Imagine that you have a little child – a son or daughter, but that you are only 15 years old. How are you going to feel about this child? There is a good possibility that you will feel that this child is a burden, limiting your freedom. You will likely feel that the child is too demanding, needing too much from you. You may want to go out and have fun and not be tied down to this child.

Is this how you feel about your own inner child – your own feelings and needs? Does it feel burdensome to take loving care of yourself? Do you feel like your own feelings and needs are just too much to have to take care of? Do you feel like taking care of yourself is just hard? Do you believe it is selfish to take loving care of yourself? Do you wish someone else would come along and meet your emotional needs to feel loved, valued, and worthy?

If this is how you feel, it is because you have not yet done the inner work of developing a loving adult part of you – a part of you that is connected with a spiritual source of love, wisdom, strength, guidance and comfort. It is your adolescent self who is charge, and this part of you not only does not want the job of taking care of you, it is not adequate to handle the job.

This is what creates love addiction.

You have a little child inside you – your feeling self – who need lots of love, attention, comfort, valuing, validating, connection and compassion. When you have no desire to give this to yourself because you feel it is too hard, you feel too inadequate, you think it is selfish, or you believe that it is someone else’s job to meet these needs, then you are abandoning yourself. If you believe that your best feelings come from someone else loving you instead of you loving you, then you are abandoning yourself. And when you abandon yourself, that little child in you is left to get the love he or she needs elsewhere.

When you abandon yourself because you have not learned how to take loving care of yourself or because you don’t want the responsibility of your own feelings and needs, that is when you become needy of others love and attention. You learn many ways of trying to get the love, attention and compassion you need.

Think for a moment about what you do to get love, connection, attention, approval or compassion from others.

Do you try to be perfect – looking right, saying the right thing, being a high achiever? Do you try to be cute or funny? Do you try to show others how smart you are? Do you strive to have the best – the best house, the best car, the best wife or husband, the best children, the best clothing? Or, do you act helpless, incompetent, in need of rescuing? Do you pull on others with your complaining, your incessant talking, your whining, sulking, silence, or your bragging? Are you overly nice, a people-pleaser? Do you attempt to get the attention you want through intimidation – with anger, threats, blame, or violence?

When you have abandoned yourself and are love-addicted, you will have developed many ways of trying to have control over getting the love you need. That little child in you is desperate to be loved. The emptiness of the self-abandonment and the resulting longing for love leads you to behave in the very ways that end up pushing others away. It is a losing battle. IT WILL NEVER WORK. You will never get the love you need by trying to get others to give to you what only you can give to yourself.

If you are interested in learning how to give yourself the love you have always wanted and break your love-addiction, you can start by downloading our free Inner Bonding course. This 6-step course will begin to give you the tools you need to move out of love-addiction and into love.

You have tried all the quit smoking techniques. You failed to achieve the objective. A sense of helplessness and frustration has enveloped you, with in. But, now someone tells you about the quit smoking techniques you haven’t tried before. You are once again interested in the subject of quitting smoking.

You have heard enough of cock and bull stories. Now, you wish to experience the reality. Reach the state, to live in a smoke free atmosphere for ever. How can you achieve it?

I wish to tell you the truth at this point of time. Your focused mind and your solid determination can do it for you. You have to build yourself, and if you break in between, you alone are responsible. Let this be perfectly understood!

With this solid determination, you need to proceed further. You have to keep your association with other sundry methods or techniques to quit smoking as well. Some of them may be the ones you haven’t tried, like anti-depressant medications. Join some association which is actively engaged in the de-addiction programs related to tobacco. Many non-governmental organizations regularly conduct programs through videos, and street plays. Your truthful desire to give up smoking should take you to such spots on a regular basis. That means, you are expected to spend your time more in the association of non-smokers than the smokers. Gradually, the smoking knot gets loosened.

You know the wise saying, “Remove the thorn with a thorn.” You get quit smoking cigarettes now. Depression is one of the main causes of smoking. Anti depression medications help to reduce your nicotine cravings. These things only give you the helping hand. In the end, your determination matters. It is only your will and determination that seeks liberation from the smoking habit once for all.

Apart from the natural stop smoking products and other over the counter medications, something more dynamic and the result-oriented treatment has become popular. Laser treatments and acupuncture methods have met with the approval and a large number of smokers have benefited out of them.

The purpose is to subdue the overriding hop of nicotine on you. You get nicotine gum, a smoking cessation shot or the patch.

In the process of quitting smoking, all these are subsidiary companies. Your flagship company is your unflinching decision!

Do you find yourself in a hurry much of the time? When we are in a hurry, we tend to lose sight of the people and things around us. I had an experience when traveling through an airport in Atlanta, Georgia that reminded me of how easy it is to walk over someone rather than help them.

While riding up an escalator to get to the gate where my flight was scheduled to leave from, I noticed a lady well up in front of me. It was apparent, even from a distance, that she was very stressed. She had three small children with her. One of them was a baby she was carrying. She was struggling to keep the other two near her as they enjoyed the experience of being in an Airport and riding up an escalator. Did I mention she was also carrying multiple bags? She had two of three bags on the escalator step in front of her. I could see beads of sweat on her forehead as she tried to keep everything together.

What surprised me happened when they reached the top of the escalator. She made her best attempt at pushing the bags that were in front of her with her feet as fast as she could get them out of the way. At the same time, she was making sure that the two children she wasn’t holding got off the escalator without tripping or falling. Although watching her orchestrate her family’s movements was interesting, that was not the part that surprised me. What surprised me the most was all of the people that were behind her on the escalator who stepped over her children, bumped into her and her children, and gave nasty looks and comments as they walked past her family. No one at that moment appeared to have any compassion regarding her situation.

When I got to the top of the escalator myself, I asked if I could help carry anything to her gate. What I found out was that she didn’t know exactly which gate she needed to go to. She offered me a couple bags to carry and we walked to a customer service desk. We found out where she needed to go and once there she was able to sit down with her family. Her smile, thanks, and relaxed look on her face was more than worth the time I took out of my schedule. How much extra time did it take me? No more than five minutes! I am confident that many of those people that walked over her had more than five minutes they could have given. Many of them probably hurried to their gate at the airport and then sat there for twenty or thirty minutes before they even had to start boarding.

What would you have done in the same situation? Although I stopped and helped her in that particular situation, I’m sure I have walked by many others in similar situations. Why would we do this? Sometimes it’s because we think we’re in too much of a hurry to help. Sometimes we’re just not looking for opportunities where we can help others.

I have to challenge myself on a regular basis to look for opportunities every day to help others. I would challenge you to do the same. When you get up in the morning, think about a way you plan to help someone before the day ends. Also, remind yourself to look out for opportunities throughout the day and respond to them. There is someone that will be better off if you take the time to help him or her today.