Stopped.smoking Quotes

I quit smoking in December. I’m really depressed about it. I love smoking, I love fire, I miss lighting cigarettes. I like the whole thing about it, to me it turns into the artist’s life, and now people like Bloomberg have made animals out of smokers, and they think that if they stop smoking everyone will live forever.

You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias. You block their e-mails. You change your phone number. You stop drinking. You stop smoking. You claim you’re a sex addict and start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo. You find a therapist. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. You start taking salsa classes like you always swore you would so that the two of you could dance together. You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weak—It was the book! It was the pressure!—and every hour like clockwork you say that you’re so so sorry. You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, No more, and, Ya, and you will have to move from the Harlem apartment that you two have shared. You consider not going. You consider a squat protest. In fact, you say won’t go. But in the end you do.

I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.

The whole business of smoking is like forcing yourself to wear tight shoes just to get the pleasure of taking them off.

Hey, I stopped smoking cigarettes. Isn't that something? I'm on to cigars now. I'm on to a five-year plan. I eliminated cigarettes, then I go to cigars, then I go to pipes, then I go to chewing tobacco, then I'm on to that nicotine gum

It is a mistake," he said, " to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.

If you rescue me from my pipe dreams, I'll stop smoking fantasies.

Responsibility becomes stressful only when you don’t feel strong enough to handle it.

Wouldn’t that be an incredibly stupid thing to do? To say ‘I never want to smoke again’, then spend the rest of your life saying ‘I’d love a cigarette.’ That’s what smokers who use the Willpower Method do. No wonder they feel so miserable. They spend the rest of their lives desperately moping for something that they desperately hope they will never have.

There are people who can make love standing on a hammock, but it is not the easiest way.

The main reason that smokers find it difficult to quit is that they believe that they are giving up a genuine pleasure or crutch. It is absolutely essential to understand that there is nothing to ‘give up’.

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.

The cigarette gets the credit for everything and the blame for nothing.

Eight hours after putting out a cigarette, you are 97% nicotine-free. After just three days of not smoking, you are 100% nicotine-free.

the top reason doctors give for not counseling patients with high cholesterol to eat healthier is that they think patients may “fear privations related to dietary advice.”65 In other words, doctors perceive that patients would feel deprived of all the junk they’re eating. Can you imagine a doctor saying, “Yeah, I’d like to tell my patients to stop smoking, but I know how much they love it”?

We discovered that if your friend's friend's friend gained weight, you gained weight. We discovered that if your friend's friend's friend stopped smoking, you stopped smoking. And we discovered that if your friend's friend's friend became happy, you became happy.

The only reason any smoker lights a cigarette is to try to end the empty, insecure feeling that the previous cigarette created.

Even though the bee is small, there she is on the flower, doing something of value. And the value she creates there contributes to a larger ecosystem of value, in that mountain meadow, in that range of mountains, in the world and even the universe. And can’t you just feel how happy she is?

The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you’ve stopped smoking. Now when you have a mental block, instead of just getting on with it you start to say, ‘If only I could light up now, it would solve my problem.’ You then start to question your decision to quit smoking.

Bees have so much to offer us if we only listen.

Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it. They do it because they are miserable without it.

Quite simply, the key to being a happy non-smoker is to remove the desire to smoke. With no desire to smoke, it takes no Willpower not to do so.

Harry lit up, drew the smoke deep into his lungs and tried to imagine the blood vessels in the wall of the lung greedily absorbing the nicotine. Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction.

List 2: Write down everything in your life that you don’t want, like more panic attacks, depression, or partners who are emotionally unavailable. Maybe you’d like to stop smoking, or overeating, or drinking. Be specific and personal. This is about you. This will be your “before” picture.

The idea of suggesting that Strike stop lying to the women in his life occurred only to be dismissed, on the basis that the resolutions to stop smoking, lose weight and exercise were enough personal improvement to be getting on with.

As much as any creature on the planet, bees provide a win-win situation with their actions... I suppose we could all take a lesson from them.

