Being practice manager, I spend little time in surgery these days but when I do I often hear ‘I only brush once a day, I’m too tired in the evening so skip brushing before bed’, ‘I have a sweet tooth’ or ‘I don’t floss as often as I should’. Does any of this sound familiar?
The thing is, these are all things you can control. You can control your attitude and your effort, sometimes it takes making some changes to your routine but it’s all achievable.
The expression ‘one step at a time’ can be applied to most goals and we’ve all been told to take things one step at a time at least once in our life time.
The idea is that small changes can all add up to big differences, but is this really case? After all, wouldn’t it be better to just go big or go home as this will help you achieve your goals faster?
One of the major problems with big changes is that you often end up needing to alter your daily routine or your lifestyle in order to accommodate them. This can be incredibly difficult to do and mean that it is harder to keep up with them, as other things will get in the way.
This increases your chances of not achieving what you set out to, which can ultimately see you give up. However, taking things one step at a time means that small changes can be slotted around your daily schedule so you aren’t having to make large changes to accommodate them.
Let’s take interdental cleaning as an example, if you routinely sit down at 7.30pm to watch Eastenders, then why not sit down with your interdental brushes or floss and do a bit of multitasking at the beginning of the programme.
I went to church last week to see my daughters perform in their Easter service and the prayers that the children were saying really pulled on my heart strings, they were praying for their families health and happiness, praying that the sea doesn’t drown in plastic, apologising for the pollution in the world, praying for world peace.
Some of these things are controllable like lowering pollution and plastics in the sea, even world peace, and relatively speaking they make not brushing teeth twice a day or not flossing sound incredibly minor. Thing is, if we can’t even make the effort to alter our routines in order to do the small things then what hope do these children have when it comes to answering their prayers.
