How To Quit Smoking With
NLP & Hypnosis For Motivation
By Alan B. Densky, CH
There are two mental states that must be satisfied before a
person 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 quit smoking, you have to crave or desire
to quit.
You have to want to quit. You probably want to quit,
at least some part of you does, or you wouldn't be reading
this article.
In order to quit smoking, you have to decide to quit.
Since you haven't quit smoking, it simply means that you
have not decided to quit . . . yet. So what you need is to
feel motivated to make a "decision" to quit smoking.
Motivation, we all need it. I
have never known anyone to do anything without motivation.
If you think about it,
people don't get out of bed or get dressed without feeling
motivated. They do not eat or wash themselves without first
feeling motivated to do so.
The source of each of our
motivations is a belief. Think about it, if you did not
believe that you could get hurt if you walked in front of
moving traffic, you would not feel motivated to be careful.
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 giving up the
smoking habit, people need to feel a great deal of
motivation to make the decision to quit. Motivation is based
on the ideas that we believe. So you will need to figure out
what ideas will motivate you (when you start to believe
them). Because when you feel powerfully motivated, you will
quit smoking.
Thanks to NLP
(Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis
for motivation, it's a lot 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 quit smoking at this point, or you would
have already broken the smoking addiction.
Yeah, yeah, I can hear you thinking
right now, you've heard all of the scare tactics about
smoking, and they haven't motivated you to quit. Well,
maybe you don't believe them. Or maybe you do believe
them, but they are not what you, as an individual, need to
believe to feel motivated to stop 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 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 criteria is in
jeopardy, you will feel the motivation that you require to
stop smoking. We call this is a negative motivator, because
it's a belief that motivates you by giving you bad
feelings. Negative motivators are very powerful.
When you believe that if you do quit,
your highly valued criteria will become enhanced, you will
also feel the motivation that you require to quit smoking.
This is a positive motivator, because it motivates you by
promising good feelings if you stop smoking.
The first task is for you to figure
out what your most highly valued criteria is. In other
words, what are the most important things in your life? Here
is a hint for you: 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 provide would 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 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 forget logic!
Just figure out what you need to
believe to feel motivated to quit smoking no matter how
ridiculous it may sound. When you figure this out, you may
find that you already have a belief that contradicts this
new idea. That's okay. We can deal with that if it's
ecological.
The format for the negative motivator beliefs will be:
"I believe that if I continue to smoke, something bad
will happen to my most highly valued criteria."
As you write down the list of negative motivator ideas that
you will need to believe to feel motivated, make sure that
you've stated them in the positive. In other words, always
state what you want or what will happen. Never state what
you don't want or 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 kids health any good."
Correct: "I believe that if I continue to
smoke, my secondhand smoke will ruin my children's
health."
Now
take the list of your highly valued criteria, and create a
list of positive motivators. "I believe that if I quit
smoking: (something very important will be enhanced)."
Again,
write down the new ideas that you will need to believe. Make
sure that you've stated them in the positive. In other
words, always state what you want, never what you don't
want. Eliminate the "not" word from the beliefs.
Wrong: "I believe that if I stop smoking, I
won't harm my kids health."
Correct:
"I believe that if I quit smoking, my children will be
healthier because I'll eliminate their exposure to the
dangers of my second hand 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 or
reality. But it does have everything to do with your
perception of reality. In other words, it has a lot to do
with the way that we see things.
Our belief systems are based in our unconscious 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 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?
Whatever
your answers are, write them down. These are the computer
codes that your unconscious uses to indicate your feelings
of belief. In this case they are the codes for positive
belief because you've chosen a belief that gives you a
good feeling. You have just calibrated your positive belief.
All positive belief pictures are bright and focused. If yours aren't, 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
image of it, one or more of these computer codes 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 will be different.
In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) we call these computer codes submodalities. In this case they are called visual submodalities.
Now
you will want 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 your positive and your negative beliefs,
it's a simple matter to manipulate 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 ruin
my children's health."
1. Sense how motivated you feel to quit smoking.
2.
Make a mental image that illustrated the above
belief.
3. Adjust the computer codes (visual submodalities) of
the image to match the submodalities from your calibrated
negative belief.
4.
If you are right handed, move your eyeballs (and your
image) up to your left and hold it there for five seconds.
If you are left handed, to the opposite. This will help you
to quickly memorize the belief.
5. Now sense how motivated you feel to quit smoking. Do
you feel more motivated? Less motivated? Or the same?
Using this technique
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
quit smoking. A decision to quit means: I'm quitting no
matter how much it hurts. If you are like most people, you won't want it to
"hurt," and it doesn't have to. There are several
hypnotic techniques that can greatly reduce, or even
completely eliminate the discomforts of withdrawal
from the cigarette addiction.
My
programs utilize a combination of Ericksonian Hypnosis, NLP,
and Video Hypnosis to totally eliminate the discomforts
usually suffered while going through withdrawal. 90% of the
smoking addiction is mental, and only 10% is a physical
addiction. My programs deal with the 90% part of the
addiction and clients tell me that they are amazed how easy
it was to quit.
© 2007 By Alan B. Densky, CH. This document may NOT be re-printed without permission. All Rights Reserved. We are happy to syndicate our articles to approved websites.