If I had to choose one book that changed my life - that changed my thinking and my actions - it would have to be Allen Carr’s “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.”

Giving up smoking

Thanks to his book, I gave up smoking nearly 20 years ago. What I loved about that book was that it took me away from the fear of giving up smokingDaniel Kahneman introduced that losses loom larger than gains. We fear losses more than we hope for wins - the sense I was about to lose something. More info: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Shifting to the gains

What Allen Carr did expertly was shift my mindset to the gains: the freedom from health issues, from the smell, from the dependency, from being ostracised by others in society and community.

It was such a powerful and yet such a relatively simple sideways movement, from obsessing over what I was losing to becoming engaged with what I was gaining.

Giving up smoking lost its fear factor - it became the logical way forward.

Allen Carr did not try and suppress the fear, but he made giving up desirable, logical and a straightforward sideways step.

Habits and identity

James Clear’s Atomic HabitsClear talks about “I’m trying to quit” beside “I’m not a smoker”. The second is a shift in identity, not willpower has a similar method of moving your mindset about habits and making things feel achievable and attainable. It is no surprise that James Clear also talks about Allen Carr’s book in glowing terms.

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