It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not. -James Gordon, M.D.

From "How to Be Happy, Dammit: A Cynic’s Guide to Spiritual Happiness" by Karen Salmansohn:

If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, then you’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting.

You must courageously break the habit of your habits, or every year you will be doomed to live out: “Same #$%&! Different outfit.” The style of your clothes may change, but the style of your circumstances won’t.

The first trick an elephant trainer teaches an elephant is not to escape. When the elephant is still but a baby, the trainer chains the infant’s leg to a huge log, so when/if the elephant tries to escape, the log proves stronger and he gives up. Eventually the elephant becomes so used to its captivity, that even when it has grown huge and strong, all the trainer has to do is merely tie the chain around the elephant’s leg to anything—even a tiny little twig—and the elephant won’t even try to escape. It has become a prisoner of its past.

The elephant and its twig remind you of your childhood. Though you believe childhood habits can’t be broken, that was then. This is now. Time has passed. You can let go. Move on…Can’t you?

Yes, you can…step back from that twig! The trick is: you must first see it’s only a twig!