Episode 760: Why Is It So Hard to Stay Disciplined?

 This episode topic was born out of a conversation Kiera had with her husband: Why in the world is it so difficult to stay disciplined? Kiera applies this question to personal and professional lives. 

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:01.454)

Hello Dental A Team  listeners. This is Kira and woohoo. It's podcast day. It's really fun to just connect with you guys It's fun to be able to talk even though I know We're not in the same place together and I don't actually know but I had a Podcaster today who said here I listen to every one of your podcasts and it just made me feel So connected to so many different people even though I don't get to see you every day I don't get to talk to you every single day. The podcast really does make me feel so happy for you

Um, to be a part of this and to be here. So today I actually have a podcast that I don't know if I'm necessarily. Equipped to be the expert on today. So you guys are just going to get a cure dent rift over here. These are curative thoughts of what I have here. Let me get all set up here. These are my thoughts that I have. These are the things that I think about. These are the things that I feel. Um, and so you guys are going to just get curative unfiltered today of just some things that I've thought about recently.

So also, if you guys love the podcast, shout out, today's the day, I'm reading a review. You guys are gonna get to watch me live. I love, I think the reviews for me are a way for me to like connect with you, to hear what you think. You obviously can email and I love hearing the emails from you guys too. Can you believe we have well over 700 episodes? Like it just feels nuts to me how many episodes we have, but truly thank you all for the reviews that you do give Dental A Team.

I read them, I look at them, I listen to them, I review them. This is what I literally do at night, is when I can't sleep or I'm stressed about things, you better believe I literally go to the podcast and I go check to see what are the reviews, how are people liking it. So just so you know, that is honest to goodness, what I do at night. So thank you so much for all of you. And if you haven't left us a review yet, please go right now, leave those five stars right.

Message this one says great contact content. Love it. Kara. Keep up the great work. So, thank you I just love being able to hear from you guys I love hearing what you guys are doing and please you guys Sharing you guys writing the reviews and all of you sharing it on social like I watch you guys you tag us on your drive Like just snap a quick picture of it tag us. It's very simple Those things help us get ranked higher to help serve more practices So I can't do it without you and I really can't do anything with

Kiera Dent (02:26.858)

without you guys doing it yourself. So please go leave those reviews, go help the podcast rank higher and let's help serve millions of people in the dental world and positively impact them in the greatest way possible. So with that, the topic of the one that I don't feel quite equipped to share, but I wanna have it as like a conversation starter. I want to have it as something for you guys. And what my topic is, Jason and I were talking about it the other day.

He and I were talking about like just life in general. And I asked him a question and I'm gonna ask you guys the question of why is it so hard to be disciplined? And where this came up was I was thinking about offices and I was thinking about we implement things that are really simple. Like almost everything on the podcast is truly easy. It would take you about five minutes to go implement. Maybe some of them like max an hour.

I go into offices, people are beyond impressed. They're like, Kira, how'd you get all this done? And I'm like, oh, because I sat here and implemented all day long. I think about like, the real one that came up to me was route slips and how often we set it in play because billing's not happening. We're not hitting the production goals we want. And so what do we say? We say, okay, perfect. We're gonna implement a system. Doctors just have to sign off that the treatment on the route slips correct. That signature is going to take a grand total of five seconds.

but we don't stay disciplined. We don't keep doing it. We think, oh no, I don't have time to do this. Oh no, I'm not gonna be able to get that done. And so what do we do instead? We skip the step, then we have problems with the billing. And I was just thinking about like, why is it so hard for teams to stay disciplined? Why is it hard for us as human nature to stay disciplined? We have beginning of year goals that we set. We have end of year goals that we set. We have quarterly goals that we have set. And...

I don't have an answer. That's why I'm saying it's kind of a, a brain teaser topic. I would love to hear from the podcast community. You know, you're supposed to do a podcast and be the expert on it. I sometimes like to come on the podcast and pose questions, questions that make you think questions that challenge yourself, questions that make you ask yourself, why are you not disciplined in certain things? So I think about it and I'm like, okay. Um, like right now I started a new workout routine and she wants me to track my macros every day.

Kiera Dent (04:49.034)

Cause we all know abs are made in the kitchen, right? Do you know how hard it is for me to track all the food I eat all day long? Like it doesn't take that long realistically, but it's just annoying. And I think that right there is, it's not actually hard to stay disciplined because when there's something like I know if, like it's hard for me to call my family members, but I promise you if something happened to my family members instantly that would not be hard.

