Smoking Illusion One: Willpower

Here's an old excuse. Lot's of smokers say: 'I can't stop. I just don't have any willpower.' Let me explain. Willpower, as most people understand it, is a psychological illusion, because it doesn't really exist. Willpower is just a 9- letter word to which you have attached high emotional value. Just analyse the word for what it is. Will is the thought by which you decide on and take action, and power is the ability to do something. Now willpower feels a little different, yes?

You merely deceive yourself with that word willpower. We use it as a label for something we have already predetermined is going to be difficult. There are things that we do because you enjoy them but other people say that those things must take some willpower. Here's a personal example. Having lost 52 pounds, I have exercised at the gym consistently four times a week for more than 10 years. Before I take my children to school I spend up to two hours working out every day. Perhaps people think I'm having to force myself. That thought couldn't be further from the truth. The working out has nothing to do with willpower. I do it because I really enjoy it.

Think about something you really enjoy doing, so much that you look forward to repeating it again and again. You'd laugh if somebody suggested willpower had to be summoned up for it.What keeps you at it is the pleasure you associate with it. Apply this to the smoking habit. When you change your feelings so that we really enjoy not smoking, you will enjoy that feeling so much that you will want to continue not smoking.

I'll turn the argument around. If willpower really did exist you would use it to continue smoking. It takes willpower to spend your money on cigarettes, because they don't suddenly appear in your hand. Go one pace backwards - it takes willpower to go out and buy them. When you've got them it takes willpower to light them, to inhale not once, not twice, but maybe more than ten times for every cigarette. Don't you think it takes willpower to have to inhale on a piece of paper filled with plant leaves and to breathe it in anywhere from 50 to 300 times a day?

Even more, doesn't it take willpower to resist people telling you to quit? It must be a strong will that keeps you smoking when you know all these things. You don't believe all that surely?

Consider two men who desperately want the same unobtainable thing. One is strong willed, the other has no willpower. The first maintains silence, the other is constantly agitated. Yet the willpower plays no part in obtaining the unobtainable.

However, it is willpower that you use when the two parts of your mind are in conflict between the angel and the devil. When you change the way you think and feel the whole of your mind is pointed in the one direction, you have no need to battle with your wills.


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Doug Grahame. I tried to stop smoking cigars for over 30 years, pills, potions, patches even acupuncture. Success only came when I understood the illusions that kept me from stopping.
http://www.stopsmokingquitforever.com