R. Michael Stone

New Year Resolutions are permanent changes for the better. Yet, if you are like most people, all the good intentions have faded and you are back on the same path you were last year; if you made it through February, you persisted longer than most people do. Why is this? Your self image, friends and family!

When you ask a smoker why they use cigarettes, they will almost always say because they like to smoke. However, smoking is hard because the person has to use great effort to suppress the normal body defense mechanism with each cigarette and the side effects of smoking are unpleasant. When the smoker says they like to smoke, the reality of the difficulty in smoking and the unpleasant side effects of smoking creates conflict and adds to the difficulty to quit smoking.

Dog intelligence is much higher than people think. Dogs understand human speech, they understand numbers and can perform complex tasks; tasks that require reasoning and making the correct decision.

The nicotine model has been used to explain why it is difficult for people to quit smoking. However, products such as nicotine patches and gum have a very low success rate. This article discusses why the nicotine model doesn't work well to help a person quit smoking.

A person usually learns to smoke during the changes of puberty when they are trying to establish an adult identity. Smoking gives the young person confidence which in turn allows their natural abilities to produce success in other areas. The cigarette is given the credit when in reality, it is their confidence in themselves that produces the additional success. This misconception is a key foundation of the Psychological Smoking Mechanism which makes it hard to quit smoking.

The driving force behind smoking is not the cigarette/nicotine. The Psychological Smoking Mechanism is what makes it hard to quit smoking. Associative Learning is what keeps the mechanism powerful. By being aware of this form of learning, you can control it and weaken the Psychological Smoking Mechanism.

We tend to believe that our thoughts are our own and have no force outside ourselves but research in Quantum Physics suggests that this notion is not correct. We are electromagnetic beings and our thoughts radiate out from us like a broadcast signal impacting things inside us and around us. Although we would like to believe that our thoughts are "private", research has shown that thought DOES affect matter outside of ourselves. This gives a whole new meaning to "watch what you think!"

There are obvious external effects of smoking cigarettes that warn the smoker years in advance of the damage that is happening to them internally. This article will alert the smoker to an external effect of smoking: accelerated aging. This is something the smoker can see every time they look in the mirror. The change the smoker sees on the outside is a reflection of what is going on inside their body!

Addiction to cigarettes (nicotine) has been used as a rationalization as to why it is so hard to quit smoking. The truth is, nicotine does not present the characteristics of a physical addiction and nicotine replacement protocols are not very effective. The real cause of the difficulty to simply quit smoking cigarettes is the Psychological Smoking Mechanism. If you stop cigarettes and don't remove this mechanism, you will continue to be a smoker who isn't smoking right now.

Addiction to cigarettes (nicotine) has been used as a rationalization as to why it is so hard to quit smoking. The truth is, nicotine does not present the characteristics of a physical addiction. The real cause of the difficulty to simply quit smoking cigarettes is the Psychological Smoking Mechanism. If you stop cigarettes and don't remove this mechanism, you will continue to be a smoker who isn't smoking right now. It is the real reason why the smoker resumes smoking after weeks or months.