Your Perception - Your Reality

In an effort to always be looking for and implementing things that work, we often reach outside the dental industry for ideas that can be translated and applied successfully to dentistry.

To that end, we spent the day today with about 100 leading optometrists from around the country listening to what they were doing that was working as well as what their challenges are. What fascinated me was their response when they all found out we worked with dentists. Here are some of their comments:

• Dentists have it made.
• Patients don’t question the dentist on what he or she charges.
• Dentists don’t have to deal with insurance companies.
• Dentists have the best lifestyle.
• All the dentists I know never work Friday.
• Their professional meetings are always during the week.
• They always have weekends to themselves.

And the list goes on.

I could not help but contrast their comments to the comments I frequently hear from dentists and dental team members that generally focus on the challenges and problems in dentistry.

All of this talk leads to one conclusion: every profession, every business, every industry has its challenges. Too often we spend more of our time dwelling on the problems that we lose sight of the advantages we have. The negative focus then translates into negative outcomes.

If most of the dentists had the same attitude about their profession as the optometrists I talked to today have about the dental profession, there would be a lot more happier dentists out there!

What if you made a list of all the positives of your practice and the dental profession like my new optometrist friends did for you today? If you adopted the attitude that they have about you, you would most likely be a lot more positive, proactive and successful!

While their perception was not totally accurate, their overall attitude about dentistry was right on track. It is a great profession. And comparatively speaking, it has a lot of advantages over many of its peers in other professions.

So take a moment to make your own list of advantages. That list will help you focus on the positives which will make you more positive. And if you have any challenges with the list OR your attitude, just go visit your local optometrist. He or she will have plenty of positives things to tell you about you and your chosen profession!