Quitting an Addiction

Kicking a habit is not easy. If you rely solely on your willpower, you are probably going to lose. Willpower is absolutely necessary, but there are tricks that can help. The key thing in giving up any addiction is staying positive about your life and making a villain of your addiction. If you constantly think that your life with addiction is a great one and you are giving up something precious to prove a point or for long term health benefits, then chances are that you will soon lose steam and get back to your old dear life with addiction. So what you need to vilify the addiction, gather evidence how miserable it made your life. Let’s face it, no matter how you glorify, an addiction never makes life better it only makes it worse. So it is not hard to come up with facts about the short-term negative impacts of an addiction.
So why in the fight between willpower and addiction, it is the addiction which wins most of the time? The answer is simple, cravings are short term, gratification instantaneous while the benefits of quitting are long term and imperceptible. So how do we win this battle? By relying on the short benefits of quitting, while recognizing that while cravings are powerful, they go down very quickly. They are pretty much gone in about a month. So if you can hold on for a month, your chances of winning increases dramatically.
So how do we focus on the short term gain? This is mostly on the healthy living. Whether you are quitting smoking or drinking, it immediately leads to very healthy improvements in your lifestyle. You sleep better, you get more energy. Convert that into activities, cycling, swimming and you will feel a lot more cheerful. You can fight negative thought more effectively. If you are quitting drinking, then you are getting back your wit. Use it to something cerebral and you get an immediate return. Read a book, play chess.
For myself, quitting drinking brings enormous benefits. My wit is all I have. I do not have a great physique, I have no social skill, I do not enjoy the company of others that much, I do not watch TV or sports. I live my life through my brain. I have a house full of books and a computer full of movies. I can enjoy them much better if I keep my wit and use my brain, instead of losing it every free evening I get. Then why it is still so hard to give up! Why indeed :)

Stay Healthy

Folks stay healthy. You cannot enjoy life if you are not healthy. No matter what you have, a private island, Sunny Leone and Katrina Kaif (Hrithik Roshan and Irfan Khan for ladies) as company, a few million dollars in the bank, a yacht of your own, no matter what. Even a small boil is enough to kill your happiness, forget big disease like diabetes or heart problem.
So what should be your priority in life? The following.

1. Have a good night’s sleep. I try to get 10 hours. But everyone should at least get eight.
2. Eat a proper breakfast. Not two toasts and a glass of milk. Proper meal, rice or roti or muri.
3. Do not smoke, chew gutka, pan masala.
4. Avoid drinking. At least minimize to no more than twice a month.
5. Be active for at least half an hour every day. Walk, cycle, play with your daughter, anything. Try to break a sweat.
6. Try not to eat a heavy meal at night, especially after 8 PM.
7. Avoid sugar, packaged food and drink. Most packaged food contains only maida, oil and sugar, sometimes harmful chemicals and no nutrients whatsoever.
8. Remember purpose of eating is to get stuffs that sustains our body, namely vitamin, protein and minerals. Calorie comes with them automatically. The amount of work we do, we need very little calorie. You don’t need to eat extra calories.

We are a pretty healthy family. We rarely fall sick and when we do, they are pretty minor. My guess is that we are plain lucky so far. But there is a little possibility that it is because we follow pretty much all of the above. What we do wrong:

1. We do not drink milk at all.
2. We hardly eat any fruits or vegetables.

I am trying to correct them slowly.