Ever wonder why some organizations run like well-oiled machines, and others face problem after problem? It all comes down to one thing: leadership. Leadership creates the culture. Everything trickles down from the top. I have worked in several different offices during my time in dentistry, and they were all different. One of the offices had okay systems in place but also got by without systems. The boss was more of a dictator-type leader. He was always right, and what he said went. We rarely challenged him, but I learned over time that if I could suggest an idea in a...
When I look back on my career in dentistry, the parts I loved the most were networking and creating relationships with other dentists. Working in private practice was not that fulfilling for me. I always felt burdened, like I couldn’t do enough to please my patients. That left me feeling empty and unappreciated. But when I went to the Pankey Institute to try to save my career, I absolutely loved the learning environment and the friends I made. When I got involved in the local dental society, I loved the sense of community that brought. Now that I am hosting...
How much did you know about dentistry before you chose it as your forever career? If you’re like me, not much. Many of us interviewed a few dentists, spent a handful of afternoons shadowing them, or just found teeth interesting as patients. We chose dentistry based on a somewhat superficial impression of the work involved. You can see how easy it would be get into the career and then realize it’s totally wrong for us. Imagine if you did that with your romantic relationships. Imagine marrying someone after you’ve only met for coffee 5 times. It would be kind of...
As humans, judgment is part of our inherent nature. We need judgment to protect ourselves from threats. As a species it is one of our strongest defense mechanisms. While it can help us in many ways, it can also create problems with relationships– especially our relationship with ourselves. While it’s necessary to discern between safety and danger, it doesn’t always serve us when we are not in danger. At a time when we are isolated and not even around other people, our judgment of others is out in full force. Take being outside, for example. While we have to be...
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...
How are you passing the time? If you’re at home with no “work” to do, you might be feeling kind of lost. You don’t want to sit and watch Netflix all day. You’ll go nuts if you spend any more time on Facebook. There seems to be nothing productive you can do, and yet, maybe there is. We all wish for more time at home, but under these circumstances, enjoying a forced staycation is not so easy. It would be easy if we didn’t have to close our businesses, worry about ours and our employees’ lost incomes, or become our...
Is it too late to talk about the New Year? Probably… I know some would say we’re way beyond talk of resolutions, intentions, and productivity. My procrastination made me miss the hype that comes with Jan 1, the hype that reminds us how much fun it is get to “start over” and hope and plan for better things to come. Yes, this is what procrastination does: it makes you start a blog post the second week in January, and then you don’t sit down to finish it until 6 weeks later. I felt motivated. I promise. I knew my plans...
Today was my last cancer treatment. Actually, by the time you’re reading this, it was yesterday. It’s been a strange day, one that holds a mix of emotions that leaves me unsure of how to feel. It’s good though. On the one hand, I’m beyond excited to be done. After 14 months of treatment, I never imagined arriving at this day. The idea of finishing what felt like a list of never-ending treatments, seemed impossible. I await the moments of anxiety and fear of recurrence that will pop up, and I wonder if my life will ever stay feeling normal...
We often hear how we can manifest what we want simply by thinking about the very thing. It’s the Law of Attraction. My first exposure to this kind of thinking was when The Secret came out quite a few years ago. While some of the principles seemed pretty cool, I remember thinking, “so, if I say I want to win the lottery, then I will win it? Why hasn’t it worked yet?” I didn’t buy into it, and I’m not sure I want to. We can’t just say we want this or that and expect to get it. It’s not...
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...
