"Our arms haven't evolved to sip yet. We just pour the booze straight in," my friend Jay once said. We were 20 years old and we guzzled alcohol almost daily. That idea stuck with me. I was already beginning to question how much and how often I drank. All I had to do was just change the motion in my arm to physically drink less. Bend the elbow at a slightly different angle and change my life. Jay and I are both sober today...we never learned how to sip.

Quitting anything is the most counterintuitive thing in the world.

To quit, in theory, you don't actually have to do anything. Want to quit drinking? It requires less kinetic energy to go buy booze, open a bottle, and pour it in your mouth than it does to not do that... Just move your arm differently and you'll drink less!

The mental anguish of quitting is where the problem lies. Anyone with a bad habit or an addiction knows the act of doing the thing you don't want to do becomes automatic. The fight isn't in the body, it's in the mind.

To fight the mind, you have to move the body.

I've managed to quit drinking completely after years of daily whiskey consumption, stopped using any mind-altering substances (except coffee - everyone needs SOMETHING), gave up a pack-a-day smoking habit, given up all sorts of bad eating habits, and become a marathoner and a triathlete. None of this happened through thinking. It happened through doing.

To quit, you have to DO something differently.

I traded bars for twelve-step meetings.

I swapped cigarettes for cinnamon toothpicks.

I quit being lazy by running, swimming, or biking daily.

I tried to think my way into right action, but I learned you have to act your way into right thinking. So if you're trying to quit some bad habit, the next time that impulse to do the thing pops into your head, do anything but the thing. Rinse. Repeat.