Episode 719: Add the Magic of Sprinkles!

This episode is all about reapplying the FUN! in your life. Kiera reflects on how as adults, we often stop enjoying life when adult responsibilities take over. She encourages incorporating a handful of things back into your life that you consider fun and talks about how making moves like this will add a level of fulfillment back into your day-to-day.

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Transcript:

0:00:00.0 Kiera Dent: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Dental A-Team podcast. I'm your host Kiera Dent. And I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices, coaching teams. Yep. We don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A-Team podcast.

0:00:51.0 Kiera Dent: Hello Dental A-Team listeners, this is Kiera aka, Princess Leia today I decided to do one more podcast dressed as Princess Leia. Before I wrap this up, why not? Let's have it be a little more fun. And today I think this is going to be a really, really fun way for you guys to just enjoy life again. I want you guys to think of are you enjoying life? Like really one to 10, are you enjoying life? Are you living your dream of a life? Are you making the finances that you wanna make? Are you having the balance between work, relationships, mental health, physical health for you to be balanced? Are you? I want you to answer those questions honestly. A lot of times we listen to podcasts and we consume content thinking that we're actually being productive in progress and making progress but in reality it's actually procrastination because we just listen and don't do anything. Just like making to-do lists and not executing on them is not really progress. It's procrastination. Just like thinking about working out is not progress, it's procrastination.

0:01:50.2 Kiera Dent: And so for you guys today, I want you to think of, are you living your dream life? Are you having fun in your dream life? Are you enjoying it? And if not, what could we do to make it a little better? And if so, what could we do to enhance it 1% or 2%? So today as Princess Leia, for those of you just listening, I definitely dress up as Princess Leia today. It is not Halloween. I feel like a five-year-old who's just throwing on my Princess Leia dress, putting my hair in some cute little buns over here but it was for a purpose. I don't usually dress like this. I don't even know Star Wars. I definitely need to catch up on this. But, and if any of you wanna help me out, give me like the Star Wars 101, email me, [email protected], I'll definitely say thank you for that or give me some comments 'cause I'm sure these videos you are going to have them.

0:02:36.3 Kiera Dent: So on that what I wanted to do today dressed up with this is I want to remind you guys how to have fun, how to have fun at work, how to have fun in life, because I truly believe the secret to life is to have fun. I have a little sticky note really, it's right here. It sits on my desk. It says, the secret to happiness is always having something to look forward to. And I think something to look forward to is where we add that sprinkling of fun. I feel like life is like a cupcake and our work and our job and our careers and the relationships are the frosting and then the fun are the sprinkles. So where can we add a little more fun into your life? How can I help you guys have a little more fun?

0:03:17.6 Kiera Dent: So I want you to think back, we're just gonna go back in time. I want you to think back, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old. So we're gonna put you guys back in childhood, back in elementary school. I want you to think, what did you do for fun or the things you loved to do? For me, I loved to be outside. I was notorious for wearing dresses and playing soccer in a dress, obviously with shorts underneath. My mom definitely kept me modest and I'm very thankful. But I loved to play soccer. I loved to be outside. I enjoyed running and doing cartwheels and dancing. Those were like the things that I genuinely loved to do. I did enjoy sports. I played tennis. I was terrible at basketball, that was not my thing. But I also loved to play football. In seventh grade I definitely got picked first round after the first game 'cause I was definitely picked last, the first game. I'm still only holding onto it a little bit. And then they realized that I was actually really good because I have four brothers, so I had to get good at this. And I was chosen first round game two, but I loved it. I loved to be competitive. I love to have sports. I love to run. I was the fastest runner in fourth and fifth grade. I would always beat the class. I enjoyed those things so much.

0:04:29.8 Kiera Dent: So I want you guys to think of what did you enjoy? What were the things that you had fun doing? What were the things that made you feel happy to be alive? And now I want you to think of today, do you do any of those things? Do you dress up in costumes 'cause you love to do that and pretend to be someone you weren't? Did you enjoy being outside? Did you love drawing? Did you love writing? Did you love telling stories? And I wanna ask you, why don't you do that anymore? Why? Think about myself, why did I stop playing soccer? Why did I stop doing gymnastics? And honestly, I'll tell you right now, I haven't thought about it for years because I felt like I wasn't good enough. I started to compare myself to other people. That was for me. What about it for you?

0:05:10.0 Kiera Dent: And also time and also my body. I don't feel like I can run half as well. I ran a marathon and I'm like, oh yeah, I ran a marathon. It wasn't that long ago. It was 2016 guys. Whew, that's six years. That's a long time. That's actually more than six years, we're up to seven. Thank you for letting me correct my math on that. Good night. Seven years since I ran a marathon. And why don't we do this? I want you just to think right now. I'll give you a minute. I'll be quiet. You can pause it that way I don't awkwardly sit here in silence with you. Why don't we do those things that we love that make us feel alive? Why do we feel like we have to be something that we're not? Why do we feel like why has work... 'cause for me, that's my answer. Work.

