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 kick the addiction. 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 smoking addiction. Since you haven't quit smoking, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to stop yet.

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

MOTIVATION, we all require it. The foundation of each of our motivations is what we accept as true. Think about it, if you didn't think it was true that you would be hurt if you walked in front of moving traffic, you would not experience motivation to be careful. 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 breaking the smoking addiction, people who are addicted to cigarettes need to feel a tremendous amount of motivation to make the DECISION to stop. Motivation is based on the ideas that we believe. So you will need to figure out 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 hypnotism for motivation, it is a lot easier to learn how to believe these new ideas than you think. However, you do not believe the ideas that will motivate you to stop smoking at this point, or you would have already broken the cigarette 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 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 soul.

When you believe that if you continue to smoke your highly valued criterion is jeopardized, you will feel the motivation that you need to break your addiction to cigarettes. We call this is a negative motivator, because it is a belief that motivates you by providing you with awful feelings. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make decisions and changes in your life.

When you believe that if you do stop, 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 stop.

The first task is for you to figure out 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 figure out what you will need to believe to feel motivated to give up cigarettes. 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, 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. You should not 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 give my children cancer."

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 make my kids sick."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I stop smoking, my children will be safer because I will 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 motivational ideas. Now for a revelation: 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 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. So come up with 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 lets you experience that love.

I'm going to ask some questions, and there are not 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?

It doesn't matter what your answers are, write them down on a piece of paper. These are the computer codes that your subconscious mind uses to indicate your feelings of belief. In this case they are the computer 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 are not, 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 are unsure of, 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 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 terrible.

Once you have calibrated both your positive and negative beliefs, it is a simple thing to manipulate what you believe so you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to stop smoking cigarettes.

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

1. Sense how motivated you feel to stop smoking.

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

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

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 make you quickly memorize the belief.

5. Now become aware of how motivated you feel to stop 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 a picture in your mind that illustrates your new idea and then adjusting your mental picture to make it 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 how much it hurts. If you are similar to most people, you won't want it to hurt and you do not have to. Because there are several hypnotic methods 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 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.