Freedom from Bad Habits

A big part of Personal Development is identifying your weaknesses and bad habits and focusing on improving or changing them.   You know exactly what these are; it’s that mental list in the back of your head, that inner voice telling you, “this isn’t serving you in the most effective way”, and it could be just the thing holding you back from experiencing Full on Freedom.

Like so many of you out there, I’ve struggled for many years with my bad habit – smoking.  I started back when I was 18.  I never smoked full time, just at the bar, with friends while having a few drinks.  I dedicated 10 years of my life to “social smoking”.  Since I could maintain this for so long I felt that I was never really addicted.  I didn’t think it was much of a problem until I started getting closer to my thirties and noticing that my energy level wasn’t as high as I would’ve liked.  I seemed to get sick more easily.  I had a nasty cough right after the weekend.  That’s when I decided enough is enough, and it was time to quit completely.  However, once I started trying to quit, I quickly realized how addicted I actually was.  I tried several times without success, got discouraged, tried again, failed and so went on the cycle.

One day I ran into a friend who told me about this amazing book he read and that made him quit smoking for good 15 years ago.  At the time I dismissed the advice and continued smoking.

The book is “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking” by Allen Carr.  When I actually picked up the book and started reading it, I noticed that my desire to smoke began dropping off quickly, so much so that I knew that if I were to continue to read the book I would quit for sure.  I got scared and stopped reading the book for a little while.  I needed to be mentally ready to say “that’s it, I am done with this”.  So a month before my 30^th birthday, I decided it was time!  I picked up the book again and started reading.  I read it and smoked while reading, just like it tells you to, and when I finished the last chapter and put the book to rest on my night table, I knew for a fact that I would never ever smoke again.  This was truly the most liberating experience I’ve ever had in my life.  I knew for sure it was over.

Now, some of you might think “yeah right, like a book is going to do that!”  Trust me, Yes, it will!  So long as you are really ready to quit and you finish the book.  It will happen!  I was completely fed up, I knew I wanted to quit, I just didn’t know how.   I was always able to stop for a week or two or even a month, but then I would go out to the bar and have a terrible time because the only thing I could think of is how badly I wanted to smoke and who I could bum a cigarette from.  What a horrible feeling!

The beauty of this book is that you will never have to feel like that ever again.  It explains why we smoke, explains our fears and tells us why we haven’t been able to quit.  It reprograms your brain from feeling that you’ve given up something you really enjoyed to wondering why in the world you ever smoked?  What did it ever give you and why didn’t you quit sooner?

It’s been three years for me now since I quit.  I haven’t had a single craving or desire to smoke. I’ve even ran into old friends that knew me when I smoked and was offered a cigarette which confused me, because I had forgotten that ever smoked at all. It seems so strange, so foreign to me now.  You know the saying “ex-smokers are the worst”, well I am not an ex-smoker, I am just a non smoker, it’s like it never happened.  I feel free and overjoyed that I was able to finally break the habit.  The freedom is wonderful!  I have bought this book for many of my friends and family members and I wanted to share my success with the rest of you.

Check out our website Full on Freedom, it focuses on various resources to help your personal development. We have included the link to Allen Carr’s book “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking”, as well as many other self help books and tools to help you start changing your life and regaining total.

Smoke-free Lily Monkey.