Creating Motivation To Kick The Smoking Habit

There are two states of mind that must be satisfied before a smoker will freely stop smoking.  These essentials 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 must have a 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, you have to DECIDE to quit. Since you haven't kicked the smoking addiction, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to quit smoking yet.

So what you need is to feel a strong provocation to make a "DECISION" to quit smoking.

MOTIVATION, we all want to have it. The source of each of our motivations is what we believe. Think about it, if you didn't have a belief that you could be hurt if you stepped in front of a moving freight train, then you would not feel motivated to be alert. If you did not believe that the gnawing feeling in your stomach meant that you were hungry, you would not feel motivated to eat.

When it comes to giving up an addiction to smoking cigarettes, people need to feel a tremendous amount 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 which ideas would motivate you if you believed them. Because when you feel a great deal of motivation, you will stop smoking.

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

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 totally believe that if you continue to smoke cigarettes your highly valued criterion is jeopardized, you will feel the motivation that you need to stop smoking cigarettes. We call this a negative motivator, because it is a belief that motivates by giving you awful feelings. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make decisions.

When you believe that if you do quit smoking, that which is most important to you will become enhanced, then you will also feel the motivation that you require to stop smoking. This is a positive motivator, because it motivates you by promising good feelings if you quit smoking.

The first chore is for you to DECIDE what the most vital aspects of your life happen to be. Your most highly valued criteria are usually things that you can't see. For example: Money would not be highly valued criteria, but the freedom, fun, or security that money can purchase would 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 quit. Here is the good news, sort of: Logic has nothing to do with belief. Things don't have to be logical for you 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 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. You should 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 make my children sick."

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 children will be safer because I'll eliminate their contact with 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: Your beliefs have 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 located in our unconscious. The subconscious is like a computer. Computers don't reason. The input controls the output. To demonstrate, I want you to think of something 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 lets you feel that feeling of love.

I'm going to ask some questions, and there aren't any correct or incorrect 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 write them down on a piece of paper. These are the computer codes that your subconscious uses to make you experience your feelings of belief. In this case they are the computer codes for positive belief, because you've chosen a belief that gives you an excellent feeling. You've just calibrated your positive belief.

Every positive belief picture is 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 from which 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 bad feeling, (a negative belief): one or more of those codes 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 ghastly.

Once you've calibrated both your positive and negative beliefs, it is a simple affair to influence what you believe so you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to break the smoking addiction.

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

1. Become aware of how motivated you feel to stop smoking.

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

3. Adjust the computer codes (visual submodalities) of the mental image so that they match the 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 well motivated you feel to stop smoking. Do you feel more motivated? Do you feel less motivated? Or are your feelings the same?

Using this technique 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 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 submodalities 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 it takes.  If you are similar to most people, you will not want to suffer from withdrawal. The good news is that you will not have to suffer. Because there are several hypnotic methods that can greatly reduce, or even completely eliminate the discomforts of withdrawal from the cigarette addiction. And you can read about them in my library of unique and original hypnosis articles.

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.