Break The Cycle

Frank B. Gilberth said, ~We're worn into grooves by time-by our habits. In the end, these grooves are going to show whether we've been second rate or champions, each in his way in dispatching the affairs of every day. By choosing our habits, we determines the groove into which time will wear us; and these are grooves that enrich our lives and make for ease of mind, peace, happiness, and achievement.~ If you think about it, we're all creatures of habit that tend to predict our actions in the way we do things. Whether or not one acknowledges or refuses to acknowledge it, our habits somewhat define who we are. It's these particular habits that people consider annoying, humorous, strange, and/or interesting.

The one habit that people tend to share is biting his or her fingernails which is annoying to most people. We all do it either when we are stressed out, worried, or in a thinking mood that will oftentimes leave one's fingernails almost chewed completely off. Nobody is really immune to it and to tell you the truth I do because, in a way, it helps me think up new topics to write about which never come easy. I'm the type of person who thinks way too much and you can imagine how my fingernails look. Oftentimes biting one's fingernails is considered a lazy alternative than finding nail clippers and cutting them neatly. Unfortunately, one will pay for it in the end as you unintentionally expose the skin under the nail which is not a pretty sight indeed.

Some habits can be a combination of interesting, strange and humorous. Yet, it's not so much a habit but rather a ritual one goes through like a person knocking on wood for luck. Personally speaking, I have a ritual that I go through when I adjust my hat and the way I do it would be best described as how a baseball manager gives signs to his players from the dugout. I tend to get strange and humorous looks from "my kids" when they proceed to ask me what in the world I'm doing. In any case, it's these particular rituals that a person does over and over again that can slightly border on obsessive compulsiveness. One such example is washing one's hands. When it comes to working with kids, you have to wash your hands on a regular basis because they can spread germs quickly.

Let me ask you this question, are you a person or know a person who is a sleepwalker? It is a very interesting, humorous, and yet dangerous habit as one does or says things that one will not remember in the morning, unless blackmail is involved but that's a whole other subject that I won't get into. Anyways...in some aspects, it's somewhat like a person drinking way too much, passes out, wakes up with a hangover and absolutely doesn't know what happened to him or her the previous night. Let me tell you something, it can be a strange experience waking up in a place that is not your own room like the garage or the back seat of your car for instance, which has happened to me a number of times.

Frank A. Clark once said, ~A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them.~ During my tenure in Youth Center or the Insane Asylum as I like to call it; I used to have a habit of giving three basic responses whenever I get called into the office. Response #1: Whatever it is, I didn't do it; Response #2: Whatever happened, I was nowhere near it because I have an alibi; and Response #3: Am I fired?, which doesn't get used that often. In any case, we all have habits that one needs to take care of; for it's an endless cycle that a person will continue to keep into the latter years of one's life. For it's a new year, one must take up the initiative and simply try to break the cycle.