The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you’ve stopped smoking.

It is 10 PM now, and Godzilla has been sitting at his desk in front of his laptop for six to seven hours. He has accomplished hardly anything today. Godzilla is drinking a lot of beer. He can not stop smoking cigarettes. His room is blue with cigarette smoke, and Godzilla sits on a chair in there, minimizing and maximizing Mozilla Firefox repeatedly. He is not over his girlfriend's house because she said on the cell phone that she needed time, alone, to think about their relationship. Godzilla worries that he will not be able to take care of himself if they break up.

The therapist’s voice rose, which was highly unprofessional. “Have you at least stopped smoking, Aran? I know you were using the enchanted drug as a crutch.” “I’ve actually quit completely.” Dr. Palmer’s eyes widened with surprise, and her face softened for the first time during our appointment. “Wow, that is actually very impressive, Aran. I’m proud of you for facing your—” She stopped talking as Aran pulled out her pipe and took a long draw. “Just kidding. I can’t go ten minutes without it.” Dr. Palmer’s eyebrow twitched.

Get it clear in your mind: CIGARETTES DO NOT FILL A VOID. THEY CREATE ONE! These bodies of ours are the most

When you put your heart and soul into your work, you cannot help but to make something beautiful.

The heart of a child is soooo beautiful. It doesn’t come with any, how do you say, preconceptions? So it can be so playful and take so much joy from the moment.

Whenever you think about smoking you must see it as a lifetime’s chain of filth, disease, fear, misery and slavery.

So the best combination for reversing heart disease is to exercise, stop smoking, eat a vegetarian diet, and practice stress management techniques—in other words, to follow the program

tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with me.

You can live a life completely free from the fears of the psyche. You just have to know how to do it. Let’s take smoking as an example. It is not hard to understand how to stop smoking. The key word is “stop.” It really doesn’t matter what patches you use; when it is all said and done, you simply must stop.

Attempts to stop smoking or give up any sort of self-destructive addictive behavior such as drugs, alcohol, hypersexuality, overeating, or overworking, often fail because it is very difficult to give up a means of self-regulation even when it is unhealthy until it can be replaced with a better form of self-regulation.

He stopped smoking at least once a month. He went through with it like the solid citizen he was: admitted the evils of tobacco, courageously made resolves, laid out plans to check the vice, tapered off his allowance of cigars, and expounded the pleasures of virtuousness to every one he met. He did everything, in fact, except stop smoking.

This is a familiar scenario in therapy. A patient’s boyfriend doesn’t want to stop smoking pot and watching video games on weekends. A patient’s child doesn’t want to study harder for tests at the expense of doing musical productions. A patient’s spouse doesn’t want to travel less for work. Sometimes the changes you want in another person aren’t on that person’s agenda—even if he tells you they are.

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him.

it’s weird how so many people talk to a God they don’t even believe exists. But you know what would be even weirder? If he spoke back. Like real, audible words. Just imagine it: A guy is walking down the street and he stops to light a cigarette. He accidentally burns himself and yells, ‘God, that hurt!’ And the clouds part above him and a great, booming voice says, ‘I know, son. You know what else hurts? Dying from lung cancer. This is a sign for you. Stop smoking.

And stop smoking," I yelled after him. "You smell like cheap ham!

Just one cigarette’ is a myth you must get out of your mind.

I'll stop smoking only if dogs stop eating bones.

The effect of the brainwashing is that we tend to think like the man who, having fallen off a 100-story building is heard to say as he passes the fiftieth floor, ‘So far, so good!

Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.

If you haven’t got your health you haven’t got anything’ but it’s true. I used to think that physical fitness fanatics were a pain. I used to claim that there was more to life than feeling fit: like booze and smokes.

