I stop smoking, I won't harm my children's health."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I quit smoking, my children will be healthier because I'll eliminate their exposure to the dangers of my secondhand smoke."

The next step is to change the computer codes in your brain to make yourself actually believe these motivational ideas. Now for a revelation: Belief has nothing to do with or what is real. Instead, your beliefs have everything to do with what your perception of reality is. In other words, it has a lot to do with the way that you see things.

Our belief systems are based in our unconscious. The subconscious mind is like a computer. Computers don't reason. The input to a computer controls the output from a computer. To demonstrate, I want you to think of anything that you already believe without the slightest bit of doubt. So come up with a belief that makes you feel good.

For instance, it's easy for most people to believe that they love their children. If that is true for you, make a mental picture that makes you experience that love.

I'm going to ask some questions, and there are not any right or wrong answers.

Is your mental image a moving picture, or a still?

Is it in color, or in black and white?

Is it close or far?

Is it focused or fuzzy?

Is it normally bright, overly bright, or dim?

Is there a border on it?

Is it borderless?

Is it a panorama?

Whatever your answers are, just write them down on a piece of paper. These are the computer codes that your unconscious uses to indicate your feelings of belief. In this case they are the mental codes for positive belief, because you've chosen a belief that gives you a good feeling. You've just calibrated your positive belief.

Every positive belief picture is bright and focused. If yours are not, then you probably don't really have total belief. An element of doubt is probably present. So find another belief to calibrate.

If you think of something that you doubt, and you make a mental picture of it, one or more of these computer codes will probably be different. Similarly, if you have a belief that gives you a negative feeling, (a negative belief): one or more of those codes or submodalities will be different.

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming we call these particular computer codes visual submodalities.

Now you will need to calibrate a negative belief. So repeat the same exact process, but do so using an idea that you already believe, that makes you feel awful.

Once you've calibrated your positive and your negative beliefs, it is a simple matter to manipulate what you believe so you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to quit.

So, to summarize, using the above example: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, my secondhand smoke will ruin my children's health."

1. Sense how motivated you feel to quit smoking.

2. Make a mental picture that illustrates the above belief.

3. Adjust the codes (visual submodalities) of the mental picture to match the mental codes from your calibrated negative belief picture.

4. If you are right handed, move your eyeballs (and your picture) up to your left and hold it there for five seconds. If you are left handed, go up to the right. This will make you memorize the belief.

5. Now sense how motivated you feel to quit smoking. Do you feel more motivated? Do you feel less motivated? Or are your feelings the same?

By utilizing this method you can make yourself believe almost anything by making an image in your mind that illustrates your new idea and then adjusting your mental picture to match your calibrated belief pictures.

And if you have a belief that is holding you back, you can use the same technique to change that belief to doubt by changing one or two of the submodalities and memorizing it that way.

Now that you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to quit, you will quit smoking. A DECISION to quit means: I'm quitting no matter what I have to do. If you are similar to most, you will not want it to suffer through withdrawal and you don't have to. Because there are several hypnotic techniques that can greatly reduce, or even completely eliminate all of the discomforts of withdrawal from the smoking addiction. And you can read about them in my library of original hypnosis articles.

(c) 2007 By Alan B. Densky, CH. This document may be re-printed as long as it is not altered and the author's name and clickable web address are retained.