The Year is Changing – Will You?

Another year is about to wind down. 2014 is a few days away from being history. Hopefully it was a good one for you and your dental practice. If it wasn’t, what do you plan to do about it? This is the time of year for making resolutions–promising ourselves that we will in fact have the strength, the willpower, and perhaps the courage to make positive changes.

My job as a coach and advisor to dentists is to strategize with them about their practice and support and facilitate the changes we have  identified. These changes are critical and necessary to help them fulfill resolutions made with the greatest of intent. Two years ago, I offered comments on this very topic. One year ago,  I began a 10 part series of posts where I identified the reasons–in my experience–that separated eminently successful dentists from the majority of their peers. All of those posts are archived on the Blog Page of my website.

So here we are again. A fresh start awaits you. But as I have said so often and truly believe, “Hope and prayer is not a strategy”.  One of my most influential mentors and motivators is Seth Godin. Earlier this month, he penned the most prophetic statement: “If you hesitate to map out your future, to make a big plan or to set a goal, you’ve just gone ahead and mapped your future anyway.” That is flat out brilliant!

Change is hard and change is rarely easy to accomplish. John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach of UCLA, whose teams amazingly won 10 NCAA championships between 1964 and 1975, realized the difficulty of change. When asked the reason for his success, he said it was his ability to get his players to do what they didn’t want to do in order to get the results they wanted.

I would imagine that all of you desire to improve. So my message today is not a sermon or a lecture, but rather a gentle reminder and a challenge to actually make that plan to reach the potential you deserve and of which you are capable. Every one of us can identify three or four areas where we can improve. Take the time–it may take hours or it may take days–but force yourself to sit down and write down your goals. That often is the most difficult part – identifying the goals. But once the goals have been articulated, figuring out how to reach them  becomes infinitely easier.

Good luck! I wish all of my loyal readers a healthy and happy and prosperous New Year.