forgetting to floss feels like enormous triumph

So yesterday on a different thread about motivation and procrastination, I mentioned how I have an argument with myself every. single. night. about flossing my teeth.

I know I should floss, but I just do not want to. Every single night in the shower for months and months, for as long as I can remember, I have the thought, "ugh $#%&. I have to floss my teeth" And then I get this feeling of dread and entrapment and I have an argument with myself about skipping it tonight. And it goes on and on until I dreadfully just suffer through it. And then I'm fine. And I'm glad I did it.

It's a pattern and I've been working on it lately. I started to recognize that the stress doesn't come from flossing. The stress comes from the internal conversation I start with myself in the shower every night. It's the thoughts that are the trouble, not the act of flossing.

And I realized that I was going to have stress either way. I would stress beforehand regardless. And then if I skipped it, I'd also stress about it afterward.

So in the shower for the last week or so, when I noticed that thought come up, I would just purposely say to myself, "This stress isn't about flossing. I will stress either way." and I just cut that conversation off before it spun out. And then I still flossed, and I didn't enjoy it or anything, but there was less suffering involved.

So last night I was lying in bed marking things off in my habit tracker in my journal, and I realized, "OMG I FORGOT TO FLOSS." I had forgotten that flossing even existed. And that might not seem like a big deal. But it is. Because flossing had been a big deal every single night since I can remember. It was a big source of stress and suffering and feeling trapped and out of control every single night. And then once I stopped playing that game with my mind, that stress just disappeared. It's amazing.

So I lol-ed and got out of bed and flossed. I flossed as a champion. Because I beat my mind at its own game. And tonight when I go to floss, I can floss as a winner. I can enjoy doing it because it's evidence that when I decide to stomp out something that makes me suffer, I freaking stomp it out.

This is very inspiring.. thank you for sharing