take care of your teeth

I'm 25 and I've peried on to disease. Peried on disease is a bacterial infection that impacts and damages the tissue and bones in your mouth. Now I've done all the deep cleans I need to do to stabilize the infection, but obviously my situation is an ideal. I live back at my poor mouth hygiene and realized that if I had been flossing every night, things would be differently. But growing up, I was never taught to floss. My parents didn't floss, and most people in my family haven't started flossing until recently. I didn't taught how to floss, and therefore, even when I did start flossing, I wasn't taught how to do it effectively. It is easy for me to say right now, if I had known about the damages that would happen to my mouth, then I would have been flossing. But I simply didn't know to the fullest extent what was happening in my mouth. I did have some idea. I knew it was good to floss people in school and people around me were flossing, and so there had to be some benefit. Or because I didn't see the benefits of it day to day, or can I say I didn't see the damages to my mouth day to day, I didn't really take much mind for it. This experience has made me wonder, what are other habits in my life that I'm doing that are slowly, incrementally damaging myself? What are things that I do today that I don't really see the downfall of it right now? But in 5, 10, 30 years, I'll start to see it. On the flip side, what are other things I can do that are actually a benefit to me? What are good habits that I may not see the benefit of right now? But from 5, 10, 30 years from now, I can truly see the benefit and be very thankful that I had done that. This mentality, I'm trying to implement in all things in my life. There are things that I do to try and grow and be a better person for tomorrow. There are things that I like to do to just enjoy it right now. But there are certain habits that I need to do just for pure maintenance. I may not see any growth or anything developing for me as a person, but doing certain things are crucial for the longevity and what being of myself if I want to maintain and take care of myself for a long period of time.