For years the hive mind of dentistry tried to fit all dentists into a box. If you weren’t a private practice owner, then you weren’t successful. If you chose to teach at a dental school, it was because you “couldn’t hack it in the real world.” If you were burnt out or stressed, then you were a wimp, and something was wrong with you. While there are still some dentists who think this way, times are changing. I recently shared a podcast interview with The Truth Behind Dentistry that gained some popularity on Youtube. It was a fun collaboration, but with...
Find your passion, and you’ll never work a day in your life! Don’t you hate when people give that advice? For most of us, our passion is hardly profitable. I mean, how can I possibly make money cooking, eating, traveling, and hanging out with friends? Image by Luisella Planeta Leoni from Pixabay Yeah, yeah… I know that’s what they always say. I also know that it’s true. If you love what you do, it makes the work more fun, and it’s easier to get through the bad stuff. Finding your passion is great if you get lucky and happen to...
Which came first– gratitude or success? Chances are that growing up you learned that the more success you would have in life, the happier you would be. Somewhere along the way I believed that too, so I set my life up to create the ultimate happiness. I accumulated it all– the degrees, the friends, a husband, a home, and the perfect dental career. Eventually I learned the joke was on me. I found myself living this successful life, but I was unhappy, and I couldn’t feel grateful for all of the wonderful “things” I had. It turns out, success does...
It’s quite challenging to objectively see ourselves and our behavior, isn’t it? The different filters we use to see the world influence everything in our lives. It makes sense– if we don’t really see the world objectively, how can we see ourselves objectively? What do you see? We’ve all seen this drawing above. At first, most of us either see a young woman or an old lady. It’s not until someone points out what you can’t see, that you finally see it. It is amazing how your perspective changes when you change your perspective. The Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Assessment did...
We all know how much stress can compromise our success in any given task. Think about it. You’re so busy worrying about something, that you’re distracted and don’t even notice what’s going on around you. We’ve all felt it at some point. In the moment, stress management may not be an option, as we may not even notice we’re stressed until we’ve had a chance to step back and pause. How can we learn to work with our stress, as it is often our partner in the journey to success? This past weekend, I experienced firsthand how stress can detract...
I bet you’d agree that many of us learned to believe that success is about money. In fact, money is often the one determining factor we use to define success. The problem with believing success is about money is that we walk through life chasing one thing, when other things matter as much, if not more. Happiness and meaning matter too. It’s not until we look around and realize that our money is not enough, that we feel compelled to do something. We even notice that in order to make a lot of money, we are trading away our happiness....
With so many great holidays to celebrate this time of year, there is one holiday in the bunch that will forever be my favorite– my anniversary! It’s the anniversary of my farewell from a high intensity career in dentistry. It has been 4 years, and it is so hard to believe that so much time has already passed. It’s fitting that it all came to fruition around Thanksgiving, because gratitude is the one feeling that never wavers. I know I made the right decision, and I’m so thankful those days are behind me. What does waver, though, is my perception of...
Yeah, you heard me right, I entered another contest. After I told myself I was done, I went and did it again. And since I know you’ve been on the edge of your seat in suspense, I’ll cut straight to it… I finally won! I’ll get to the actual contest in a minute. First, the journey to get there is fresh on my mind. A while back I discovered a book called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. I loved it so much that I dedicated a blog post to it. I’ve never read another book that so convincingly and...
The last thing I ever expected in my life was a phone call from my sister asking me to look into her new business and try her product. Like I’ve mentioned in the past, she and I were always very skeptical about the network marketing business model. We’d never seen anyone succeed at it before. We had only seen people waste their money month after month. But when she called me, she explained that her friend she had known for years had just started with this company and was indeed having real success. This changed my sister’s perception of MLM’s...
