You can train your brain to abandon negative habits by teaching your brain to associate them with neutral or even bad circumstances (the latter as a punishment). For example, instead of getting yourself worked up over the fact that you smoke one cigarette a day, remove all thought from the act of smoking that one cigarette. Don’t attach any negative or positive actions, thoughts, or emotions to it. Neutralize any associations. Once you’ve taken the pleasure away from smoking, it will be less appealing. If that tactic doesn’t work for you, try following up the act of smoking that cigarette with something unpleasant, such as scrubbing your toilet, paying bills, or listening to heavy metal music at a ridiculously high volume. What- ever it is, it should be something that you genuinely dislike, and you should force yourself to do it every time you have that cigarette (or, if you can’t bring yourself to do that, enlist someone else to help with the punishment, such as a close friend). Soon enough, the cigarette will probably not seem worth the hassle, and you will abandon the habit.