Break The Addiction To Tobacco

There are two psychological states that must be appeased before a smoker will voluntarily break the smoking addiction. 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, you must have a 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 habit. Since you haven't quit smoking, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to quit yet.

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

MOTIVATION, we all need it. The source of each of our motivations is what we believe. Think about it, if you didn't think it was true that you could be injured if you drank poison, then you would not feel motivated to be careful. 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 breaking the cigarette 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 figure out what ideas will motivate you (when you start to believe them). Because when you feel a great deal of motivation, you will quit smoking.

Thanks to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and hypnotism for motivation, it is much easier to learn how to believe these new ideas than you probably think. However, you do not believe the ideas that will motivate you to quit smoking right now, 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 humanbeing.

When you totally 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 stop smoking. We call this is a negative motivator, because it is a belief that motivates by giving you bad sensations. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make changes.

When you believe that if you do quit, that which is most important to you 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 figure out what the most important 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 provide could be highly valued criteria. Write your list of highly valued criteria down on a piece of paper.

Next you need to figure out 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 anyone 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 cigarettes, something terrible 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 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 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 make my kids sick."

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

The next step is to modify the computer codes in your brain to make yourself actually believe these motivational ideas. Now for a bombshell: Belief has nothing to do with logic. 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 located in our unconscious. The uncouscious mind 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. 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 makes you feel that 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?

It doesn't matter what your answers are, just write them down. These are the computer codes that your unconscious 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 a good feeling. You have 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 to calibrate.

If you think of something that you are unsure of, and you make a mental image of it, one or more of these computer codes (which we call submodalities) 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 bad.

Once you have calibrated your positive and your negative beliefs, it is a simple issue to influence 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 make my kids sick."

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

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

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

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 quickly memorize the belief.

5. Now become aware of 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 using 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 so that it matches 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 like most people, you will not want it to hurt and you don't have to. Because there are several hypnotic and NLP techniques 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 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.