Look at that natural French white tip! Grow, baby, grow!
Ever since I can remember I’ve bitten my nails. I’ve tried a gazillion times to stop and I’ve tried a gazillion ways (not a fan of the icky stuff that you put on your fingertips to discourage biting…I end up sucking it off so I can nibble my nails without distraction and it makes finger foods taste awful. Why should potato chips pay the price for my bad habit?). Sometimes, I would stop for awhile and then fall off the wagon and then, I guess, figure, what’s the point? and start chowing down again. The more I think about it, the less sense that makes…
My grandma, “Cookie,” recently passed away. She was the biggest fan of my quitting and “suggested” it repeatedly and often (by smacking my hands if they went anywhere near my mouth). Cookie is one of the most sophisticated women I’ve ever known; always dressed in her best, including beautiful accessories, you can only imagine she had beautiful fingernails. She even used to say my teeth were “jewels not tools” to work on my nails (when I argued that I was “cleaning” my nails if they were in my mouth). When she passed away, my Grandpa, “Bumpa,” laid all her jewelry out for me and my cousins to go through and I took most of her rings. I had already lightened up on the chewing habit as soon as I found out she had passed on, but now with her beautiful bling gracing my fingers, it seems preposterous that I would have dilapidated digits to display along with.
Of course there has been study after study on why it is we have bad habits (knowingly continuing to systematically harm ourselves even) and how to “break” them. Most of those studies are based on the premise that we are matter-bodies with matter-brains affected by matter-chemicals and habits have to do with ruts in our brains. But I don’t subscribe to any of that. I don’t happen to believe that thoughts can be generated by matter. I have experienced learning something new and so changing my mind and I don’t see why a habit should be any different. I still remember the moment when I decided to stop sucking my thumb (I was actually at Cookie and Bumpa’s house!). I just decided and never did it again.
So, here’s to my new bling: my own homegrown fingernails. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going! What bad habit will you decide to do without today?
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Whee to the whole thread I read throughout this post: your yearning…somethin’ in you nudgin a shift…sans guilt, shaming, doubt, or sabotaging…
Just a nod. Yep. So done with that am I…and off you go wings and all taking flight to a lighter expression of you..one w/o that behavior.
Letting go routine behaviors we’re so done with is freeing yesireebobbajoe
I’ve actually stopped calling them ‘bad’ habits so much as “so done with”…
No shame needed…no scolding…no guilt…no top down dictatorial by gummit how dare you anything
Whee to flutterin more lightly….
(ps. lately I pitched the mindless knoshin on gum when i write…and all the smack crackin poppin that went with it)
see you soarin with wings…(ps I put glitter all over mine…after I tye dyed them)
hugs.