Last Thursday I had a really good cry. I can assure you it was a good, long, ugly cry. And it felt so good. That day was the one-year anniversary of my last targeted chemotherapy infusion. It’s been quite a year, a tough one for many. But given how 2019 was for me, 2020 has been a breeze. I’ve been happy. It seems almost suspiciously happy, the kind of happy that you don’t think is humanly possible. Most of the time it’s a carefree feeling. I’ve not been bothered by the small things, and when I am, I can quickly...
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...
Many of us graduated dental school thinking the only way to be a dentist was to have your own private practice. With practice ownership, you get to have all the control, make all the important decisions, and be the one in charge. However, with practice ownership, you have to have all the control, make all the important decisions, and be the one in charge. That responsibility isn’t for everyone. More and more, we are starting to see that dentistry doesn’t have to be a one-size-fits-all profession. Today so many young dentists are finishing school with massive debt, that they don’t...
Welcome to my guest blogger, Dr. Michelle Mudge-Riley! Dr. Mudge-Riley is a physician, an entrepreneur, and founder of Physicians Helping Physicians. She runs multiple businesses and has spent over 15 years assisting physicians with career strategy. In a 2010 book that she co-authored, Physicians in Transition, she was called the “Doctor’s Doctor” because of her success in working with other doctors. Dr. Michelle Mudge-Riley is here to share her knowledge to help you in your search for non-traditional careers for dentists. She is also my co-host for the upcoming FREE Dentist Career Change Masterclass and the big NEXT Dentist Conference...
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...
Getting through the current events will either require or create a lot of resilience in each of us. It seems like there has not been a time in our lives where we have felt so much discord. With Coronavirus, the economy, politics, racism, the media, social media, and more; life just feels hard these days. Despite all of the negativity we experience in this present moment, one good thing will come out of it: we will all become more resilient– no matter what. We might struggle to see the good that can come out of this, but becoming more resilient...
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...
Would you agree that our perspective dictates everything we experience in life? We often hear how our thoughts create our reality. In a way, that’s true, but really, it’s more accurate to say that our thoughts create our perception of reality. Two weeks ago, I sprained my ankle. Yup. Just as I was getting myself back into a gym routine, I had another setback. I wish I could say it was a super cool accident, but it wasn’t. Leaving the gym, I missed a step, and landed on the top of my foot. I heard a giant crack and, seconds...
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...
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...
