One thing I am very proud of myself for is that I quit smoking after 12 years of the habit. The last years of that period was heavy smoking: getting to more than one pack a day. My smoking would increase dramatically when I was meeting friends or travelling or focussed on working… After the first few years, when I kind of felt I was addicted, I started reading about quitting, and I became aware of the health hazards. I tried a few times to quit, but actually always resorted back to smoking. I could give up anything in life but not smoking. I was very heavily addicted. At the time, the world was becoming more environment friendly, it was no longer cool to smoke. But I could not quit. I read Allen Carr books many times, but even though that helped me a bit, I would be back to my friend called Marlboro… It was really also spoiling my professional life. I tried to take all kinds of medicine, nicotine patches… even they did not help. So in short, knowledge, social pressure, health awareness, professional dullness, medicine, the cost of smoking… nothing could stop me… I had almost thought I could never give up smoking and I would end up smoking all my life.

My parents were arranging a marriage for me and I was not very keen… but then I met my wife and after we got engaged we started talking… and it was important for her and me that we have a child…. That was the moment… the thought of me smoking and the possibility of getting a deformed baby because of that, that image felt completely off to me. Imagining that kind of baby in the arms of my wife who was marrying me with all trust that I would be taking care of her…. That was the moment… I could not do harm to a baby or to a person who loves me so much… how could I do something like that to them… I quit the same day, and never looked back again.

So many times, large decisions are not possible when we look at them from our own angle, but by having an angle towards others… so many large decisions in life can be taken from that insight. Later I started getting into human psychology a lot and learnt that habits are breakable when the neuron chains of those habits in our body are loosened – and that happens when you truly start loving something else and the body starts loosening the neuron chains to form a new neuron chain around that new passion/interest of yours… That is what happened to me. Aren’t feelings of love and care so strong, don’t they help us take very important and large decisions? Life is wonderful.