I work in the morning at a manual typewriter. I do about four hours and then go running. This helps me shake off one world and enter another. Trees, birds, drizzle — it’s a nice kind of interlude. Then I work again, later afternoon, for two or three hours. Back into book time, which is transparent — you don’t know it’s passing. No snack food or coffee. No cigarettes — I stopped smoking a long time ago. The space is clear, the house is quiet. A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. Looking out the window, reading random entries in the dictionary. To break the spell I look at a photograph of Borges, a great picture sent to me by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín. The face of Borges against a dark background — Borges fierce, blind, his nostrils gaping, his skin stretched taut, his mouth amazingly vivid; his mouth looks painted; he’s like a shaman painted for visions, and the whole face has a kind of steely rapture. I’ve read Borges of course, although not nearly all of it, and I don’t know anything about the way he worked — but the photograph shows us a writer who did not waste time at the window or anywhere else. So I’ve tried to make him my guide out of lethargy and drift, into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination.

Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction. Ignoring the warning on the cigarette packet might not be the most flamboyant act of rebellion a man could allow himself, but at least it was one he could afford.

His room was a sickly dual-tone of crimson and charcoal, like an Untitled Rothko, the colours bleeding into each other horribly and then rather serenely. The overall effect was overwhelmingly unapologetic but it grew on you like a wart on your nose you didn't realise it was a part of your identity until one day it simply was. His room was his identity. Fiercely bold, avant-garde but never monotonous. He was red, he was black, he was bored, and he was fire. At least to me he seemed like fire. A tornado of fire that burned all in its wake leaving only the wretched brightness of annihilation. His room was where he charmed and disarmed us. We were his playthings. Nobody plays with fire and leaves unscarred. The fire soon seeps into chard and soot. The colours of his soul, his aura, and probably his heart if he didn't stop smoking.

I told them a bit of what I told you: that this is bigger than a beekeeping class, that Slovenia is a magical place, and that the person who comes here will have an Aha! moment that will change them forever. And that person will absolutely become a champion for bees in the process.

Maybe her father was angry with her. Maybe he had gone away because she tried to make him stop smoking. She thought she was saving his life, but maybe she was being mean to him. Her mother said she must not annoy her father, because he was worried about being out of work. Maybe she had made him so angry he did not love her anymore. Maybe he had gone away because he did not love her. She thought of all the scary things she had seen on television-houses that had fallen down in earthquakes, people shooting people, big hairy men on motorcycles -and she knew she needed her father to keep her safe.

for me, is the saddest thing about smoking: the only ‘enjoyment’ a smoker gets from a cigarette is temporary relief from the discomfort created by the previous one. All the smoker is looking for is the state of peace, tranquility and confidence that they had before they started smoking in the first place.

That is also a unique Slovenian tradition, and people have different opinions on how it originated. Some believe the paintings were originally done to bring good luck to the bees; others say it was to help the bees find their way to the right hive. My own view is that painted hives are just more interesting.

To me this is the most tragic part of this whole business. How hard we worked to become hooked, and this is why it is difficult to stop teenagers. Because they are still learning to smoke, because they still find cigarettes distasteful, they believe they can stop whenever they want to. Why do they not learn from us?

the only pleasure or crutch that smokers receive when they light up, is trying to get back to the level of peace and tranquillity that non-smokers experience the whole of their lives, and that since each cigarette, far from relieving the withdrawal pangs from nicotine, is actually causing them, even that pleasure or crutch is illusory.

The year had begun with the first protests in Milan against the Austrians, where citizens had stopped smoking to damage the revenues of the imperial government (those Milanese comrades, who stood firm when soldiers and police provoked them by blowing clouds of sweet-scented cigar smoke at them, were seen by my Turin companions as heroes).

We think of stopping smoking as something that is very difficult to do. What do we need when we have something difficult to do? We need our little friend. So stopping smoking appears to be a double blow. Not only do we have a difficult task to perform, which is hard enough, but the crutch on which we normally rely on such occasions is no longer available.

Feeling like you cannot stand one more minute doesn’t mean you can’t. You can, actually. It’s incredibly easy to stop smoking. And it’s horrifically uncomfortable. Then not quite horrifically uncomfortable. Then it’s damn uncomfortable. Then it’s uncomfortable. Then it’s not as uncomfortable as it was at first. Then it’s not so bad. And then you don’t smoke anymore. And you don’t miss it.

