Changing a Habit

My home has a fence around it and in order to get in, you have to do through a gate. Over time, that had become progressively more challenging as the wood door seemed to have warped. In order to open the gate, I'd have to do an acrobatic move with both of my hands to simultaneously pull the door up and over the the left.

This created problems when you'd have your hands full of groceries or you wanted to race in during a rainstorm.

Eventually, I decided to address the problem so I put on my handyman hat. Ten minutes later, I had moved the latch down about half an inch and the door now opens perfectly.

The funny thing is that it took me a while to remember that I didn't need to open the door the old way anymore. This is classic example of becoming numb to a problem and conditioning yourself to accept a less than desirable situation. I've heard that it takes about 30 days to form a new habit. That's about the amount of time it took for me to remember how to normally open the gate.