Creating Motivation to Kick the Cigarette Smoking Habit

There are two psychological states that must be contented before anyone will freely stop smoking. These fundamentals 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 stop smoking, you have to desire to stop. You probably want to stop smoking, at least some part of you does, or you wouldn't be reading this article. In addition, in order to stop smoking, a person must decide to give up the smoking habit. Since you haven't broken the smoking habit, it simply means that you have not decided to kick the smoking habit yet. So what you need is to feel provoked to make a "decision" to kick the smoking habit.

Motivation, we all require it. The foundation of each of our motivations is what we accept as true. Think about it, if you did not have a belief that you would get hurt if you stood in the path of an oncoming semi, then you would not feel motivated to be careful. If you did not believe that the gnawing sensation in your stomach meant that you were hungry, you would not feel motivated to eat. When it comes to giving up an addiction to cigarettes, people need to feel lots of motivation to make the decision to give up cigarettes. Motivation is based on the ideas that we believe. So you will need to decide what thoughts will motivate you (when you start to believe them). Because when you feel powerfully motivated, you will stop smoking.

Thanks to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and self-hypnosis for motivation, it's much 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 stop smoking right now, or you would have already given up smoking. 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 is not."

BELIEF: Trust/faith/tenet - A state of mind devoid 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 human being.

When you believe that if you continue to smoke cigarettes your highly valued criterion will be in jeopardy, you will feel the motivation that you need to break your cigarette smoking habit. We call this a negative motivator, because it's a belief that motivates by providing you with terrible feelings. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make decisions and changes in your life. When you believe that if you do kick the smoking habit, that which is most important to you will become enhanced, you will also feel the motivation that you require to stop smoking. This is a positive motivator, because it motivates you by promising good sensations if you kick the smoking habit. The first mission is for you to decide what the most essential aspects of your life are. Your most highly valued criteria are usually things that you cannot see. For example: Money would not be highly valued criteria, but the freedom, fun, or security that money can provide could be. Write your list of highly valued criteria down on a piece of paper.

Next you need to conclude what you need to believe to feel motivated to quit. 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 don't worry about logic! The format for your negative motivator beliefs will be: "I believe that if I continue to smoke cigarettes, something appalling 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 welfare is 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 give my children cancer."

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

WRONG: "I believe that if I stop smoking, I won't give my children cancer."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I stop smoking, my kids will be safe 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 new ideas. Now for a bombshell: Belief has nothing to do with real logic. Instead, your beliefs have everything to do with your perception of reality. In other words, it has a lot to do with the way that you see things. Our belief systems are based in our unconscious mind. The subconscious is like a computer. Computers don't reason. The input controls the output. 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 kids. If that is true for you, make a mental image that lets you experience that feeling of love.

I'm going to ask some questions, and there aren't 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 border less?

Is it a panorama?

Whatever your answers are just write them down. These are the computer codes that your unconscious uses to make you feel your feelings of belief. In this case they are the computer codes for positive belief, because you have chosen a belief that gives you an excellent feeling. You have just calibrated your positive belief. All positive belief pictures are bright and focused. If yours aren't, 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 are unsure of, 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 will be different. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming we call these particular computer codes visual sub modalities. 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 terrible. Once you've calibrated both your positive and negative beliefs, it's a simple matter to influence what you believe so you can motivate yourself to decide to kick the smoking habit.

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 stop smoking.

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

3. Adjust the codes (visual sub modalities) of the mental image so that they match the mental codes from your calibrated negative belief image.

4. If you are right handed, move your eyeballs (and your image) 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 quickly memorize the belief.

5. Now become aware of how well motivated you feel to stop smoking. Do you feel more motivated? Do you feel less motivated? Or are your feelings the same?

By using this technique you can make yourself believe almost anything by making a picture in your mind that illustrates your new idea and then adjusting your mental image to match your calibrated belief images. 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 sub modalities and memorizing it that way. Now that you can motivate yourself to decide to quit, you will stop smoking. A decision to quit means: I'm quitting no matter what I have to do. If you are like most people, you will not want quitting to hurt. The good news is that you will not have to suffer. Because there are several hypnotic methods that can greatly reduce. And you can read about them in my hypnosis article library. I also host a free entertaining video filled with quit smoking tips. It is titled "How To Stop Smoking The Easy Way." It is available both on my site as well as most of the Web 2.0 video sites.

About The Author:

Alan B. Densky, CH offers quit smoking hypnosis CDs for breaking the tobacco habit. He is the inventor of the Neuro-VISION Video technology, which received a US Patent due to its success. He can be contacted through the Neuro-VISION self-hypnosis site.