I have never been able to believe that human affairs were serious matters. I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me - which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome. There are really efforts and convictions I have never been able to understand. I always looked with amazement, and a certain suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money, fell into despair over the loss of a 'position,' or sacrificed themselves with a high and mighty manner for the prosperity of their family. I could better understand that friend who had made up his mind to stop smoking and through sheer will power had succeeded. One morning he opened the paper, read that the first H-Bomb had been exploded, learned about its wonderful effects, and hastened to a tobacco shop.

It doesn't matter where you are right now. No matter where you are, you're on the way to greatness If you desire that reality. Be present. Be grateful for the stepping stones that have you here today reflecting on your dreams. Stepping stones are a necessary part of the success process. Go into overdrive now. You can do this. No one ever made it in just one day. Each step is a part of the process. It doesn't matter what it takes! You're winning! Keep flowing all the way there. Stay up. You were born a winner!

If you want to stop smoking, ask yourself, do you do it because you love nicotine, or because it provides a burst of stimulation, a structure to your day, a way to socialize? If you smoke because you need stimulation, studies indicate that some caffeine in the afternoon can increase the odds you’ll quit. More than three dozen studies of former smokers have found that identifying the cues and rewards they associate with cigarettes, and then choosing new routines that provide similar payoffs—a piece of Nicorette, a quick series of push-ups, or simply taking a few minutes to stretch and relax—makes it more likely they will quit.3.28

It’s more complicated, too, knowing that people who call themselves feminists and social-rights activists might turn their backs on the ones who need them: Women who are desperate to be loved, so they sleep with too many men. Men who are snorting pills or shooting up heroin or some mysterious opiate concoction, because being alive hurts so much, it is worth it to risk overdose and disease and losing everything you have, everyone who loves you, to escape the hell inside you, even for just a few hours. Poor people without the wherewithal to stop smoking or stop burning their trash by the creek, who would rather die in a coal mine than get free health care.

If we say a person has heart disease, are we eliminating their responsibility? No. We’re having them exercise. We want them to eat less, stop smoking. The fact that they have a disease recognizes that there are changes, in this case, in the brain. Just like any other disease, you have to participate in your own treatment and recovery. What about people with high cholesterol who keep eating French fries? Do we say a disease is not biological because it’s influenced by behavior? No one starts out hoping to become an addict; they just like drugs. No one starts out hoping for a heart attack; they just like fried chicken. How much energy and anger do we want to waste on the fact that people gave it to themselves? It can be a brain disease and you can have given it to yourself and you personally have to do something about treating it.” I try not to blame Nic. I don’t. Sometimes I do.

The Company We Keep So now we have seen that our cells are in relationship with our thoughts, feelings, and each other. How do they factor into our relationships with others? Listening and communicating clearly play an important part in healthy relationships. Can relationships play an essential role in our own health? More than fifty years ago there was a seminal finding when the social and health habits of more than 4,500 men and women were followed for a period of ten years. This epidemiological study led researchers to a groundbreaking discovery: people who had few or no social contacts died earlier than those who lived richer social lives. Social connections, we learned, had a profound influence on physical health.9 Further evidence for this fascinating finding came from the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Epidemiologists were interested in Roseto because of its extremely low rate of coronary artery disease and death caused by heart disease compared to the rest of the United States. What were the town’s residents doing differently that protected them from the number one killer in the United States? On close examination, it seemed to defy common sense: health nuts, these townspeople were not. They didn’t get much exercise, many were overweight, they smoked, and they relished high-fat diets. They had all the risk factors for heart disease. Their health secret, effective despite questionable lifestyle choices, turned out to be strong communal, cultural, and familial ties. A few years later, as the younger generation started leaving town, they faced a rude awakening. Even when they had improved their health behaviors—stopped smoking, started exercising, changed their diets—their rate of heart disease rose dramatically. Why? Because they had lost the extraordinarily close connection they enjoyed with neighbors and family.10 From studies such as these, we learn that social isolation is almost as great a precursor of heart disease as elevated cholesterol or smoking. People connection is as important as cellular connections. Since the initial large population studies, scientists in the field of psychoneuroimmunology have demonstrated that having a support system helps in recovery from illness, prevention of viral infections, and maintaining healthier hearts.11 For example, in the 1990s researchers began laboratory studies with healthy volunteers to uncover biological links to social and psychological behavior. Infected experimentally with cold viruses, volunteers were kept in isolation and monitored for symptoms and evidence of infection. All showed immunological evidence of a viral infection, yet only some developed symptoms of a cold. Guess which ones got sick: those who reported the most stress and the fewest social interactions in their “real life” outside the lab setting.12 We Share the Single Cell’s Fate Community is part of our healing network, all the way down to the level of our cells. A single cell left alone in a petri dish will not survive. In fact, cells actually program themselves to die if they are isolated! Neurons in the developing brain that fail to connect to other cells also program themselves to die—more evidence of the life-saving need for connection; no cell thrives alone. What we see in the microcosm is reflected in the larger organism: just as our cells need to stay connected to stay alive, we, too, need regular contact with family, friends, and community. Personal relationships nourish our cells,

