“First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits, or they’ll conquer you.”
–Anonymous
I have been biting my nails as long as I can remember. I can’t recall ever having full, unbitten nails, in my entire life, not even as a kid.
If you think I simply don’t care about that, you would be wrong. I am often horrified at the condition of my fingernails. They are usually bitten to the quick, and beyond. I have even drawn blood doing so. Truth be told, that result is not that uncommon. Yes, this nasty habit has even given me pain.
So for nearly as long, I have fought against this instinct to bite my nails. I have tried to simply will myself to stop. I have encouraged others to call me out on it. I have even painted on that horrible tasting fingernail polish which is supposed to dissuade you from putting your fingers in your mouth. All of this has failed.
Side note to the fingernail polish: One, it gets into EVERYTHING you eat. Two, you actually get so used to it, you don’t mind as much when you taste it, pretty much defeating the purpose.
I had a stretch about six or seven years ago where I succeeded in stopping biting my nails, using the ole willpower trick. I even had to clip my nails once. But I had a couple moments of weakness and before I knew it, I was back to square one.
What’s really funny (and not so much in a ha-ha way) is that people will judge you for biting your nails, as if you do it purposefully and willfully. But the fact is, I at least do not. I do it without thinking. I have had times when I have found my finger in my mouth, unbidden and unaware of when it started.
I am not trying to be disgusting, I assure you. It’s a habit. It is a habit which is so ingrained, my mind does it on auto.
So when I read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, it was a real eye opener. Duhigg and others have noted that as much as 90 to 95 percent of human behavior can be traced down to habit. For those of us who are poor at math, that is arguably every little thing we do. Duhigg says that even some of the times when we think we’re making a decision, we’re simply falling into the practice of old habit.
Considering this, you realize that something so pervasive as habit can quite reasonably transform your life, if you can harness its power. If almost everything you do is habit, and you learn to practice good habits, it stands to reason that your overall quality of life will significantly improve.
Duhigg constructs the path of the habit. You have a trigger, some stimulus that inspires a response. That response is the habit. And the feeling you get from doing the habit is the dopamine rush you get from relieving yourself of whatever triggered the habit in the first place. Duhigg even has an excellent system for breaking down a habit, as laid out in the appendix of his book. I am not going to get into that here, as it is a detailed and methodical approach that is well beyond the scope of this blog post.
What I will do, though, is talk about getting WEIRD. In a non-scientific way, I have also had some idea of when I bite my nails. Last week, after some consideration, I determined that I primarily bite my nails on five specific occasions. Watching television or movies. Eating. Internet, as in when I am on my phone. Reading. And, finally, Driving.
W.I.E.R.D.
I came up with this as a reminder for when I am most susceptible. I have been using it for the past seven days. And thus far, I have managed to stop myself from going full bore on my nails. It hasn’t stopped the urges, but I didn’t expect it to. That will only come with time, as I make the habit of NOT biting my nails a real part of my life.
Now, when I sense the urge or involuntarily raise my hand to my mouth, I simply tell myself, “Weird.” Instantly, my motivation to stop this habit re-appears, and my hands return to whatever they were previously engaged in.
I had originally devised this as a simple mnemonic tool, an easy reference to my triggers. But it has begun to transform itself into a replacement habit. The mere mention of the word “weird” drives away the compulsion to engage in the habit.
Will this work in the long haul? Too soon to tell. I think if Duhigg were to read this, he would tell me that it still little more than a willpower trick in which I am engaging, and that it isn’t a true replacement habit. Duhigg is very clear that one must replace one habit with another, better one if one cannot treat the impulse itself.
But for the first time in over forty years, I feel like I am on to something. Something weird. And hopefully the end of something else, for good.