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There are two states of mind that must be appeased before anyone will voluntarily 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, a smoker must have a DESIRE to kick the habit. 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 give up the addiction. Since you haven't broken the smoking habit, it simply means that you have not DECIDED to stop yet.

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

MOTIVATION, we all need it. The source of each of our motivations is our beliefs. Think about it, if you didn't believe that you would be injured if you stood in the path of an oncoming semi, you would not experience motivation to be cautious. 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, people who have a smoking habit need to feel a tremendous amount of motivation to make the DECISION to quit smoking. 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 a great deal of motivation, you will kick the smoking habit.

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 probably think it is. However, you don't believe the ideas that will motivate you to kick the smoking habit right now, or you would have already stopped 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 will be in jeopardy, you will feel the motivation that you require to stop smoking. We call this is a negative motivator, because it is a belief that motivates by giving you terrible feelings. Negative motivators are great for getting you to make decisions.

When you believe that if you do stop, your highly valued criteria 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 sensations 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 cannot 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 need to believe to feel motivated to break the habit. 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 cigarettes, something dreadful 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 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 children's health."

CORRECT: "I believe that if I kick the smoking habit, my children will be safe 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 bombshell: 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 subconscious is like a computer. Computers do not 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. 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 picture that lets you feel 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, just write them down. These are the computer codes that your unconscious mind uses to indicate 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 have just calibrated your positive belief.

All positive belief pictures are 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 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 bad 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 bad.

Once you have calibrated both your positive and your negative beliefs, it is a simple thing 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 kid's health."

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

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

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

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 quickly memorize the belief.

5. Now sense how well 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 using 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 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 feel the pain and you do not 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 cigarette 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 hypnosis CD's for breaking the smoking habit. He is the developer of the Neuro-VISION(r) Video Hypnosis Technology for smoke cessation. It received a US Patent due to its effectiveness. Mr. Densky can be contacted through the Neuro-VISION web site.