The little sneak caught me one day, coming around the car when I was outside puffing away. “I was wondering what you were doing,” he said, spying me squatting behind the truck. He’d nailed me, but the look on his face made it seem as if our roles were reversed--he looked as if he were in shock, as if I’d just slapped him. When I went back inside, I found he’d taped signs to the walls: DON’T SMOKE! I laugh about it now, but not then. “Why are you so devastated that I’m smoking?” I asked when I found him. “Because. I already lost one parent. I don’t want to lose you, too.” “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m going to stop.” But of course it wasn’t nearly that easy. As horrible as I felt, I was deep into the habit. I would quit for a while--a day, an hour--then somehow a cigarette would find its way to my mouth. I continued to rationalize, continued to struggle--and Bubba continued to call me out. “I’m trying,” I told him. “I’m trying.” He’d come up and give me a hug--and smell the cigarette still on me. “Did you have one?” “Yes.” “Hmmmm…” Instant tears. “I’m trying, I’m trying.” One day I went out to the patio to take what turned out to be a super stressful call--and I started to smoke, almost unconsciously. In the middle of the conversation, Bubba came out and threw a paper airplane at me. What!!! My son scrambled back inside. I was furious, but the call was too important to cut short. Wait until I get you, mister! Just as I hung up, Bubba appeared at the window and pointed at the airplane at my feet. I opened it up and read his message. YOU SUCK AT TRYING. That hurt, not least of all because it was true. I tried harder. I switched to organic cigarettes--those can’t be that bad for you, right? They’re organic! Turns out organic tars and nicotine are still tars and nicotine. I quit for day, then started again. I resolved not to go to the store so I couldn’t be tempted…then found myself hunting through my jacket for an old packet, rifling around in my hiding places for a cigarette I’d forgotten. Was that a half-smoked butt I saw on the ground? Finally, I remembered one of the sayings SEALs live by: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Not exactly the conventional advice one uses to stop smoking, but the conventional advice had failed me. For some reason I took the words and tried applying them to my heartbeat, slowing my pulse as it ramped up. It was a kind of mini-meditation, meant to take the place of a cigarette. The mantra helped me take control. I focused on the thoughts that were making me panic, or at least getting my heart racing. Slow is smooth. Slow down, heart. Slow down--and don’t smoke. I worked on my breathing. Slow is smooth. Slow is smooth. And don’t smoke.

The odds of me living until I’m a hundred are slim to none, but I’ll try, and I’ll enjoy every precious moment.

Critics suggested the adoption of the Dietary Goals would be costly for taxpayers too. Because of more expensive groceries? No. Because “health care expenditures increase if the lifespan is prolonged.” It’s like when people quit smoking: “The increase in the expected lifespan would simultaneously increase the cost of care of old people.”1500 In other words, if people eat more healthfully and stop smoking, there may be more seniors, some of whom might need our care.

