The unconscious mind sees everything and 'knows' more than your conscious mind. Most of what it sees and knows will be kept away from your conscious mind so that you can focus your attention on what you choose.

What ever you choose to focus your attention on is what the unconscious mind assumes is important to you. It can only see the positive aspect of a thing because it does not comprehend the negative.

Therefore if your attention is on the negative that is what your unconscious mind takes as your order. You have asked for the thing you think about and made it 'important' by thinking about it.

So you quite smoking and yet all you can think about is smoking. You say to yourself "I no longer want to smoke cigarettes." and that statement creates a visual picture of you smoking a cigarettes. Your subconscious mind sees only that picture. Therefore, you are drawn to a situation where you smoke a cigarette. You can't resist the manifestation of what you created in your mind.

OK. Thanks for the reading suggestions. I'll look it all up.