How I love Wednesdays, because that’s the day when the “Happier” podcast with Gretchen Rubin and her sister Elizabeth Craft drops. (Podcasts “drop”–did you know that?) Anyway, every week the two sisters spend a little over half an hour talking about all kinds of things that may sound superficial but really aren’t.
(You may remember that I got into the podcast universe by listening to Season 1 of “Serial”–that one dropped on Thursday
mornings. I never had to subscribe to that one, or to this one, because I look/looked forward to them both so much.)
Anyway, Gretchen gave herself a demerit this week over her habit of hair-twisting. It’s so funny to me—here’s this wildly successful writer and speaker, someone whose fans number in the millions, who’s had three New York Times bestsellers and is set to have a fourth—and she has this habit of twisting her hair until it breaks off. It’s a very specific habit, and you can listen to her description of it at about minute 34:30. This is by no means the first time she’s talked about her habit, but her mention of it really resonated with me this time, I think because she addresses how to address it. Not necessarily how to cure it. She says here, and has said in the past, that she will probably always have that habit. It’s so ingrained that it would be a waste of time to work on getting rid of it. (In her book on habits she didn’t talk about nervous habits such as hers or nail-biting or finger-drumming, but Charles Duhigg’s book does have a story about a compulsive nail-biter and how she overcame that urge.) However, she says, she’s noticed that her hair-twisting has reached epic proportions of late. She doesn’t think it’s because of any particular stress in her life, but Liz points out that maybe, just maybe, having a major book launch in the same month that her eldest daughter is going off to college might be a little stressful. (Gretchen’s latest book, The Four Tendencies, comes out in September.)
So what to do? Well, an at-least-partial solution is to get a haircut. If her hair gets too long she’s more tempted to twist it. The principle is, “Change things, not people.” For me, with my somewhat-compulsive finger-picking, the things I can change are 1) keep my nails very short, which I like anyway because I type and cook so much and don’t like the feeling of my nails hitting the keys or getting in the way of, say, cleaning out a chicken cavity, and 2) put on hand lotion regularly. I could also 3) use nail polish. My husband hates my finger-picking and chewing; he says, “The elegant woman does not chew on her fingers!” My son used to say to me, “Don’t pick your fingers, Mommy!” Hey, I’m irritating enough as it is just with my personality; any improvement will be a help!
So that’s the deep subject for today. Do you have an irritating nervous habit that you could curb by changing an outside condition? If so, what have you got to lose by trying?