The most important challenge that I posed to you last week was about the cleaning we all need to do inside of our own heads. The more often you check in on yourself, your thoughts, and your focus, the less mental clutter there will be and more clarity your experience.
This is why I say do not just GO but GROW into your future. Opportunities and possibilities are abundant if you are open to seeing, believing, and acting upon them. The only thing that keeps us from realizing more of them is when we are stuck in our own minds and allow ourselves to put in the box of the present.
What is today, does not have to be what is tomorrow; as long as you are willing to grow into tomorrow’s opportunities. However, if you fixate on the problems that exist today you will only experience more of the same problems in the future. You do, after all, get what you are looking for in life.
To clean up your mental clutter start with how you speak to yourself, your own self-image, and then move to your feelings about others. You can refuse and resist the temptation to default to negative attitudes and thoughts; which is the only way to stay in control over your own life.
When you think, believe, and respond negatively, you are giving power to that circumstance or individual to influence your thoughts and emotions.
Spend time today thinking about the negatives thoughts you let dominate your active mind, the pessimistic assumptions you allow to dictate outcomes, and the needless distractions that take away from your higher priorities.
By the way, this has direct implications to how you engage, educate, and influence your patients as well.
In fact, this is, in a nutshell, exactly what you are doing to help your patients by replacing any old beliefs or critical thoughts about how they feel about dentistry, themselves, or their health and reshaping it to something positive.
A lot of what stands in the way of your patients’ acceptance of treatment has nothing at all to do with the treatment. Self-doubt, past let downs, and life problems stand in everyone’s way now and again.
The reality of your patient relationships should be about clearing up their vision, raising their expectations, and renewing a focus on their health by you being their guide that is going to take them there.
Instead of being an adversary (a role far too many in the industry assume), you are their greatest ally. The more you embrace this responsibility and the more you are aware of what you must help them overcome in their own minds, the more empathy you will have which leads to more influence and a greater ability to engage them on their pathway to health.
We talk a lot here in our Monday Morning Huddles about perception being reality and understanding others as a key to helping them. This requires mastering your perception about how others think but first and foremost about how you think.
So, grab your broom and dust pan. It’s time to clean up your thinking, clear out your mental clutter, and free up your mind to create tomorrow’s reality.
