Ceci n'est pas une pipe

I am a tireless skeptic, who knows me knows that. My first approach before any change is always the same: even before understanding what it is without even realizing it express an endless succession of possible traps and hidden assumptions dietrologiche. I do not think in any way with the good intentions of my neighbor, what kind of flaunting left and right to have an absolute truth in my pocket - I think immediately that it wants to sell me the truth and that its price will certainly be unfair. For this reason I lost - in addition to confidence - any kind of faith: why I will not tolerate having to believe in something or someone that does not convince me with your good example - it never happens - or substantiation.

If you do not believe in who utters certainties on the world in exchange for money and power, imagine what I thought when I talked to Allen Carr and his book "It's easy to quit smoking if you know how to do it." When a customer told me about it I showed his usual enthusiasm, you must show each customer as such, but the information was immediately tagged as toxic and is passed only through the name of the author of the book is very easy to remember, even for someone like me who for years has too many to mention other things in mind. "Carr, as auto in English but with two r's" - I told him. The information, put it this way, it was junk stored in the directory of my good old brain.

Back home I made the mistake - so to speak - to speak with my partner, who asked me for years without success that I quit smoking. Within a couple of weeks, just in time to stop at the first Autogrill and trovarmelo front of the usual Trivialliteratur and gossip magazines, the book was on my nightstand.

Well, what I want to tell you about this book is that ... it really works! Believe it or not, it works! As is written in the more disordered way, as has been translated even worse, as it does not contain any form of brutality in the exposition of the consequences of nicotine addiction, this book makes you aware of the mechanisms that will encourage people to light a cigarette . And most of their absurdity. I have not finished reading the book and I went from No cigarettes per day to a maximum of two. And those two cigarettes are social, so to speak, or smoke in the company of a friend or a customer, not because I will experience a real need. But even those will stop, I'm sure, and when that happens, I'll know.

I do not know how he does it. I repeat: the book is poorly written, it is messy and full of repetition and yet devoid of science that I would have expected. given the nature of the topic. And yet ... it works! Certainly not through any form of subliminal suggestion, I believe is limited in some way to activate a mechanism that makes conscious awareness that you are going to light a cigarette every time this happens, which allows our natural forms of self-defense come into play to stop us from doing so. One of the more subtle mechanisms of the smoking habit - the habit because it is - is precisely to perform the act of lighting a cigarette in a fully automatic and unconscious - would be more correct to say, unconscious. Having in mind the reflections of an ex-smoker about dynamics that may indicate that smoking makes you aware that you're about to do. So, without trauma, without any sense of deprivation, you just think about it and simply do not, you are not!

Let me add a note: following the publication of his books and the huge success - yes, I have documented - that Allen Carr has also become a business empire. This post is not intended as an invitation to have your vehicle EasyWay centers (there are even in Italy) and ask for assistance to pay for smoking cessation. In my opinion not necessary: ​​it is more than enough to read the book carefully.

As a child, the face of Aiazzone on local TV said: "Seeing is believing." But who was he? Hector Andenna? I do not remember ...