Please welcome guest blogger, Dr. Julie Kellogg. Julie is a third-generation dentist as well as a certified professional coach, writer, investor, dog mom, skier and shoe aficionado. She lives in Walla Walla, WA with her two dogs, Mochi and JoJo. Her 5G coaching combines coaching and travel for achievers who want to get out of their head and into their senses. You can find that along with her travel blog and texture library at travelwithtexture.com

Enjoy this two-part blog post where Julie shares her story in the first one and what she did about it in the second post.

What I’ve Learned From Being Good at Work I Didn’t Love

Last week I shared my story about getting into dentistry and realizing I didn’t like it. I’ve learned a few things along this bumpy journey. Most of these ideas can be distilled down to values and my clarity around my values.

Family, loyalty and skillset.

I chose to keep at it for 10 years because that was an important benchmark of credibility to me personally. After 10 years, I chose to continue as long as my father was still practicing dentistry. I knew those days were finite. We enjoyed working together and as he slowed down, he valued my presence even more.

Now that my father is retired, I am in the process of significantly reducing my clinical schedule to spend more time on other professional endeavors that I enjoy.

But I’ve discovered that it’s important for me to maintain some of my clinical skillset and be in tune with the current state of dentistry. Even though clinical dentistry still stresses me greatly, I am still choosing to stay involved a bit.

I’ve also found that I still feel a tremendous loyalty to the family brand. All my family members have now retired and non-family dentists have stepped in. While I am sure this feeling will diminish over time, I feel compelled to maintain a professional presence for now.

Clarity

Most of us probably don’t love or hate everything about our job. Gaining clarity around what I like and dislike about the work has been a helpful process.

For example, patients often comment on how gentle my injections are. But I hate sticking a needle in another person’s face every hour of every work day and I hate worrying about achieving profound anesthesia.

Thankfully, I enjoy removable prosthetics and implant prosthetics, much of which can be accomplished without administering anesthetic.

I also don’t like being a tooth mechanic. While I appreciate the skill it takes to do beautiful restorations, I don’t really enjoy the process.

The wellness coaching conversations I get to have with patients are my deepest joy. I get excited about helping them learn about their personalized health/caries/periodontal risks and empowering them to make positive changes.

Being an introvert and having conversations with 20 or more people every day is exhausting. Limiting the number of clinical days or simply shortening the days allows me to have more quiet creative time and keep my battery charged.

Identity

When asked what we do professionally, how many times have we answered, “Oh, I’m just a dentist”?

I’ll wager that for most of us being a dentist is a heavy part of our identity, one that consumes us even while we try to minimize it. This identity can be hard to shake.

I’ve worked hard to shift this mindset. I am so much more than a dentist. I am a coach, writer, teacher, mentor, investor, landlord, daughter, dog mom, snow skier, traveler, and shoe aficionado.

It’s still easy for me to say that I’m just a dentist. But I now make a conscious to say something else first. “I am a __ and a dentist, among other things.”

Love-hate-neutral

For years, I’ve simply said that I have a love-hate relationship with dentistry. I love the profession of dentistry, but I hate being a dentist. Maybe that’s partly true.

I recently had a conversation with a coach who encouraged me to try and feel more neutral about being a dentist. I don’t have to love it, and I don’t need to hate it either.

Because I am really good at being a dentist, doesn’t mean I am obligated to love my career.

I can focus on maximizing the enjoyable moments of my dental day and minimizing the dreadful ones.

Dentistry (and life) is a journey

Is a career in dentistry exactly what any of us expected it to be? Probably not. There is no way to know everything until we’ve experienced it. The day-to-day reality of any career changes over time.

Our career and our work are a big part of our life and our identity. There are a lot of emotions associated with this. We should acknowledge all of these emotions. As we get more specific with our feelings, we can make more meaningful changes.

We can be really good at something we don’t love, even something we might hate. For some, this may necessitate making a big shift, perhaps even changing careers completely. For others, this may be taking our skills down a slightly different path. It could be as simple as trying a few small changes to minimize the dreadful.

We all bring something beautiful to our work, our teams and our patients. If you love every day in dentistry, bravo! If you are struggling with stress and some love-hate emotions towards dentistry or your career, I hope my experience will encourage you. Our careers are part of the journey—not the destination—and our emotions are the power indicator light.