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expressed in this blog are the authors own and are derived from the author’s
experiences and observations. This blog is the intellectual property of the
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Thanks to the internet in general and
social media in particular, when it comes to exposure pertaining to ones
profession, there is nothing short of an information overload out there. Dentistry
is no different. Facebook pages, groups, youtube videos, instagram
accounts...dentists today are sharing their work and knowledge on online
platforms more than any time in history and it only keeps getting better. To
the budding dentist, especially the ones who have only recently established
their own practice, this information can at times get a bit overbearing. To put
it in simple terms, as a budding dentist, it is often very easy to look at
something and start comparing instead of being just truly inspired. The first
question to arise is, how can I earn like this guy rather than what can I learn
from this guy and how can I adapt that to my practice?
The primary reason for that is, in the
beginning, you are really not completely satisfied with the way your practice
is shaping up unless of course you have it completely planned out in a
corporate-ish 5 year growth plan manner! There’s rent to pay, a profit to earn,
a patient base to build, a name to establish, a lifestyle to support and dreams
to pursue. Needless to say, in reality, not all of the above get fulfilled at
the same time for everyone especially, if you’re just starting out. The end
result? Your entire focus starts shifting towards the future, not in terms of
the things you want to achieve, but on what you can do to escape the clutches
of this hard reality with no scope, saturation, no profits and the struggling reality
of a budding dentist. You step outside and meet a few of your peers going through
the same phase and the conversation shifts entirely towards the negative; why
dentistry is the wrong profession to choose, why you should have taken up
engineering in the past, how you should quit the field and start a business
together and the best one...how even the guy selling you tea right now makes
more in a month!
While all of this can be taken in good
humour, what we don’t realise is that this phase we expose ourselves to as budding
dentists indeed does more harm than good, especially when it comes to mindset. With
a mindset that is so focussed on the future and the problems it holds for you,
it is very hard to realise your dreams and follow the path to success that you
have imagined for yourself.
In short, when the focus is your
future, you lose sight of the present and when you lose sight of the present
the future becomes nothing more than a continuation of the present misery.
Here’s an interesting insight by Mr.
Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of
Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, often referred to as
the “best business book ever”.
“Excellence is the next five
minutes...forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!”
A simple piece of advice to take from
this quote as a budding dentist is that it is ok to worry about the future, it
is ok to plan things, it is ok to not be currently satisfied with where you are
right now...these are all part and parcel of running a practice in today’s
highly competitive market. What is not ok is to be so much engrossed in the worry
of tomorrow that you lose sight of the present, the now, what you have in hand!
Want to take up that course on
implants because you worry that if you don’t all your patients will disappear
in the future? Go ahead, do it, why not? But first, ask yourself this, do you
treat a case that reports for a minor procedure such as scaling and root
planing with all your attention and care? Are you in the moment while
preparing a class I composite restoration trying to make it the best
restoration you’ve ever done? Are you in the present? Are you excelling today?
Or did you lose another day in the routine and go home worrying about a better
tomorrow?
Make the next five minutes rock! The
message is loud and clear. Want to be a successful practitioner tomorrow? Want
to earn the big bucks a few years from now? Want to achieve those dreams of
yours? Quit nagging about the present and worrying about the future and get
down to making the next five minutes rock!
To conclude, what matters to your
success as a budding dentist today is not the state of the field neither is it
the saturation...it is not even the guy with a clinic next to yours or the lack
of footfalls in your OPD, what matters is your mindset, what you do with the
time you have...right now...in the present!
Want to see what the future holds for
you? Look at how you spend the next five minutes and you shall have your
answer.
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