For many people, cigarette smoking began at an early age. Usually this habit starts during a person’s teen years although we have seen it start even earlier. Normally, peer pressure or the influence or the example of parents was somehow involved in the decision to smoke the first cigarette. Also, depending on a person’s age, they may have been influenced by advertising, which was legal at one time in America. Once this “social reason” for smoking initiated the act, there are two basic reasons why the act of smoking became and addiction. First is the addictive nature of nicotine. Nicotine...

Let’s face it. Each and everyday we are faced with challenges to which we must adapt. They may involve threats to our survival, obstacles standing in the way of our desire to become happier, or even represent an urge to take one’s musicianship or golf game to the next level. For most of us, our ability to make minor adjustments to our way of thinking does not present much of a difficulty. For others, no matter how hard we try, we just don’t seem to make much progress. In fact, often our efforts seem to make matters worse. A common question that I often hear is whether self-help efforts...

Several factors are involved with the experience of loneliness. One, of course, is a lack of connection. The brain has sectors that cause a desire for connection with other human beings. When that connection is not occurring, a certain level of uneasiness occurs. This is why prisons use solitary confinement as a form of punishment. Second, as a person feels safer in a group situation, when that connection does not occur in his natural for the person's fight-flight reaction to occur. This is sometimes called a sympathetic autonomic nervous system reaction. When chronic it may cause health...