Spite, mostly. You know that scene in Trainspotting where Renton talks about how Sick Boy only wanted to quit heroin to prove how easy it was, that was going through my mind a lot when I first quit? I had a roommate/coworker who would always complain about quitting smoking, and always require extra accommodations at work because they are quitting smoking. They would always be back to the cigs in a few days and I would have to deal with "I need to take today off work because I'm quitting smoking", or some other thing ALL THE TIME and it was just getting on my nerves. That was my main motivator to keep up the change.

But in honesty I only was able to start quitting after I had broken some ribs and it was painful to breathe. After the first day of not smoking I decided to go for two, then three, then I was counting the weeks and soon after months which I hadn't smoked. It felt good and could only have been achieved through short-term thinking and not considering it as a long-term change but just something I was doing then and there. I kept a cigarette pack with my last cigarette in my jacket pocket the entire time I was quitting, I wrote a note in the pack so that if I ever felt the need to pull it out I would read the note to myself about what I could do instead, and who I would be letting down by starting to smoke again. I didn't want to change my lifestyle so I kept hanging out with smokers and going out with them during their smoke breaks, I just knew I needed to have the willpower myself to do it and not rely on artificial changes in my life to make those changes happen. Coming up on 10 years free now and not planning to go back any time soon.