Whenever you try to incorporate something new into your life (usually the healthy stuff like working out, meditation or snacking on celery instead of crisps), people will tell you that it takes 30 days to create a new habit.

30 days of sticking to something apparently tricks your mind into accepting it as the new normal, so it gets easier to see it through.

I am not convinced though.

Surely, it gets easier with time. But if my mind accepts things as new normal, why do I always completely fall off the bandwagon if I, say, get sick? Shouldn’t it take 30 days of not working out to undo all the routine I practiced beforehand?

And why don’t I need 30 days to convince my brain that it is the new normal to spend the whole weekend in my comfies, watching Netflix and eating things that don’t even resemble celery if you are drunk and squinting and in the complete dark?

If you haven’t guessed it by now, I am talking strictly hypothetical here. I haven’t spend a weekend in my comfies binging on Netflix for years, but that is not because I have adopted a healthier lifestyle. It is because I have kids, and they just won’t let me!

Why do I talk about it at all? Well, ever since I had my hair done a few months ago (here) and discovered a way I like to style it (here), I have been wearing it down quite a lot.

Even for work. You see, for the longest time my work hair was a deep chignon (as opposed to the messy top knot I was rocking at home, because – kids). And when I started wearing my hair down, I was getting quite a lot of comments about it.

Nice ones, but it seemed to be so exciting that even the facility manager had something to say about it. Eventually though the comments dies down.

Until, last Monday, I decided to wear my hair up. Because it was hot, because I had to be on the train… just because. And, lo and behold, five people stopped me that day to address the fact that I was, indeed, wearing a deep chignon.

Now I wonder: If I wore the deep chignon for 30 days straight, would it be the new normal again?