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There are two states of mind that must be fulfilled before a smoker will voluntarily stop 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 stop smoking, a person must have a DESIRE to quit. 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 give up the habit. 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 provoked to make a "DECISION" to quit smoking.

MOTIVATION, we all need it. The starting place for each of our motivations is a belief. Give it some thought, if you didn't have a belief that you would be hurt if you stepped in front of a moving freight train, then you would not experience motivation to be vigilant. If you did not believe that the gnawing sensation in your stomach meant that you were hungry, you wouldn't feel motivated to eat.

When it comes to giving up an addiction to smoking, people who are addicted to smoking cigarettes need to feel a tremendous amount of motivation to make the DECISION to stop. Motivation is based on the thoughts that we believe. So you will need to figure out exactly what 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's a lot easier to learn how to believe these new ideas than you think. However, you don't believe the ideas that will motivate you to stop smoking right now, or you would have already broken the smoking addiction.

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 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 humanbeing.

When you totally believe that if you continue to smoke your highly valued criterion is in jeopardy, you will feel the motivation that you require to break your addiction to cigarettes. We call this is a negative motivator, because it's a belief that motivates by giving you dreadful 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, 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 job is for you to figure out what the most vital 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 provide could be. Write your list of highly valued criteria down on a piece of paper.

Next you need to figure out what you would 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 do not worry about logic!

The format for your negative motivator beliefs will be: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, something bad 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 won't 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 harm my children's health."

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

The next step is to make changes to the computer codes in your brain to make yourself actually believe these new ideas. Now for a bombshell: Belief has nothing to do with or reality. 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 subconscious mind. 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 gives you a good feeling.

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 feel that 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?

Whatever your answers are, just write them down. These are the computer codes that your subconscious uses to make you have your feelings of belief. In this case they are the mental 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 are not, 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 doubt, and you make a mental picture 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 bad 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 terrible.

Once you've calibrated 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 addiction.

So, to summarize, using the above example: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, my secondhand smoke will make my children ill."

1. Sense 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 image to make them match the computer codes from your calibrated negative belief.

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 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?

Using this proceedure 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 so that it matches 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 how much it hurts. If you are similar to most, you won't want it to feel the pain and you don't have to. 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 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.