“YOU have mail, Sam!,” my cousin Jenny gleefully told her two-year-old daughter.

A look of surprise and excitement came upon my niece’s face. “Mail?,” Sam grinned. “For me?”

She then excitedly opened the letter together with her Mom. She was thrilled because her concept of getting a letter must have been limited to what she saw on “Blue’s Clues” (”We just got a letter, we just got a letter, we just got a letter, I wonder who it’s from!”). Having her own letter to open and read was a big moment for her!

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IT takes 21 days to build a habit, I’ve heard. There does seem to be logic to that. If you do the same thing over and over for a number of days, you’ll most likely end up picking up the habit without even knowing it.

Fixing the bed in the morning used to be a pain to me. After getting dressed for work, I would automatically get my office bag and step out of the bedroom, leaving our pillows and blankets in a mess. While it saved me minutes in the morning, coming home to a disorderly bed gave me a headache. I convinced myself it was high time I picked up the habit. The very next morning, I made the bed upon waking up.

There were a lot of snags along the way. It was hardly a therapeutic act, wrestling with the sheets and blankets. It didn’t help that I was counting the minutes to the rest of my morning rituals. I had to rush making the bed so I could heat my bath water, fix my clothes, take a bath, etc. Making the bed was a huge barrier for me.

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