Yes, you broke up with something too. Broke up with your drinking coffee habit, with your operating system or your old computer. Broke up with an old friend of partner…I think about making this like a serie of posts, all related to the interruption of something I used for a long time. A habit, a software application, a person. It’s very interesting to see when you actually stopped to do something, and why.
It will be pretty interesting also to see how others have broke up with the same pattern or habit.

I will start this serie with an easy one: when and why I broke up with smoking. It was on 17h November 2005. After a party at my company, Mirabilis Media, I felt so miserably the next day, that I instantly decided to quit smoking. And I did. It was an instant decision, fueled by the insanely bad consequences this habit has generated.

I never come back, and I know I will never do this again. I haven’t had any bad moods or other consequences, I didn’t put weight or something. This is a myth, you don’t smoke to lose weight, you smoke by habit. It’s a Pavlov thing, you train yourslef into it. You can train yourself out of it. Almost as easy as you trained yourself into it.

This habit is most likely to be ignited again by your friends and co-workers, by your entourage. Let’s smoke a cigare, let’s have a break. This is almost folklore in my work environment, it’s a very popular gathering reason. If you have enough power and self-confidence to separate the gathering stuff from the smoking habit, you’ll most likely win. If you just associate the gathering with smoking, you’ll lose. I’ve heard that vaping is a good start on quitting smoking that’s why those portable vaporizers are in trend nowadays.

Quiting smoking was very rewarding on a long term, far beyond the health advantages. I had a tremendous increase in self-confidence: I did that, I can also do much difficult stuff. And I also did it very easy…

If you had a similar exprience and want to share it, feel free to comment on that. I am really curious to see how other people broke with their habits.

[tags]smoking, habit interruption[/tags]