Many smokers, while trying to stop on the Willpower Method, try to increase the motivation to stop
by building up false incentives.
There are many examples of this, A typical one is 'My family and I can have a marvelous holiday
on the money I will save,' This appears to be a logical and sensible approach, but in fact it is false
because any self-respecting smoker would rather smoke fifty-two weeks in the year and not have a
holiday. In any case there is a doubt in the smoker's mind because not only will he have to abstain for
fifty weeks but will he even enjoy that holiday without a cigarette? All this does is to increase the
sacrifice that the smoker feels he is making, which makes the cigarette eve n more precious in his
mind. Instead concentrate on the other side: 'What am I getting out of it? Why do I need to smoke?'
Another example: 'I'll be able to afford a better car.' That's true, and the incentive may make you
abstain until you get that car, but once the novelty has gone you will feel deprived, and sooner or later
you will fall for the trap again.
Another typical example is office or family pacts. These have the advantage of eliminating
temptation for certain periods of the day. However, they generally fail for the following reasons.
1 The incentive is false. Why should you want to stop smoking just because other people are
doing so? All this does is to create an additional pressure, which increases the feeling of
sacrifice. It is fine if all smokers genuinely want to stop at one particular time. However, you
cannot force smokers to stop, and although all smokers secretly want to, until they are ready to do
so a pact just creates additional pressure, which increases their desire to smoke. This turns
them into secret smokers, which further increases the feeling
of dependency,
2 The 'Rotten apple' theory, or dependency on each other. Under the Willpower Method of
stopping, the smoker is undergoing a period of penance during which he waits for the urge to
smoke to go. If he gives in, there is a sense of failure. Under the Willpower Method one of the
participants is bound to give in sooner or later. The other participants now have the excuse they
have been waiting for. It's not their fault. They would have held out. It is just that Fred has let
them down. The truth is that most of them have already been cheating.
3 'Sharing the credit' is the reverse of the 'Rotten apple' theory. Here the loss of face due to failure
is not so bad when shared. There is a marvelous sense of achievement in stopping smoking.
When you are doing it alone the acclaim you receive from your friends, relatives and colleagues can
be a tremendous boost to help you over the first few days. When everybody is doing it at the same
time the credit has to be shared and the boost is consequently reduced.
Another classic example of false incentives is the bribe (e.g. the parent offering the teenager a sum of
money to abstain or the bet, 'I will give you £100 if I fail'). There was once an example in a TV
programme. A policeman trying to give up smoking put a £20 note in his cigarette packet. He had a
pact with himself. He could smoke again, but he had to set light first to the £20 note. This stopped
him for a few days, but eventually he burnt the note.
Stop kidding yourself. If the £50,000 that the average smoker spends in his life won't stop him, or
the one-in-two risk of horrendous diseases, or the lifetime of bad breath, mental and physical torture
and slavery or being despised by most of the population and despising yourself, a few phoney
incentives will not make the slightest bit of difference. They will only make the sacrifice appear worse.
Keep looking at the other side of the tug of war.
What is smoking doing for me? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Why do I need to do it? YOU DON'T! YOU ARE ONLY PUNISHING YOURSELF.