For Christ’s sake, if they legalized pot half the people would stop smoking it. Prohibition created more drunks than grandmother’s wart. It’s only when you can’t do that you want to do.

Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.” Hundreds of studies have shown that implementation intentions are effective for sticking to our goals, whether it’s writing down the exact time and date of when you will get a flu shot or recording the time of your colonoscopy appointment. They increase the odds that people will stick with habits like recycling, studying, going to sleep early, and stopping smoking. Researchers have even found that voter turnout increases when people are forced to create implementation intentions by answering questions like: “What route are you taking to the polling station? At what time are you planning to go? What bus will get you there?” Other successful government programs have prompted citizens to make a clear plan to send taxes in on time or provided directions on when and where to pay late traffic bills.

Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking.

I once tweeted something silly in a state of anxiety. “Anxiety is my superpower,” I said. I didn’t mean anxiety was a good thing. I meant that anxiety was ridiculously intense, that we people who have an excess of it walk through life like an anxious Clark Kent or a tormented Bruce Wayne knowing the secret of who we are. And that it can be a burden of racing uncontrollable thoughts and despair but one, just occasionally, that we can convince ourselves has a silver lining. For instance, personally I am thankful that it forced me to stop smoking, to get physically healthy, that it made me work out what was good for me, and who cared for me and who didn’t. I am thankful that it led me to trying to help some other people who experience it, and I am thankful that it led me—during good patches—to feel life more intensely.

Motivational interviewing has been the subject of more than a thousand controlled trials; a bibliography that simply lists them runs sixty-seven pages. It’s been used effectively by health professionals to help people stop smoking, abusing drugs and alcohol, gambling, and having unsafe sex, as well as to improve their diets and exercise habits, overcome eating disorders, and lose weight.

When you find yourself thinking critically about a partner or friend ("You should stop smoking"), try changing the criticism to an affirmative, even prayerful, and kindhearted wish ("May you find the strength to stop smoking"). Use this same technique when you are self-critical: "May I access the strength I know is in me to let go of this habit.

A key member of the show’s production staff found that she had to stop smoking pot when she worked on Saturday Night—ironically, since it was the first job she’d ever had where she could smoke pot—because it made her too sensitive, too soft in dealing with all the people calling in who wanted something. With cocaine she found she could tell them no very efficiently, very fast, with no emotion whatsoever. “Coke,” she said, “takes the heart out of people. It’s irrelevant if you’re hurting somebody. It’s all what you want to get across at the moment and who you want to listen to you.

If you have ever wondered, “Why don’t I do what I say I’m going to do? Why don’t I lose the weight or stop smoking or save for retirement or start that side business? Why do I say something is important but never seem to make time for it?” The answers to those questions can be found somewhere in these four laws. The key to creating good habits and breaking bad ones is to understand these fundamental laws and how to alter them to your specifications. Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature.

What the hell you mean, who I am today? Damn you slow Ari, I’m Lai today, I’m gonna be Lai tomorrow, and I’m one of the coldest women you are going to ever meet in your life! Cynt, stop smoking that shit near my damn granddaughter, she starting to act slow again!” I laughed.

Join a gym, start a healthy eating plan, save more money, stop smoking—the list of New Year’s resolutions is endless, but how many of them are ever accomplished?

the very reference on a permanent freedom of choice (my awareness that I can stop smoking any time I want) guarantees that I will never actually do it—the possibility of stopping smoking is what blocks actual change,

The system we will be applying is not a teeth-gritting, will-power, try-hard-to-shape-up method. You have tried that already: I’m going to try hard to get organized! or I’m going to put my will-power to work and stop smoking! Probably the harder you tried the more frustrated you became.

