Having asked this question to hundreds of people, there is a common response which nearly all have said.

‘To love and appreciate people in their lives and to say thank you to them.’

Life does not ask our permission to be born and it does not ask our permission when we are about to die.

As none of us know when the last 24 hours of our lives will be, why wait until you arrive at that moment to command the highest action priority step of loving and thanking those people around us?

Ask yourself, are the things and the frustrations that you may be holding onto to maintain being right, really worth the time effort and energy? Would it just be better to let go of the things which are holding you back from finding fulfilment at work or in your personal life for the sake of living while you are alive?

‘Life does not ask our permission to be born and it does not ask our permission when we are about to die.’

We can get stressed and frustrated when practicing dentistry and its partly to do with the demands of the job, partly to do with our inabilities and partly to do with the fact that no one teaches us how to respond when certain situations arise.

Its in those moments when the intensity of the problem is the greatest and the time horizons are small that we can’t see the solution, and we can’t open our hearts and minds to the lesson from the experience.

If you are going through problems at your practice and don’t know what to do, here are some tips.

1Stop and define exactly what it is that is causing you to be this way.  Sometimes we exaggerate the problem and add into the mix other things which can go wrong.

2Be grateful for the opportunity to grow and the lesson you are about to get.

3If appropriate, seek professional or personal help from people who understand what you may be going through.

4Work out possible solutions that are fair, legal and reasonable to all parties concerned.  Remember that life has a tendency to work in far exchange so don’t try and get something for nothing or give something for nothing.

5Do the pros and cons of each solution, the benefits and drawbacks of this solution happening or not happening so that it is clear in your mind and your not emotionally charged over it,

6Broaden your time horizons.  Will this matter to you in 5, 10, 20, or 50 years time from now, or would you have forgotten the problem like you did the last one?

7Remember that this can be the last 24 hours you have, so check in with yourself.  Is this the way you would like to live in the present moment? Relax and put things into perspective whilst remaining responsible. Breath!

8Chunk down the solution into small action steps you can do over a period of time.

9Focus on implementing the solutions rather than the problem and always have contingencies to fall back on.

10Learn from the experience and see how it served you in your own purpose in life.  Has it made you more wiser in the areas of finance, practice management, staff or patient care?

11Be thankful for the lesson you learnt so that you don’t carry emotional baggage.

12Continue to focus on your purpose in life and service.

Life will not give you a situation that you cannot handle.  As Albert Einstein once said

‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.’

Rise above the level of the paradox to the level of the metadox.  Its only then you will be able to see things more clearly, and only then will you start to come alive.