Dear Cali Chica:

“although those old pathways will not ‘unform’ they will slowly become less habitual.. with practice and repetition”-

I met a woman who told me that as a child she grew up in a farm and new no table manners, ate with her hands, she said. When I met her, she was in her thirties or early forties and  lived in a fancy part of Southern California, owned a business. I watched her eat: she ate with perfect precision, cutting her food into small equal pieces with fork and knife held perfectly.

Problem is she looked like a robot eating, perfectly measured moves, not look at ease. Was she anxious as she ate, as she made sure her manners are perfect? Maybe. My point is, it takes way more time to be at ease with a new, learned behavior than it is to perform that new behavior.

anita