Desire

It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow.
Anonymous

"The devil made me do it". How often have we said that to ourselves after doing something we know we shouldn't, yet again. New good habits are very difficult to form, and old bad habits are just as difficult to break. The very nature of a habit, as something you don't even have to think about doing, renders it difficult to change. And, as they say, it is so much easier to acquire a bad habit than to acquire a healthy one.

The most effective way to suppress a bad habit is to go cold turkey. Give yourself a long list of reasons why this habit simply can't be continued. Study all the research on what the consequences will be for you if you continue it. Convince yourself that if you don't quit now, it will be very painful for you in the future. And that if you do quit now, your future will be so much better; so much more fun. Then just quit completely right now. If you quit gradually, it will be too easy to slip back into your old routine.

It is easier to never to get started on something that you know you will regret later than to live with the results. It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow. As they say, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Suppress the first desire. Don't give it a chance. If you don't get started smoking, you won't have to worry about having to buy cigarettes all the time, wanting to smoke in non-smoking areas or around people who clearly don't approve, getting lung cancer etc. It is easier to suppress the first desire than to have to deal with all the consequences of your continuing unhealthy desires, which will get increasingly hard to stop, the longer they continue.