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There are two states of mind that must be contented before a smoker will voluntarily 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 stop smoking, a smoker 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, a smoker must DECIDE to quit. Since you haven't kicked the smoking addiction, 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 believe that you would be hurt if you jumped from a tall building, you would not experience motivation to be alert. If you did not believe that the gnawing sensation in your stomach meant that you were hungry, you would not feel motivated to eat.

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

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

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 humanbeing.

When you believe that if you continue to smoke cigarettes your highly valued criterion is in jeopardy, 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 terrible sensations. 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, 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 chore 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 could be. Write your list of highly valued criteria down on a piece of paper.

Next you need to conclude what you 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 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. Never state what won't 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 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 will 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: Your beliefs have 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 subconscious mind. The unconscious 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 children. 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 mind uses to make you experience 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 positive feeling. You have 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. An element of doubt is probably present. So find another belief from which 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 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 both your positive and negative beliefs, it is a simple thing to manage what you believe so you can motivate yourself to DECIDE to break the smoking habit.

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. Become aware of how motivated you feel to stop smoking.

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

3. Adjust the computer codes (visual submodalities) of the image so that they 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 make you memorize the belief.

5. Now sense how motivated you feel to stop 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 a picture in your mind that illustrates your new idea and then adjusting your mental image to 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 stop smoking. A DECISION to quit means: I'm quitting no matter what I have to do. If you are like most, you won't 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 smoking 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.

Alan B. Densky, CH. offers NLP CD's for breaking the smoking addiction. He is the inventor of the Neuro-VISION(r) Video quit smoking hypnosis technology. It received a US Patent due to its effectiveness. Mr. Densky can be reached through his Neuro-VISION web site.