I don't know if you were ever a smoker Jim but quitting smoking requires, or can require gargantuan will power. I quit smoking about twenty years ago and the battle is still fresh in my mind. I enjoyed smoking and tobacco must be at least as addicting as heroin. Have I mistaken will power for something else?
-------------------------------------------#juan-------------------------------------------------------------
Oh yeah I was a smoker. I quit July 12, so it's been 6 months of a better way for me.
I added changing my eating habits and stepped up weight lifting and swimming 1/2 mile each day,
which wasn't too hard since I've swum laps most of my life even during the smoking, although
much less than now.
Excercising makes me NOT want to smoke. And eating fruits and vegetables makes me feel better
avoiding the inevitable bio-rythmn downturn from eating bad foods.
You're right, #juan, about describing what most smokers and former smokers know. Once
you've tasted the Apple, you're done for the rest of your life. A little part of the brain remembers
that pleasure. That pick-me-up. The Brain will ruin its body for that immediate pleasure --- which is
why the Buddhists say our heads drag our bodies along.
It wasn't and still isn't will power for me.
Will power means you're constantly setting yourself up for failure by position.
The positition you put yourself in: That of having to say NO all the time, day after day,
temptation after temptation. How long will that marathon be successful ? How long
can you resist ?
You don't put yourself in situations of temptation. This is hard for a smoker to do since
he's learned over time to tie smoking to almost every activity (s)he does.
Rather it be this.
You enjoy your new habits, something you look forward to.
This way of thinking is much more powerful since we tend to do what pleasures us, and
avoid pain. And will power means a very big negative: embracing withdrawal and
denying ourselves pleasure.
Semantics ?
I think it's more than semantics.
In my case hypnosis resets the internal programming, most of which was very negative
in all of us.