Cheap MP3 download helped me quit nail biting for good!

I found the answer to quitting my lifelong nail biting habit in a $15 app! Over the years I had tried everything from bitter aloes to spending a fortune paying for regular manicures, thinking if I paid someone I would be too embarrassed to turn up with bitten nails. I do not like acrylic nails at all, so that was not an option for me. Now in my 50's, I shudder to think how much money I have spent on manicures over the years! The only thing that worked for me and worked immediately was hypnotherapy - but not the 'go-see-a-hypnotherapist-at-$300-an-hour-for-five-to-ten-sessions', no way! I simply purchased a downloadable MP3 for $15 USD. I listened to it each night as I went to sleep. Normally it takes about 21 days to change a habit, but I found that it worked for me completely after five days. I have no desire to bite my nails at all. I continue to listen to it from time to time as a "top-up" to maintain the cessation of nail biting. I bought my download online from www.stevegjones.com He has MP3 hypnosis programs for everything from weight loss to writer's block. They vary in price and often he has flash sales from as little as $1 per MP3 program. I am not affiliated with his company at all, but can highly recommend!

My uni studies STOPPED me biting my nails!

I've been enjoying long, beautiful nails for 30 years, thanks to a method called behaviour modification! I was required to do it as part of a psychology unit at university. It is a method which rewards good behaviour and punishes bad behaviour. This is the method:

1. You determine what you want to change: I want to stop biting my fingernails.
2. You determine what would be a good reward. I will give myself $1.00 coin.
3. You determine what would be a good punishment. I will give $2.00 to charity. Note: It is best that the punishment is worse than the reward, so you can obviously achieve your positive goal ASAP. The simpler your rewards and punishments are, the better. I used the money to purchase a scarf but you could do it for anything.
4. You work out what you need to motivate yourself to achieve that positive outcome. I used hand cream daily, I used oil to massage the cuticles daily, I painted my nails with nail hardener and once the nails grew past my fingers, I got manicures regularly.
5. Draw up a table as shown below, to keep track of your progress daily to get to your eventual goal:

Day 1 – Outcome: I put my fingers in my mouth So you put a cross in the negative box and take the punishment. Negative Positive Punishment Reward x $2.00 paid to charity

Day 2 – Outcome: I didn’t put my fingers in my mouth So you put a cross in the positive box and take the reward Negative Positive Punishment Reward x $1.00 paid to myself

From memory I stopped biting my nails after the second week and kept going until I grew my nails to the length I wanted them. I found that it took about 10 weeks to achieve the outcome I wanted. I didn’t think I would get long fingernails, but I did and continue to do so!

An organised family is a happy family

In the spirit of getting organised for May, my tip has to do with letting go of control and coming up with organisational ideas that work with the people you love.

For example, my partner is a wonderful, talented individual who wouldn't know how to put away his clothes even if he was bribed! Clothing was constantly strewn over the floor, on the furniture or stuffed into cupboards and this drove me to distraction on more than one occasion.

Finally it dawned on me that the neatness issue was mine and the organising issue was his, so I discussed what would work best for him. I found out that he would prefer a single place to keep all his clothing, something portable and easy. I went away and, based on what he had told me, set up a system consisting of one large plastic tub on wheels and one small wicker basket. I placed both of these in the bottom of the wardrobe.

Clean clothes now go in the tub and dirty clothes in the basket. When the wicker basket is full, it goes in the wash; I made sure the basket was the same size as a machine load. When washed and dried, the clothes go from the basket back to the tub. Simple!

Now I have a clean bedroom and my partner can always find clean clothes. As a bonus, he's reduced his washing by two-thirds because he is only washing dirty clothes, not a mixture of clean and dirty.

Best of all, there is no longer friction surrounding the tidiness of the bedroom. The idea of working with those you love to create a harmonious living environment, where their needs and ways of doing things are heard and acted on really can have a positive impact, both financially and emotionally.

A series of (un)fortunate events

I had been living beyond my means for some time and knew I needed to trim my spending. For the last couple of years, I had been pretty careful with purchases, but was not succeeding in 'cutting my coat according to my cloth'. About eight or nine months ago, I decided I would only spend cold hard cash. I withdrew what I could afford to once a week from the bank and forced myself to make do with that until the following week. What a shock! The first couple of weeks, I was penniless within 24 hours and had long lists of unpurchased 'necessities'. My grocery shopping barely covered the bottom of the trolley. (What a joy when it came to unpacking it!) I discovered I could do without many things and started making all food (including bread) from scratch. Most things tasted better and I enjoyed cooking. I started buying vegetable seedlings and growing them, but have had to trim that back to seeds to supply us with enough. The junk food and alcohol are long gone - the money never makes it that far. I lost weight! But I still wasn't making ends meet, so I had to cut back on contents insurance. The result has been that I am more careful with what I do have and am becoming less concerned about material possessions as I am not acquiring expensive new ones anyway. I had more free time on the weekends as I didn't 'have' to scour the newspaper for the best buys and then rush around putting them on the credit card. However I still needed to trim my expenses, so I had to forgo my medical insurance. I find I am now so much more careful with my lifestyle, diet and exercise and I suspect it is because my subconscious knows that there is no comfortable private hospital or top specialist waiting for me if anything goes wrong.

Petrol is still a thorn in my side and I am very conscious of the percentage of my hard-earned money that is going on harming the environment just to get me to work. Tomorrow I have an interview for a less 'glamorous', but otherwise similar job within walking distance of my home. This would also increase my exercise. So far, the follow-on effects of spending only cash I have in my hand have not ended. But each time I have had to make a tough decision about which 'necessity' to forgo to live within my means, I have discovered that going without is not as bad as I feared and that, oddly enough, I am now healthier, happier, less rushed, more in control of my life and proud of my resourcefulness than I ever was when I had everything I thought I needed.