As dental professionals, we face change every day. We should be pros at it by now.

Small things in the office constantly come up– things like sudden adjustments to the schedule or having to change course on a procedure mid-treatment. We learn to accept that it’s impossible to 100% predict treatment plans or anything else without that crystal ball. Adaptability becomes second nature, as we constantly handle these unexpected shifts. You’d think we would have mastered our fear of change by now.

But when it comes to the big changes, we really struggle. Even when things are not going well, we avoid change at all costs.

We may waste months or even years hanging on to the team member who’s not measuring up. I’ve been there myself. I remember working with a hygienist who I really liked a lot. It was my first year in practice and my first job. She was awesome. Over time, she began to complain and get more frustrated each day. It was a dysfunctional office, so I completely understood why she felt that way. I was so afraid everything would fall apart and get worse if she left, that I tried to support her mentally and emotionally, hoping I could convince her that she should stay.

It didn’t work. She just became more and more negative.

Eventually she quit, and my big bad fear came to fruition.

And the unexpected happened.

We found someone better! We hired a new hygienist who was just as great with people and at her work– but she was better because she was happier.

Our fear of change is often worse than reality.

Let’s talk about your dental career. If you’re questioning quitting dentistry, you probably go back and forth, over and over in your head. On the one hand, you know you feel miserable. You are stressed, anxious, have low energy, and you worry all the time.

These feelings should be the only sign you need. This is your intuition speaking.

You feel that every day– okay fine, you feel it everyday that you’re not coping well with the stress. You know the pattern… on good days you try to convince yourself that you should be happy or you should be stronger. (Here’s a clue, by the way: convincing is not your intuition speaking.)

Intuition is a lot more simple than we make it. It is simply what we feel. But, if you listened to your intuition in this instance, life would become pretty inconvenient. This would mean that you’d have to change.

You’d have to change something, anything.

Us dentists, we’d prefer to tolerate the pain that we know rather than risk facing an even worse pain. The What If question always lingers.

Ask yourself, is it the job or the career.

We can ease the fear of the unknown by reducing the unknowns with an intentional and deliberate plan.

I don’t take lightly the idea of quitting dentistry. When I sought out help from my career coach over 10 years ago, although I felt like I was dying inside as a dentist, I still needed to believe that I had done all I could to save my career.

My fear of change only delayed the inevitable. I’m like a dog: way too loyal! That loyalty kept me in bad work situations for far too long. I was great at making the best of difficult situations until I just couldn’t anymore.

Do all you can do answer this question for yourself. Work on your leadership. Test out different jobs. Try to change your mindset and how you cope with stress. Improve your skills and draw boundaries. Draw mental boundaries with yourself– try to conquer the worry spiral that keeps you up at night after a less-than-perfect procedure.

If you’ve done it all, and it works, great. You know it was the job and not the career.

However, if you’ve poured all you can into making this career work for you, and it’s still crushing your soul, then it’s time to face the inconvenient truth.

It’s time to make the BIG change.

One thing we all have in common is that once we make the change, we realize how we should have done it sooner.

My friends and clients tell me this all the time. In hindsight, the insurmountable fear of all that could go wrong if they quit dentistry was all in their heads.

No one ever regretted changing careers and quitting dentistry.

In fact, they love who they are so much more after making the shift. They feel grateful for everyday that they get to be free of the pain and suffering of their former lives. They feel confident, knowing that they conquered their biggest fear and knowing that they can do more than just drill and fill.

Most importantly, they never fear making any sort of career change ever again.

No matter what type of change you want to create in your life, I acknowledge that change is hard. Once you do it, though, you’ll see that it is always worse in our imagination than it is in real life.

Try the opposite. Instead of fearing the worst, imagine how good things can get if you make the shift. Imagine the potential of what lies ahead.