0:05:55.7 Kiera Dent: I love to work. I can sit here and I can show. And I think it's sometimes because finances have become the universal quote unquote grading scale in society, right? Something that we all have, something we all have access to and it's something that differentiates us amongst other people. And so for a lot of people, I know a lot of employees don't care about the benefits, they're nice to have. But what you really care about is what's your take home pay. I know I did. What's the hourly? And that's how I can compare. What job do I wanna have? Where do I wanna work? The other benefits are nice. The other benefits will keep me there like a great culture and probably if I'm interested in retirement. But I'll tell you what, when I was first an assistant retirement I did not care, I did not worry about it. I wanted my biggest take home pay because while yes, my future self would have appreciated it, my current self needed money to pay my bills.

0:06:44.3 Kiera Dent: So on that, is it fair to think that maybe we've stopped having fun, we've stopped playing, we've stopped enjoying life because work has taken over. We've got sophisticated. Right now Dental A-Team's book club for this time is, and it's one of them, so if you haven't read it, read it with us, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. And he talks about in there, I'll do a whole breakdown, so you can definitely listen to that book and be part of the podcast. But he talks about in there how we have been trained by society of what's important to us and what we should believe in and what we should deem as important. But if we step out of that and we think for one minute of what's important to us and could we add a little more fun in our life. Could we dress up? Could we be silly? Could we go to those things that make us laugh? So for me, being outside and loving it, why don't I incorporate being in nature more often? Why don't I sign up for running again? Why don't I just sign up for a race? It's gonna force me to then want to go and run again. Why don't I find friends? I loved hanging out with friends. I had so many friends growing up, if you believe that. I bet none of you would've guessed that, right? [chuckle]

0:07:48.0 Kiera Dent: But why don't we do this? And I would say that oftentimes we allow work and the things that maybe suck our energy to consume our time. And today I wanna encourage you, let's just change that a little bit, not going for radical, because human needs are... We need finances to survive. When we're kids our parents hopefully took care of that for us and for some of us that wasn't the case, but for a lot of us that was. We didn't have the stress of survival. We didn't have the stress of needing to make ends meet. We didn't have the stress of comparing. And then you become older and we think we become wiser, but we forget what lights our fire. We forget what gives us that passion in life. And so today, I just wanna encourage you to pick one, two, or three things that you could incorporate to have a little more fun.

0:08:32.2 Kiera Dent: I have another sticky note. These things sit with me all the time. It says "No matter what, decide to live in a beautiful state. Why wait till the final moments? Life is short." And I thought about this a lot. Like life is so short. Our friendships are short. Our relationships are short. Like in the grand scheme of things, it is short. And we get into this illusion that they're gonna last forever. And then when they're gone, they're stripped away from us and leave us with this gaping pain. Why not live a little more today? And I wanna ask you, you might have an inner critic that tells you, I can't do that because I can't afford to not work. And what I will say is, the person who spends all their days at work is a person who's unfulfilled, usually unhealthy and lacks the fulfillment. I want you to remember right now, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.

0:09:22.2 Kiera Dent: You can have all the money in the world. And I will tell you a story of my personal life where I had this goal. I had a goal to make a million, to see a million in my bank account. And I'll tell you the day that I did it, I was sitting at home in my apartment by myself, no one to celebrate with me, no one to share, no friends. The worst shape I've ever been in in my entire life and depressed. But yet, that was a goal I had dreamed of. And I remember, like, I literally sat there and I was like, high five. Like, this is great. Like who do I tell? I texted Jason told him, called my mom. I was like, oh my gosh, guess what? But it didn't change me. It didn't change my life 'cause I was living the same life. I was sitting in an apartment, you guys like, great, congratulations.

0:10:12.5 Kiera Dent: And I realized I don't have friends, [chuckle] I don't have people to celebrate this with. I don't have a healthy body like I am using my health to create my wealth and giving up everything that makes me happy. Not everything I love to work. I'm not saying that working is wrong. What I'm saying is, can you have a little more fun in life? Can you be a little more youthful? Can you go back to those things that just genuinely made your heart on fire? Can you create that just a little bit? The cupcake remember is our life. The frosting on top are the relationships, our work, our job, our career, the things that are like our task, the day-to-day that make up our, the bulk of our time. And the sprinkles are the fun. The sprinkles are not 99% of the cupcake. They're like 1% of the cupcake, 2% of the cupcake, maybe 5% of the cupcake, depending upon how big these sprinkles are. But they're not the main shebang. They are the pieces that make it happy. They are the things that make you happy. So where could we add 1, 2, 3, 4, 5%?

