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I was a smoker for many years... everyone in the family smoked - father, mother, and brother. I was a dumb kid in an industrial town in Iowa - constant opportun

I was a smoker for many years... everyone in the family smoked - father, mother, and brother. I was a dumb kid in an industrial town in Iowa - constant opportunity and social pull to consume nicotine. After awhile I didn't want to be a smoker anymore and found a self help book - "Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking." Friends of mine suggested it, and I found a PDF and read it during a dead afternoon at work. Instead of focusing on the "hard" trope of quitting smoking it presented it as easy - hence the title. It framed the habit for exactly what it was, a drug addiction, but it never talked harshly to you about how you became a nicotine addict or the quitting process. It focused on telling you exactly what to expect if you decide to quit, and then gave you a positive framework to help overcome the effects of quitting. The overall message was always "think of how much you're going to gain by quitting... health, money, etc." It worked, I am no longer a nicotine addict. I don't think I would have had the capability to quit without some mental reframing which that book 100% helped me accomplish. > That's were the focus should be, not on the people who always walked the happy path and just "worked hard". Overcoming hopeless situations, stigma, bias, ego. That's actually hard. Agree. There's always the "work hard" narrative and I find it's often coupled with a discrediting attitude like OP's comment. The effect of that attitude demotivates more than it helps. As cheesy as it was I found the tools to fix my nicotine addiction in a self-help book ha

FredPret 4y ago
Thank the gods for Allen Carr. He helped me too.
bombcar 4y ago
That was the point I was getting at - the book presented you information in a way that helped, but you still did the hard work of actually implementing it. Almost all diets work if you stick to them, and almost nobody does. People want behavioral changes to be easy but they're not - they require hard work. Perhaps more diet books would be successful if they treated it as a food addiction instead of a "eat healthy to look sexy".
- 1123581321 4y ago
  There probably is no getting to you, but “the book presented you information in a way that helped” is the whole point of a self-help book, and when someone arrives at a better understanding of themselves or a project via presented information, it does get easier for them.
borroka 4y ago
I was a smoker for many years. One day, I decided to stop. I did not read books or got any other support. I did not want to die of lung cancer (crossing fingers!). I now occasionally a smoke a cigarette (say, once every month or two), something that, according to the vast majority of many ex-smokers, appears to be almost impossible to do.

FredPret 4y ago

Thank the gods for Allen Carr. He helped me too.

bombcar 4y ago

That was the point I was getting at - the book presented you information in a way that helped, but you still did the hard work of actually implementing it. Almost all diets work if you stick to them, and almost nobody does. People want behavioral changes to be easy but they're not - they require hard work. Perhaps more diet books would be successful if they treated it as a food addiction instead of a "eat healthy to look sexy".

1123581321 4y ago
There probably is no getting to you, but “the book presented you information in a way that helped” is the whole point of a self-help book, and when someone arrives at a better understanding of themselves or a project via presented information, it does get easier for them.

borroka 4y ago

I was a smoker for many years. One day, I decided to stop. I did not read books or got any other support. I did not want to die of lung cancer (crossing fingers!). I now occasionally a smoke a cigarette (say, once every month or two), something that, according to the vast majority of many ex-smokers, appears to be almost impossible to do.