You know I write about career happiness a lot. Finding it and sharing it has become my mission in life. Because I know how awful it is to feel anxiety and depression from your work, I want to help you avoid that. We spend most of our waking hours there. If it creates such turmoil in your life, then you spend most of your waking hours feeling cruddy. That just doesn’t seem worth it. My message to you has always been that life is too precious to waste it feeling miserable. I’ve been writing about this and sharing my dental...
A funny thing has happened to me in recent weeks. I’ve started feeling happy, and positive, and more like myself again. I’m not going to lie, it felt really strange at first. Part of me didn’t trust it at all, and the other part of me thought maybe it was too soon. I kept waiting for it to go away and be replaced by the fear and sadness that has consumed my last year. Then one word popped into my head: Resilience. And all of my newfound enthusiasm made sense. On August 13, 2018, I came home from my mammogram...
We spend so much of our energy trying to be happy. Happiness is such a buzzword these days. It almost seems like an addiction itself. The attraction to it is so strong that we often shun any sadness we might experience. It’s no wonder we’re addicted. It feels good. In fact, nothing feels as good as happiness does. But where would happiness be if sadness didn’t exist? Just as courage cannot exist without fear, happiness cannot exist without sadness. Which brings me to my point: embracing our sadness will help us shake it off. Image by Fran__ from Pixabay When...
How do you use intuition in your life? Merriam Webster defines intuition as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” In other (easier to understand) words, it’s that wisdom that is guided by your feelings. It’s what you know in your gut to be true. Rationality and reasoning don’t factor in here. In the professional world, we often think there is no room for woo-woo stuff like feelings and heart. However, the best leaders often credit their intuition for their success. Knowing how powerful intuition is to guide us, I’ve...
If you’ve ever done yoga, you’ve probably gone to a class where they happen to talk about the one theme you needed to hear that day. It happens to me often. Sometimes my blog posts do that for someone too. I hope this one arrives on a day you need it. Several months ago, the day my hair started falling out, I randomly went to yoga, and the teacher spoke all about what happens when it seems like our world is falling down around us. Literally a part of me– my hair– was falling down around me by the handful,...
I recently shared with you my dilemma about my cold cap. The question was whether I should allow myself to go bald, or whether I should suffer through the pain of wearing the cold cap for mediocre results. It’s amazing what writing down your thoughts can do to help you gain clarity. I had been struggling for a good month to come to a decision. It was weighing heavily on me, but in the days I put it in writing, a few things happened to help guide me in my decision-making process. I finally feel confident in my choice. I’ve decided to...
I’m at a crossroads, facing a dilemma that feels huge. Logically, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, but in my heart, there is something keeping me stuck. I don’t know if I should shave my head. These days we have access to amazing technology that can actually help save our hair during chemo. It’s called a cold cap. The cold cap has been around for a while, but now they’ve developed a system that makes the process simpler, more manageable, and more accessible than ever before. The cold cap freezes your scalp, restricting blood flow to the...
Yes, you’ve read that correctly. I have cancer. It’s still weird to say it, and it’s just as weird to read it back. You may (or you may not) have noticed I’ve been quiet lately. It’s because I’ve been busy having cancer. (See? Even with cancer, I still can’t help being silly at times.) Before you get too worried about me, I’d like you to know that there is good news: it is curable. Even though we are planning for a happy ending, it’s still hard. I still have to go through the physical, emotional, and mental crap of wondering...
Most of us really value the importance of work life balance. Especially now, it seems to be more important than ever. My guest today is Andrew, a dentist in the UK. Andrew came to a crossroads in his career when he was forced to make a tough decision. He had to choose between continuing on in a very happy, successful dental practice or walking away from that to maintain the most important relationship in his life. See how it turned out for him… Three years ago, I came to a junction in my life where I really struggled. It turned...
We can get so caught up thinking we have to fit into this perfect image of how to practice dentistry. That usually means having a busy, successful private practice. By now you know that I love to challenge that idea. So here is my challenging viewpoint: it is possible to be passionate about dentistry outside the Dental Op. My guest today proves it. While Carrie Ibbetson is clearly passionate about life at the dental chair, her true calling within dentistry has pulled her interests in a different direction. Carrie is a dental hygienist with a slightly different mission. Listen to...