0:11:11.4 Kiera Dent: So what I wanna show you guys is how can we do this? How can we make this tangible? And for those of you on the podcast, I will tell you what I'm doing right now, just listening, those of you who are watching I can show you. Do you have a planner? This is what I do. I'm literally gonna show you guys. So here's my planner. You can see I've got all these pieces and where there's pink, that's Kiera's time. And in this of everything, there is one little block of pink in an entire week for two hours and that's my personal time. Every single week I look for something I should have put down at the bottom. There's a full pedal where I go cycling, that's for Kiera. So in a 40-hour work week, I have three hours. Okay? It's not even 10%. Three hours dedicated to just Kiera. And every single week, my favorite color is pink. So whatever your favorite color is, can you go in and add some sprinkles, some fun, some youthfulness, some things that just make you feel so alive. We often think that I've got to have it balanced. Meaning 40 hours of work, 40 hours of play. And that's not how it works. Could be. Maybe you've got 60 hours of play and 20 hours of work, but whatever is the right balance for you, it's not equal. It's balanced.

0:12:18.0 Kiera Dent: So for me, if I can at least add in two to three hours per week of Keira time, I'm good. I'm great. I'm super happy. I feel super fulfilled. I feel like I can add that fun. But notice I'm not even working out. So maybe if I added in say an extra hour split up over two days, so 30 minutes each day, could I start to have more fun to be able to run those races, to be able to go play soccer again, to go and have fun like I used to? Could I start to just start small? And I think we get discouraged as adults because we expect ourselves to be perfect. And I'm going to right now encourage you to get used to not being good at things, to go try something that you're not good at. I've got my guitar upstairs, I am terrible at the guitar, but I wanna get good at it. And so we are so equipped as humans to think especially as adults, that if we're not perfect at it, that we don't wanna keep doing it and I think that that's where we lose the fun. I mean, I didn't know I was good at soccer. I didn't know I could play tennis. I tried it and I looked terrible and I practiced a lot. Running a marathon, good nights, that was really hard. And Cookie, she was the one who beat me on the race. I could not catch her. She was faster than me and she's like 25 years older than me. That was definitely motivating and humiliating.

0:13:33.3 Kiera Dent: But I wanna encourage you to, one, add in at least 5% of your week, even up to 10%. Let's get a little crazy, 10% of your week where you dedicate something to you that makes your heart and soul on fire. And then number two, I want you to sign up for something. Go do something, something that you are not good at. Now that can be business and that could be fun. I was not good at numbers. Woo. I hated looking at a P&L. I was terrified of it. I was terrified. And I love helping clients become good at reading a P&L. Our clients who then confidently know the numbers of their business are so much happier, less stressed, and they have more time for fun because they're not stressed about the business and if they can pay themselves or not, which is a survival mode. So if you're not good at that, let's learn that. Let's hire a coach. Let's become an expert on it. If you're not good at... If you've always wanted to play guitar let's sign up for a lesson. Let's be okay being bad. Because when we can learn to be beginners again, when we can learn to try new things, that's where we become creative again. That's where we become fun again. That's where the excitement and joy in life comes again. And that's where we also give grace to team members who are new, who don't know what they're doing. So it's going to absolutely at a hundred percent make your life better.

0:14:48.6 Kiera Dent: So today I wanted to just come to you of, let's have a little more fun in life. Let's be a little more like we were when we were little. Let's find ways to incorporate that back into our life if it adds joy. And let's remember that it's perfectly perfect to not be good at things, to be a learner, again, to switch the side from expert to beginner and enjoy the process of learning new skills, being bad at things again. I have definitely botched my first time tuning that guitar after not playing since seventh grade. I'm not gonna tell you how many years that is. I'm starting to get into that phase where I don't wanna share. I definitely popped a string. I've never popped a string. I forgot how to tune a guitar and it took me like I think six months to get that restrung but it's fun. It's fun to be not great at it. It's fun to have something where I'm really not, I don't know it, but it's fun to create and cultivate talents and hobbies that add joy and sprinkles to life. So I wanna ask you, what sprinkles are you gonna add back into your life? It doesn't need to be the whole, the whole cupcake, just the sprinkles. And if we can help you, this is what I live for, is getting dentists and teams their lives back, helping them be financially secure and doing it on a personal level that's specific for you.

0:16:05.3 Kiera Dent: I love training you. I love teaching you. I love creating custom things for you. And that's what our team does. So if we can help you, go to @thedentalAteam.com. Book a strategy call. I'd love to help you. You get a one hour free strategy call where we're gonna give you so much value and you can choose to work with us or not. But there is no risk. Why not? The only thing stopping you is you. Let's add those sprinkles in. Let's show you how to do it from people who have done it and are living their dream lives. We're not perfect. We're always striving for better, but we are able to show you how to do it successfully 'cause we've done it for hundreds of offices just like you. And with that, guys, go add the sprinkles. Go have an incredible day. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A-Team podcast.

[music]

0:16:45.7 Kiera Dent: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A-Team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.