There are some who thought smoking relieves their stress and it helps them to properly digest their food intake. But none of these are true. There are no health benefits in smoking. In contrary, it increases the risk of having heart and lungs disease, not to mention throat cancer, impotency, osteoporosis, glaucoma and other deadly diseases. Do you have the same type of reasoning?

Quitting is easier said than done. You may find it difficult to totally eliminate this habit for good. Usually the first step is the hardest but in this case the easiest part is the day you decide not to smoke. You may opt to decrease the number of your cigarette consumption day by day or you will abstain from it immediately. Regardless of your chosen method, you will not succeed unless you’ll have strong determination to fight the urge to light a cigarette.

To help you totally eliminate the addictive habit of smoking, here are the six things you need to do to boost your determination.

1.Instead of thinking cigarette, think of money, money and money! How much is the cost of the cigarette the first time you smoke? Can you estimate how much money you already spend since then? Hundreds? Thousands? If you don’t stop now, how much more are you willing to waste? Do you think your savings are enough to sustain the expenses of your future medical condition cause of your unstoppable smoking?

2.Enjoy your life not your cigarette. How long would it take for you to finish one cigarette? If you multiply it to the number of stick you consume in a day, how many minutes or hours do you spend in the company of a dangerous friend? Sum up all the time you smoke ever since you started, how many days, months or years are taken away from you? Do you wish you have spent those times with your love ones instead? And did you know that for every stick you consume, it shortens your life by fifteen minutes?

3.Improve your health not your food digestion. Now that you know it is only a myth that smoking improves food digestion, can you finally say goodbye to your useless buddy? When was the last time you visit your doctor and ask for a health assessment? Do you think you are healthier now after consuming more than a dozen of pack of cigarettes? Can you handle the consequences of the things you’ve done to your body?

4.Think of relieving not only your stress but also of those who surrounds you. What do you think others felt whenever they saw you smoke? Have you notice how tense and irritated they are every time they smell the smoke that comes out from your cigarette? Can you feel the concern of your love ones and how worry they are for your condition?

5.The bravest thing you could do is to be a quitter. Are you scared to be called a quitter? Do you think it will make you a lesser person if you stop smoking even in the company of those who smokes? Can you stand form with your decision and don’t let others tempt you to return to your old habit? Can you show to the world how brave you are by saying ‘NO’ for good?

6.Show the world you know how to care. Do you know that second hand smoke is more dangerous? Do you want your love ones to suffer the consequences of your wrong choice of habit? Aren’t you affected by the worsening problem of air pollution? Can you think of the harmful effects of your smoking to others and to the environment?

Choices we made in our life can make or break us. By reading this article, you already made a choice. You really wanted to have a smoke-free life. Now that you already made the first few steps of getting away, continue to step forward and never look back. Every time you crave for nicotine, continue to ponder on the questions listed above. Have the determination to control to your life for good and don’t let yourself be enslaved

Just like in real life, we all dream of something but not all of us achieve our goals. At first, we are so eager to run that we be even left others behind. However, as the race goes farther, we started to feel the pain and we slowly lose our desire to finish what we’ve started. What hinders us to move forward is our attitude. If we let our fears and frustrations get in our way, we surely face failure.

It is a fact that completing a 26 mile run is not an easy task. Before the actual marathon, we buy the right gears, eat healthy foods regularly and commit on a rigid training. We can also apply these three steps in achieving our dreams.

Buy Time.

Time is very essential in determining the effort we need to exert. We also set a deadline to meet our goals. Buying time means organizing our schedule and making adjustments to ensure we have time to accomplish what we have to do. We also need to learn how to prioritize things. There are some activities we need to set aside to concentrate on the things that are more important to us. Remember the clock is ticking and every second counts.

Nourish Our Brain.

By eating healthy foods, the runner conditions his body to endure strains and fight fatigue. Similarly, we also eat the right knowledge to prepare ourselves to our journey to success. We need to read a lot, listen to the people who succeed and learn from the mistake of others who failed. Learning is a continuous process and we don’t settle on our own understanding of things. Our mind had the biggest memory capacity to store data. We just need to maximize it. The benefits or reading, the pointers from people who succeed and the experiences of people who failed are very vital in our own success. It motivates us to run in the path of those who succeed and encourage us to do better than those who failed. Our brains are the captain of our souls. It will navigate us to the finish line.

Commitment is the Key.

The runner trains himself first before joining the marathon to learn the right way of running. In our everyday lives, we also have our trainings. We strive to achieve smaller goals like meeting deadlines or losing a couple of pounds. With these achievements, we learned to commit.

No matter how fast you run, without endurance you can never cross the finish line. Same thing, all your hard work will be wasted if you don’t commit yourself in achieving your goals. There are no short cuts in marathon. We need to run, run and run. We may stumble along the way, commit mistakes and experience hardships, but just like a true athlete, we rise every time we fall, became more cautious on our steps and continue to look ahead. Perseverance and determination are the ingredients of commitment.

The good thing in marathon, all of us can achieve our goals. Everybody is encouraged to cross the finish line but the only person we can depend on is ourselves. But we don’t have to worry anymore because with these three easy steps, we are now ready in our journey to success and we will surely fulfill our dreams.

Why take a piece of the pie in life when you can have it all? Go for your dreams instead of the little bits and pieces of leftovers. Many people live through life not knowing that they can achieve more than they realize. So how can you have more in life? You do this by being aware of the following two key principles.

First, you, not others, need to be the visionary for your life. Don’t let your momma tell you that you have to be a doctor when you know you want to be a rock star. You will have to be the one that will decide how your life will be because you are going to be the one that will make it a reality.

Second, take control of your life and go out there and do it. Remember the saying “actions speak louder than words?” Well, talk is cheap and you will go nowhere if you don’t go out there and try. Action is the key in making your ideas and dreams come true. Most people in the world just sit back and wait for something to happen. You probably know someone like that. Perhaps it is your neighbor waiting for the Man upstairs to drop a girlfriend off at his door. That’s never going to happen.

People that have plenty in their lives are those who take control themselves. They all know that it is up to them because there is no one out there that is going to take them by the hand and lead them.

The majority of the population on this planet believe that we live in a have-not world.  They live as victims that are controlled by outside forces. Most people wait for some kind of outside force to motivate them, do it for them, give them more money or heal their cholesterol problems.

They give power to other people, events, conditions or places instead of taking full responsibility. Don’t let the world pass you by. Become an active participant in your life instead of letting your life run you because everyone here has what it takes to realize their dreams.

1. First things first, write your plans out on paper. Spell out your goals and ways to reach them. This write it out technique works for more than just a business plan. The great thing about this is that you decide how you want to start and what goal(s) needs to be accomplished first.

2. Make sure you get really specific about the details of what you plan to achieve.

3. Break the task down into small little milestones so that you can handle them easily.

4. Establish checkpoints on your progress as well as rewards that go along with each milestone that is achieved.

5. Set deadlines for each checkpoint and hold yourself to them.

6. Remind yourself of the great benefits you can expect from your completed tasks and goals.

7. Use negative motivation to your advantage. Just keep reminding yourself of the what would happen if you never act to reach your goals.

8. Be optimistic. This is one of the principles of the law of attraction in the popular book the Secret. Just keep holding your head up high and your chances for success will increase.

9. Use sticky notes to motivate yourself and to remind yourself of deadlines or goals.

10. Finally, the most important of all is to get started now. What are you waiting for? Another 30 years? The old saying that ‘Time is money!” is very true.

Please feel free to leave comments and feedback on any of my articles. In addition, tell me what other personal development topics you want to hear about. Thanks.