Zen of the Quit

Seriously. Don’t even try. It isn’t going to work. You may think you can skate on this, but there’s a part of you that knows what you’re up to, and that’s the part of you that you need the most if you’re going to get free and stay that way.

One of the strongest motivations for humans and other conscious beings is the avoidance of pain. In fact, chances are that the avoidance of pain was the primary reason we continued to smoke for as long as we did, in spite of plenty of evidence of the bad consequences of doing so: we didn’t continue […]

An important thing to understand about your inner junkie is that it’s very much like a spoiled child: it will do its best to make your life miserable unless you give it what it wants.

A common theme that comes up with people who are getting ready to quit smoking is they feel like they have a split personality: one part of them wants to quit and one part wants to find reasons to keep smoking.

Rationalizations are simply a mechanism we use to try and make the lies we tell ourselves about our smoking behavior seem plausible. When we quit, if we have allowed these rationalizations to go unchallenged, they will come back to haunt us.

I’ve already as much as said that you’re an addict several times on this blog, and I wonder if you’ve accepted that yet. Well, don’t take my word for it: take this quick 5-question quiz* and then decide for yourself.

One of the most common reasons that people give for not wanting to quit smoking is that they don’t want to gain a lot of weight. And a lot of quitters relapse because they gained weight after they quit. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

As important as it is to have strong reasons to quit, it’s even more important to look at the reasons you came up with to keep smoking and realize that pretty much all of them are really just rationalizations.

I already suggested you start listing the reasons why you want to quit; now I will suggest that you also list the reasons why you want to keep smoking. Why?