This Post is a Real Nail Biter

I’m sorry in advance. The title of this post is a bad pun.

On second thought, I’m not sorry – puns are the best!

But like the title says, this one is all about nail biting; or rather the fact that I didn’t bite my nails for 11 years…until I did again.

So what happened?

To start, growing up I bit my nails all the time. And I mean, ALL the time. It was such a bad habit, and despite everyone in my family’s best efforts, I stuck with it for many years. 20 to be exact.

In junior high and high school I tried just about everything to stop; I tried painting my nails, using that really bad tasting nail polish, and so many other tips and tricks. At one point I even Googled getting hypnotized as a way to stop. But alas, I feared nothing would work.

That is, until I turned 20. This was the age when I decided I wanted to find an internship in my senior year of college. I figured that short, bitten nails wouldn’t look very good in an interview or in an office for that matter, so I decided to stop once and for all. And you know what? I stopped. Completely. For 11 years.

Honestly, it wasn’t even that hard. Once the time was right and I had the right motivation, it just clicked.

Side note: some folks think that I stopped because this was also the age that I started dating my future husband, Nick, but that’s just so not the case. I had never changed my physical appearance for a guy at that point and I certainly wasn’t going to start then (and haven’t started since, thank you very much!). 

But it was the internship. This was my first realization that for me personally, professional goals would be a major influence on whether or not I would achieve a goal.

Fast forward 11 years later, and the exact thing that motivated me to stop biting my nails motivated me to start biting again: my job.

The last few months at work have been more stressful, busy, and challenging than at any other point in my career. I love what I do and I’m not complaining at all – but at times it was (and is) a lot to manage.

So little by little, the biting came back. First just one finger, then just a couple more, until eventually I was full blown junior high Liz all over again.

But I have to say I am really pleased with how I handled it. I didn’t get too down on myself and I took it one day at a time. Most importantly, I never considered myself a nail biter again. Instead, I said to myself that I had fallen off the wagon and that I needed to make a strategy to get back on. I believed that this was just one setback in a lifetime of *mostly* not biting my nails.

I quickly realized that I would soon have my annual mani/pedi with my mother-in-law, our Thanksgiving tradition. That was just a few weeks ago, but so far, it looks like that’s all I needed to get back on track.

That, and perhaps some new coping mechanisms for the rest of this semester at work :).

And on that note, a thought experiment:

When is a time you “fell off the horse” and were able to get back on? What was your motivation?