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How To Create Motivation Using Neuro-Linguistic Programming To Kick The Addiction To Tobacco

There are two psychological states that must be appeased before a person will freely stop smoking. These fundamentals 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 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 quit. 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 provocation to make a “DECISION” to stop.

MOTIVATION, we all want to have it. The starting place for each of our motivations is our beliefs. Think about it, if you did not believe that you could be hurt if you walked in front of moving traffic, you would not experience motivation to be wary. 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 the cigarette habit, people who are addicted to smoking cigarettes need to feel a tremendous amount of motivation to make the DECISION to give up cigarettes. Motivation is based on the ideas that we believe. So you will need to figure out exactly which thoughts will motivate you (when you start to believe 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 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 stop smoking at this point in time, or you would have already broken the habit.

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.

When you totally 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 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, 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 mission is for you to figure out what the most essential 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 figure out what you will 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. You should 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 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 kids will be safe 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 revelation: Your beliefs have nothing to do with real logic. 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 unconscious mind. The subconscious mind is like a computer. Computers don’t reason. The input controls the output. 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 kids. If that is true for you, make a mental picture that makes you experience 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?

It does not matter what your answers are, just 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 an excellent feeling. You’ve just calibrated your positive belief.

All positive belief pictures are bright and focused. If yours are not, 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 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 terrible.

Once you have calibrated your positive and your negative beliefs, it is a simple matter to manage 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 kid’s health.”

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 mental image to make them match the codes from your calibrated negative belief.

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 quickly memorize the belief.

5. Now sense how well 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 proceedure 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 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 how much it hurts. If you are similar to most, you will not want it to suffer from the pain of withdrawal and you don’t have to. Because there are several hypnotic and NLP methods that can greatly reduce, or even completely eliminate all of the discomforts of withdrawal from the cigarette 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.

Alan B. Densky, CH. offers NLP CD’s for breaking the smoking habit. He developed the Neuro-VISION(r) Video Hypnosis Technology for smoke cessation. It received a United States Patent due to its effectiveness. Mr. Densky can be contacted through his Neuro-VISION web site.

- Alan B. Densky, CH

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