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There are two psychological states that must be appeased before a person will freely kick the smoking habit. 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 kick the smoking habit, you must have a DESIRE to stop. You probably want to kick the smoking habit, at least some part of you does, or you wouldn't be reading this article.

In addition, in order to kick the smoking habit, one must DECIDE to quit. 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 motivated to make a "DECISION" to quit smoking.

MOTIVATION, we all require it. The foundation of each of our motivations is a belief. Give it some thought, if you didn't think it was true that you would be injured if you drank poison, 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 would not feel motivated to eat.

When it comes to breaking an addiction to cigarettes, people need to feel a lot of of motivation to make the DECISION to give up cigarettes. Motivation is based on the thoughts that we believe. So you will need to figure out which thoughts would motivate you if you believed them. Because when you feel powerfully motivated, you will kick the smoking habit.

Thanks to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis for motivation, it is much easier to learn how to believe these new ideas than you think it is. However, you do not believe the ideas that will motivate you to kick the smoking habit 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 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 soul.

When you believe that if you continue to smoke your highly valued criterion is jeopardized, you will feel the motivation that you require to stop smoking 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 changes.

When you believe that if you do quit smoking, that which is most important to you will become enhanced, you will also feel the motivation that you require to kick the smoking habit. 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 happen to be. 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 buy 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 stop smoking. 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 don't worry about logic!

The format for your negative motivator beliefs will be: "I believe that if I continue to smoke, 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. Never state what won't 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 give my children cancer."

Next, create a list of positive motivators. "I believe that if I kick the smoking habit: (something very important will be enhanced)."

WRONG: "I believe that if I stop smoking, I won't harm my kid's health."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I kick the smoking habit, my children will be safer because I'll eliminate their contact with 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 shocker: 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 based in our subconscious. The unconscious is like a computer. Computers do not reason. What goes in controls what comes out. 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 image that lets 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 unconscious mind uses to make you experience your feelings of belief. In this case they are the codes for positive belief, because you have chosen a belief that gives you a positive 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 doubt, and you make a mental picture 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 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 bad.

Once you've calibrated your positive and your negative beliefs, it is a simple matter 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 children sick."

1. Sense how motivated you feel to kick the smoking habit.

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

3. Adjust the codes (visual submodalities) of the picture so that they match the 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 help you to memorize the belief.

5. Now become aware of how motivated you feel to kick the smoking habit. 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 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 kick the smoking habit. A DECISION to quit means: I'm quitting no matter what I have to do. If you are similar to most, you won't want it to hurt and you do not have to. Because there are several hypnotic techniques that can greatly reduce, or even completely eliminate all of 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.