wotiwrote

Anyone who's lived longer than the average Mayfly knows that a bad habit is easy to keep and a good habit hard to acquire. That that is so remains one of the proofs that the universe can be cold and unhelpful except when it wants to take you by surprise.

In the past year I have acquired one new habit that can be chalked up on the good side. I have lost none of my bad habits and I may even be evolving some deadly new variations of the latter as I write this. But I'm pleased with my new habit and I'm so pleased with the way I made it stick that I'm going to try to apply the method to some other areas of my life.

Here's the big news. I now floss.

Yup, that's it. Not a great deal if you're from the US, I suppose, but over here in the land of the anti-Hollywood choppers flossing is not de rigeur. Especially when you're of a certain age. Like me.

My teeth are generally in good shape so the poor NHS dentist would have to resort to a bout of scraping and polishing to extract some meagre recompense from my semi-annual visit. To be fair, with my coffee and chocolate consumption, scraping and polishing was only to be expected. So I decided that flossing could be a GOOD THING.

Now I've tried flossing before. The usual sequence of events is this:

• Buy floss
• Put floss in bathroom cabinet
• Discover floss in bathroom cabinet days before its expiry date
• Struggle through a painful and bloody flossing session
• Swear to floss again the following day
• Discover floss in bathroom cabinet months after its expiry date

The problem, as with all my attempts to change my habits or impose some new order on my life, is the all-or-nothing approach. Put simply, this means that any failure or evidence of weakness condemns me as a fool and a charlatan and I must be punished. Punishment takes the form of not letting me try to improve my life. I believe this is quite common and immediately raises the question of how we have survived so long as a species. It may also carry the answer to our future, however: "Global warming? We're so bad we deserve to destroy the planet."

I struck upon this simple ploy. I would ease myself into flossing gently, akin to the careful sliding of a strip of tape between my molars. The plan was this:

• Buy floss (I realise there is some overlap here)
• Floss Saturday morning
• Don't go near floss for a week

And that was week one. On week two I flossed on Friday and Saturday. I did this for two weeks. On the third week I added Thursday and flossed three times a week for three weeks. You get the picture. After five weeks of flossing five days a week I've just added Monday to the rota.

The result is threefold. One; my teeth feel thinner. Two; I feel pretty damn chuffed with myself. Three; when Sunday comes I feel pleased that I can take a day off from flossing. By Monday I'm looking forward to getting the floss out again. The secret, therefore, is to always leave yourself a little leeway. To be tender to yourself. I'll probably just leave Sundays alone. I bet God didn't floss on Sunday.

Next I'm going to tackle something more important. When I can decide what it is.