There are two mental states that must be satisfied before a smoker will freely quit 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 quit smoking, you must have a DESIRE to kick the addiction. 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 quit. Since you haven't broken the smoking habit, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to stop smoking yet.

So what you need is to feel an incitement to make a "DECISION" to stop smoking.

MOTIVATION, we all want to have it. The source of each of our motivations is our beliefs. Give it some thought, if you didn't believe that you would be injured if you walked in front of moving traffic, 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 wouldn't feel motivated to eat.

When it comes to giving up an addiction to smoking, people who are addicted to cigarettes need to feel a great deal of motivation to make the DECISION to give up their addiction to tobacco. Motivation is based on the thoughts that we believe. So you will need to DECIDE exactly which ideas will motivate you (when you start to believe them). Because when you feel powerfully motivated, you will quit smoking.

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

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 believe that if you continue to smoke cigarettes your highly valued criterion is in jeopardy, you will feel the motivation that you require to break your cigaratte smoking habit. We call this is a negative motivator, because it is a belief that motivates you by giving you dire feelings. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make changes.

When you believe that if you do stop smoking, your highly valued criteria will become enhanced, then 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 stop smoking.

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

Next you need to DECIDE what you will need to believe to feel motivated to give up the cigaratte addiction. 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 forget logic!

The format for your negative motivator beliefs will be: "I believe that if I continue to smoke cigarettes, 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 will not happen. Eliminate the "not" word from the beliefs.

In this example we will say that your children's health 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 quit smoking: (something very important will be enhanced)."

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

CORRECT: "I believe that if I quit smoking, my kids will be healthier because I'll eliminate their exposure to 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 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 unconscious is like a computer. Computers don't 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 feel 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 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 mind uses to make you have 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 good feeling. You've just calibrated your positive belief.

Every positive belief picture is bright and focused. If yours aren't, you probably don't really have total belief. You probably have an element of doubt. So find another belief from which 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 (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 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 have calibrated both your positive and negative beliefs, it is a simple affair to control 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 children's health."

1. Sense 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 mental picture to match the codes from your calibrated negative belief image.

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

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

Using this method 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 I have to do. If you are similar to most, you will not want it to suffer from withdrawal and you don't have to. Because there are several hypnotic and NLP techniques that can greatly reduce, or even completely eliminate all of the discomforts of withdrawal from the smoking addiction. And you can read about them in my hypnosis article library.

(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.