Catherine Rutland recommends a little internal communication with yourself every day.
I have been in the learning seat a lot in the last month and I have loved it.
I have learned new stuff and refreshed a lot of existing knowledge; it is good to absorb and reflect.
One of my big takeaways from a great two-day course was about deciding your mindset.
It is something I have always tried to do but when times are tough it can seem difficult to do.
To make it easier, we learnt to verbalise it and ensure team members were also aiming for the same mindset, which is really powerful for great teamwork.
The same sort of theme has come up in different guises at various meetings I have been to over the last few weeks.
What is our mindset as a profession?
This is probably worth a huge debate, but individually it is worth thinking about.
If we can decide our mindset, and choose to live our day in that thinking, how will it alter our working day?
If that mindset is positive, how does that impact your patient care, customer care, performance, team attitude and, by default, profit?
And if you want to get really positive, what would it do to the profession if we all chose a positive mindset?
It doesn’t take away all our troubles, that is not what I am saying, life is not easy.
It is how you face those issues that your mindset will determine.
We hear so much about the younger dentists struggling with morale and contemplating leaving the profession and yet so many dentists I have spoken to recently have loved their careers, are proud of the profession and feel fulfilled.
I have written before that we are almost scared to admit we love what we do, yet I see so much positivity in so many of the people I meet.
I know it is a different world to when I qualified, but in order to help our younger colleagues we need to share our passion for the profession, support them with our positive mindsets and talk and write about what is going well and we are proud of.
Communication in every aspect of dentistry is so important and a little internal communication with yourself every day to make sure you face the world in the right frame of mind will make every interaction more beneficial.
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