With

A 2008 study in Appetite found that the group of volunteers who tried not to think about eating ate more than the group who didn’t. The first group exhibited what is called a ‘behavioural rebound effect’. Similarly, a 2010 study in Psychological Science found that the group of smokers who tried not to think about smoking actually thought about it even more than the group who didn’t. This reminds me of a small piece of advice my driving instructor said to me when I was 18: ‘Steven, the car will go where your eyes are looking. If you want to avoid crashing into the cars on the side of the road, don’t focus on the cars on the side of the road, because you will veer towards the parked cars on the side of the road. Look forwards, into the distance, where you want the car to go.’ This seems like a fitting analogy for breaking and making habits: you will end up doing the thing you’re focusing on, so don’t focus on stopping smoking, don’t fight it; focus on the behaviour you want to replace it with.

Living’s hard,” Doris said. “I got three kids with different daddies. I’m fat, can’t stop smoking, and I’ve worked in this cave since God was in diapers. My momma scrubbed toilets most her life, worked sunup to sundown until she got the cancer. When I tried to sell the TV and get her some chemo, she said, ‘Don’t you dare, Doris. Don’t you dare drag this thing out.

To expect sustainable development or a trust in business as usual to be viable policies is like expecting a lung cancer victim to be cured by stopping smoking; both measures deny the existence of the Earth’s disease, the fever brought on by a plague of people.

When I had tried to stop previously there were weeks of dark depression. There would be odd days when I was comparatively cheerful but the next day I would invariably sink back into the misery and depression. It was like clawing your way out of a slippery pit—you feel that you are nearing the top; you can see the sunshine—and then find yourself sliding back down again.

Encourage your loved one to eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, maintain a reasonable weight, stop smoking, and consume alcohol in moderation. If you can’t get your fire fighter to cooperate, model a healthy lifestyle yourself. A new study of 4,700 couples showed that there is a strong association between the health of husbands and the health of wives. Married people tend to follow the same kinds of diets, for better or worse, or to smoke if their spouse does.

Even those social smokers who only smoke sometimes, are addicted. They just need less of it, but they need it. And occasional smoking is even worse.

My whole life was a mess. I had no idea what was going on in the world. I was a prisoner of weed and cigarette.

Quitting is the only way you can stop smoking.

Just smoke less and keep trying. If you smoke 10 cigarettes in a day, smoke only 9 for next 3 days then 8, then 7… and one day you will quit. Smoking cigarettes is not doing any good to you. It’s just killing you. You don’t wanna die yet. Do you!?

Smoking cigarettes is not doing any good to you. It’s just killing you. You don’t wanna die yet. Do you!?

It's about how to quit smoking and never crave for it again. I can’t tell you how to do it in 1 hour, 10 hour or 24 hour. It’s a process and it will take time. If you’re looking for some overnight miracle then forget about it, it doesn’t exist.

The athlete doesn’t stop smoking and start training. He starts training and finds he has stopped smoking.

Crazy? Of course you’re crazy. We’re all crazy!

You know you're going to have to stop smoking too, right?” “I don't smoke!” It was as if Wilson had heard my thoughts moments before. Wilson lifted an eyebrow in disbelief, and smirked at me, waiting for me to come clean. “I don't smoke, Wilson! I just live with someone who smokes like a chimney. So I smell like an ashtray all the time. I can't help it if I reek, but thank you for noticing.” Wilson had lost his doubtful smirk, and he sighed gustily. “I'm sorry, Blue. I'm incredibly good at dropping clunkers. I don't have a big mouth, but somehow I manage to stick my foot in it quite frequently.

I started telling people about my dream a couple of days ago and then it seemed like everything and everyone kind of led me here, like it was just supposed to happen.

There’s no lonelier feeling than when a crowd of people is staring at you and there’s nowhere to hide. But you know what you do? You take your lumps and then give it another shot the next time. A better shot. That’s all you can do.

Pursuing this dream wasn’t about getting to the ending I’d envisioned in my head. It actually wasn’t about getting to an ending at all.

If you really wanted them to, they would just jump in the boat for you. But, no one really wants that because it wouldn’t be any fun.

So, my dream has sort of come true in a roundabout way. I guess I just had to pursue it to find out what it was.