Altering Your Smoking Beliefs? That's Easy

Let me talk about beliefs again and stress the point with another story. A group of frogs were hopping through the woods and two of them fell into a deep pit. All the other frogs stood around the pit. When they realised how deep the pit was, they told their unfortunate friends they would never get out. The two frogs ignored these comments and tried to jump out.

The other frogs kept telling them to cease, giving them the hopeless message that they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took notice of what the other frogs were shouting and simply gave up. He rolled over and died. Sound familiar with quitting smoking?

The other frog continued to jump as hard and as high as he could. Once again, the frogs poking their heads over the edge of the pit shouted at him to stop the hurt and suffering and just die. He jumped with even more determination and eventually made it out of the pit. When he emerged, the other frogs asked him: 'Why did you continue jumping? Didn't you hear us?'

The frog explained to them he was deaf. He thought that when they were yelling at him they were encouraging him the entire time.

What you do depends largely on what you believe. Your beliefs are the most dominant, motivating or debilitating drivers you posses. As kids many of us were told to try, try, try again when confronted with a particular hard task. If you really believe you can do something like quitting smoking, you give yourself the chance to do it. If you really believe you can't do something, you shut down even the possibility of achievement. It doesn't matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides.

Beliefs are so important in our activities. A belief is something that we feel with absolute certainty to be true. Your beliefs are your lenses to the perceptions that shape and colour your actions and ultimately your behaviour, and they are formed primarily from your feelings. The stronger your feelings, the more emotional intensity they contain and the stronger your belief. This process is vital if you aim to stop smoking.

You must believe that you can do it.

Beliefs are formed from three areas:

From your direct experience.

From your programming, that is, what you absorb directly from your peers and family.

From outside influences, such as thought viruses from media and from your surroundings.

The peak performance guru Tony Robbins says: 'Most of our beliefs are generalisations about our past based on our interpretations of painful and pleasurable experiences. Once accepted, our beliefs become unquestioning commands to our nervous system and they have the power to expand or destroy the possibilities of our present and future.' Clearly, Robbins goes big on beliefs as influences in our personality.

Beliefs, whether they are true or not, lie on a scale and vary on a continuum from an idea at the lower of your belief scale to a conviction at the highest level. When you have emotional intensity linked to an idea this powers up the belief to become a conviction.


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Douglas Grahame. Our beliefs are what drive us, to alter a certain belief we have to firstly understand how we got it in the first place. It took me many years to understand that and finally stop smoking for good.