Creating Motivation To Stop Smoking

There are two mental states that must be contented before a smoker will voluntarily quit 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 quit smoking, you have to DESIRE to quit. 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 give up the smoking addiction. Since you haven't quit smoking, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to quit smoking yet.

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

MOTIVATION, we all want it. The source of each of our motivations is a belief. Think about it, if you didn't have a belief that you would be hurt if you jumped from a tall building, then you would not feel motivated to be alert. 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 the cigarette addiction, people who smoke need to feel a lot of motivation to make the DECISION to quit. Motivation is based on the ideas that we believe. So you will need to figure out exactly what ideas would motivate you if you believed them. Because when you feel powerfully motivated, you will quit smoking.

Thanks to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis for motivation, it's 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 quit smoking at this point, 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 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 your highly valued criterion is jeopardized, you will feel the motivation that you require to break your smoking addiction. We call this a negative motivator, because it's a belief that motivates by giving you bad sensations. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make decisions and changes in your life.

When you believe that if you do quit smoking, 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 feelings if you quit smoking.

The first assignment is for you to figure out 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 purchase would be. Write your list of highly valued criteria down on a piece of paper.

Next you need to DECIDE what you would need to believe to feel motivated to break the 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 do not worry about logic!

The format for your negative motivator beliefs will be: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, something horrible 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 make my children sick."

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 make my kids sick."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I quit smoking, my kids will be safe because I will 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 bombshell: Your beliefs have nothing to do with what is real. 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 subconscious. The subconscious mind is like a computer. Computers do not reason. The input to a computer controls the output from a computer. To demonstrate, I want you to think of something that you already believe without the slightest bit of doubt. Make it 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 are not 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?

It does not matter what your answers are write them down. These are the computer codes that your subconscious uses to make you feel your feelings of belief. In this case they are the mental codes for positive belief, because you have chosen a belief that gives you a positive feeling. You have just calibrated your positive belief.

All positive belief pictures are bright and focused. If yours are not, then you probably do not 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 image 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 NLP 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 have calibrated both your positive and your negative beliefs, it's a simple issue to manipulate what you believe so you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to quit smoking.

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 quit smoking.

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

3. Adjust the computer codes (visual submodalities) of the image so that they match the codes from your calibrated negative belief image.

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

5. Now sense how well 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 system you can make yourself believe almost anything by making an image in your mind that illustrates your new idea and then adjusting your mental image to make it 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 it takes. If you are similar to most, you will not want quitting to feel painful. The good news is that you will not have to suffer. Because there are several hypnotic and NLP methods that can greatly reduce, or even completely eliminate the discomforts of withdrawal from the cigarette smoking addiction.