John Boyle O'Reilly Quotes

A bad habit never disappears miraculously, it's an undo-it-yourself project.

There is no pleasure in life equal to that of the conquest of a vicious habit.

Once you break a habit into its components, you can fiddle with the gears.

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.

If I quit all the things I loved cold turkey, I knew it would only be so long before I went back to my old ways.

Twenty-eight days is what is takes to break a habit and to implement a new set of habits.

Everybody has some kind of addiction. It's about how you get around that addiction. First, you have to break the habit like anything. You have to define the hurdle or the objective.

Procrastinating is a habit that I have to overcome.

You can't break a bad habit by throwing it out the window. You've got to walk it slowly down the stairs.

The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.

The major thing that holds you back when you're trying to change a bad habit like eating, smoking, or drinking too much is your belief you are out of control.

People try to change too much at once and it becomes overwhelming, and they end up falling off the program. So gradually changing bad habits makes much more of a difference than trying to change them all at once.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

The best way to break a bad habit is to drop it.

In 'Before and After,' I identify the sixteen strategies that we can use to make or break our habits. Some are quite familiar, such as 'Monitoring,' 'Scheduling,' and 'Convenience.' Some took me a lot of effort to identify, such as 'Thinking,' 'Identity,' and 'Clarity.'

Many men and women in the world demonstrate great willpower and self-discipline in overcoming bad habits and the weaknesses of the flesh.

The specific steps for changing a specific habit differ from person to person and habit to habit, but the steps - the formula - is essentially the same, and once you learn it, you can do amazing things.

I didn't want to be a slave to any passion anymore. I gave up card playing altogether, even bridge and gambling - more or less. It took me a few years to get out of it.

We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, we're free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower.

I used to love going out and celebrating with the lads. But we can do that in the hotel and I don't miss it. I don't feel that urge any more. Once you make the transition to not doing it then you don't miss it.

If you're going to stop masturbating, you can't taper off. You've got to quit, cold jerky!

Once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work.