‘Don’t let UDA stress impact you negatively’: This month Khalil Hussein discusses the rise of stress in dentistry and how to overcome it.
Now is that time of year when a lot of practices are pushing to finish their UDA targets and the pressure is really on.
I, myself, know this first hand owning a mixed NHS and private practice with my wife and brother in law.
Covid-19 severely hampered the dental industry and since then it has never fully recovered. There is a shortage of dental nurses and associates who want to work in the NHS, material costs have increased, energy prices are up, and if you don’t hit your target, there are real worries for the future!
So, it’s no wonder many people are feeling the pinch. While pressure can make diamonds, it can also crush rocks into dust.
Here are a few ways to turn yourself into a diamond, all backed by science.
More here and now neurotransmitters
Serotonin, oxytocin and other endorphins are all examples of your here and now neurotransmitters. They provide feelings such as happiness and gratitude in the present moment.
Imagine the first time you tasted delicious food or witnessed the birth of your first child. Your brain was flooded with these neurotransmitters which gave you those wonderful feelings.
In that time you weren’t thinking about the past or the future. Instead, you were living in the here and now.
Dopamine by contrast is the neurotransmitter that helps motivate you to do things for future gain – it’s what motivates you to work out, solve problems and look towards the future.
It causes that giddy excitement about something that is going to happen soon or it can present you with five different problems that could topple your business and tries to figure out ways to deal with them.
Dopamine is a very important thing. Without it, you would never strive for more or work towards being better.
However, the problem arises when your brain starts to become too focused on the future and less on living in the here and now.
Modern day life is filled with things that have caused us all to become dopamine junkies. Our mobile phones are filled with notifications and things that trigger small amounts of dopamine so that we take action and check them.
We respond to emails when we should be relaxing in bed, we scroll endlessly and compare our lives to others from around the world and we can never switch off.
Focusing on the future too much
Too much focus on dopaminergic activities is what causes many dentists to burn out. Often you may catch yourself thinking of different problems and scenarios for the future and how to solve them.
This is useful from an efficiency point of view as your brain will be better prepared if those things do happen. However, the keyword is if those things happen.
Most of the time 99% of what we scheme and plan for in our heads never comes to fruition. So instead of enjoying the present moment, we worry about a possible future that we often have very little control over. And we end up losing precious time.
A little trick I learned from Mo Gawdat, author of Solve for Happy, is that when you find yourself unhappy or stressing about something.
Ask yourself: is this true?
If the answer is no, then drop those thoughts straight away as they are pointless. If it is true, the next question to ask yourself is: what can I do about it?
Once you know what’s in your control, action these things or plan to action them. Quickly, you’ll realise that a lot of things you worry about are not in our control, so it’s best to focus on what is in your control.
If there is nothing you can do about it, it’s best to accept it and move on. There is no point in stressing about something when all the stress in the world will not change it.
Humans like to believe we are in control over much more than we think, when in reality all we can control is ourselves and our actions.
Ninety per cent of life is good
Realising that much of the world is out of your control is both liberating and scary. Some people have a very difficult time with this as they try to control everything and burn themselves out doing so.
They are constantly working towards an imaginary future where things are perfect. This future does not exist and they are killing themselves trying to get to it.
Letting go of what you can’t control gives you freedom to spend more time enjoying the many things in your life that are going well.
If you are a dentist in the UK, 90% of your life is probably good. You are educated, you probably earn much more than the average salary in the UK, and you probably have a decent car, a house, food on the table and a smart phone that you are reading this article on.
This makes you better off than most of the population in the UK. For some of you, this number will be less and others more. But if you really sit and think about it, most of life is good. We just don’t pay attention to the small everyday things in our lives.
Happiness is wanting what you already have and gratitude helps us get there. It is a delicate balancing act between focusing on the future and living in the here and now. Both are important.
Alleviating stress is often found by bringing yourself into the here and now, experiencing gratitude for the many small things you have in life and letting go of what is not in your control.
Catch previous Dentistry Gym articles:
- Don’t let injuries stop your New Year’s resolutions
- Ergonomics won’t save you from pain or injury
- Pain isn’t what you think it is
- Acute lower back pain? Try this out
- Do this for your sore neck.
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