Sometimes someone will say something with which you completely disagree. Instead of dismissing it as irrelevant to you and your life, ponder a moment and see if there is a message that could be useful to you.
It can be difficult to change habits if we are closed rather than open to suggestions and observations. Once we are open to hearing something that could be relevant to us, a new door can open.
For instance, nearly five years ago, someone remarked that the palms of my hands were peeling and the skin was broken all over the place. At first I dismissed it saying that it was because I played golf without gloves.
The winter came and I was not playing golf. Someone else noticed that various layers of my skin were missing from the palms of my hands.
I had been completely unaware that I was picking the skin on the palms of my hands until they were almost bleeding. I still dismissed what was happening and refused to see that it had become a bad habit.
This carried on for some years and yet again, someone else actually caught me picking off the skin from the palms of my hands.
I now decided it was time to do something, only to realise that it had become a bad habit and it was not so easy to just give up on a whim.
Several times I tried to give up, but the habit had become so ingrained that often I was completely unaware that I was picking off the layers of skin.
Physician heal thyself – I help others to let go of bad habits, all I had to do was follow the simple six step plan! So easy when you can see the light, and so impossible when you can’t!
While planning how to give up, it suddenly dawned on me that I had started picking the skin when severely stressed. My mother had been at death’s door, thankfully she has recovered and various other members of my family were, to put it politely, causing me a lot of stress, plus I had a brain disease which meant that there was little energy available for everything that was going on in my life.
To calm me down, I started, unwittingly and unknowningly to pick the skin from the palms of my hand.
On realising this, I looked at my present situation and realised how much it had changed. My mother is now wonderfully well and there are some strategies in place for dealing with the other stresses in my life.
Suddenly, I have been able to stop picking the palms of my hands! Occasionally in a stressful moment, I might become aware of being about to pick the skin and I remind myself that to enjoy the golf again, I would like to have every layer of skin in place on the palms of my hands.
It is wonderfully exciting to “watch” the skin grow back. Examining my palms frequently – not every day, but several times a week, I am noticing how much better they are becoming.
Progress continues really well and there are only about two layers to grow on the left hand and one layer on the right hand – roll on a full set of skin layers to the palms of my hands!
