Now, she moved from knowledge to wisdom. She moved from knowing in her head that smoking was bad for her to knowing it in her bones

and the spell of smoking was broken

She started to become disenchanted with her behavior

Now, the prefrontal cortex, that youngest part of our brain from an evolutionary perspective, it understands on an intellectual level that we shouldn't smoke

And it tries its hardest to help us change our behavior,

to help us stop smoking, to help us stop eating that second, that third, that fourth cookie

We call this cognitive control. We're using cognition to control our behavior

Unfortunately, this is also the first part of our brain that goes offline when we get stressed out, which isn't that helpful

Now, we can all relate to this in our own experience

We're much more likely to do things like yell at our spouse or kids when we're stressed out or tired, even though we know it's not going to be helpful

We just can't help ourselves