And so I wondered, is it hard to be disciplined because we make everything important or because we keep adding things? And so I could go back to James Clear and Atomic Habits and I asked the question of like, okay, do I need to stack these things? But at the end of the day, I guess, how much is the pain? Because for that office with the route slips and signing off on them that takes honestly five seconds, their pain clearly is not bad enough, would be my guess as to why we don't stay disciplined. My guess is there are so many things that we have to remember day in and day out.

There are so many things that we have to do that unless it's an automatic system, meaning we don't have to think about it. That's why I go into offices and I literally put on your route slips if you have open dental, the things I need you to do and all you have to do is circle it. So all I have to do is change you giving the route slip to the back once you sign off on it. It's not perfect, but it's more automatic and easier. Same thing with note templates. If I want you guys to fill in certain things, make it automatic. But I think if it's not automatic,

and the pain's not bad enough, that might be where we let these things slip. So for this practice, maybe they're not broke yet. You better believe if there was no money in the bank, I guarantee you they'd be checking off those route slips real quick. So I've wondered, is that what it takes to be disciplined? Either it has to be automatic, so it's easy, or it has to be something where the pain is bad enough. Is that really what it takes to be disciplined? Like why is being disciplined so hard?

Jason and I were talking about this. I asked him this question. This has been on my mind for about the last two weeks. And he said last night, he's like, Kira, why is it so hard to be disciplined? Why is it hard to eat good food? Why is it hard to go to bed at a good time? Why is it hard to be kind to ourselves? Like we know all these things, but being disciplined like willpower wears out. But I'm questioning, is it the reason we're doing these things? Because shoulds don't get met, must do.

Kiera Dent (07:08.114)

I should sign this route slip. I should eat healthier. I should. Well, you better believe the second that my body starts hurting, it becomes a must. So I guess the question is.

Can you be disciplined on shoulds? Or how can you turn other things into musts? How can we turn systems into musts? Like this must happen, but not overwhelm our team because if everything's important, nothing's important. So again, today was like I said, a conversation that I don't know if I'm the best expert on. Something that I'm still trying to navigate through, but I know it happens in a lot of practices. And the only two conclusions I've come to are, it either has to be automatic and easy.

or the pain has to be so bad that it becomes a must. Because willpower, dedication, it's not gonna happen. I also think building your schedule and your life to set you up for success. So for example, if I know that we need to audit route slips and I want these signed off, well, let's put an audit into place and we're gonna do it for like 30 days until this becomes a habit. It's oftentimes I think we try to implement too many things that truly aren't important.

and hope and pray whichever ones, the most important ones will be, are going to be the ones that stick. There's a lot of words. Hope you guys got that. So maybe it's also us prioritizing what really has to happen if we can't make it automatic and then do it for 30 days with a true like balance. So with those route slips, I thought, okay, doctor signs off on it, team takes it up front. I've got two checks on it. Maybe the third check if this practice isn't doing it is that it goes through an audit.

that at the end of the day it's scanned and any route slip that's got no initials on it, the doctor's responsible for calling all those patients. Hmm, interesting. Well, now the pain just got bad enough that people are going to do it. No one wants to call the patient and say, hey, I didn't call you. Gotta confirm that this is correct. No one wants to do that. And so I think it really is when you implement things into your life or to your practice, do we know, like do we have safeguards? When I go into a practice and we work with an office,

Kiera Dent (09:15.198)

I implement a lot of new systems. The consultants do this, we do it constantly. And those new systems always have to be automatic. So like morning huddle, it's got a form, everyone does it, we've got a time. I've got three people that hold each other accountable. Odds are it's probably gonna stick. I've got form, like the whole thing, like you don't have to think about it, it's just there for you. It's hard for the first couple of weeks, but then it becomes second nature. Block scheduling, I go in and I put it all in there. We have it all figured out. We train the whole team of what these are. We tell everyone like, you're not allowed to touch the blocks ever, period.

Well, blocks usually stay. Handoffs, I make it to where it's so simple, every person does it, and then we have a consequence of, and if we choose not to do this, because we've all agreed this is the most important thing, this is what will happen. So that way teams can make a smarter decision, they can work on this easier, and that's really going to help them be better at this. So I think like to be disciplined, you realistically need to have, one, it to be as automatic as possible. Two, you've got to also make sure it's a true priority. Like, is this really a need?

Or is it like a want? Because if it's not a need, it's really not gonna move it forward. If it's not automatic, it's probably gonna fall apart. So why are we setting ourselves up for failure? And then the third thing is like the accountability consequence piece. Like I know if I set it up, like Sheer Wheel's not gonna help me on tracking my food. The only thing it is, is it's fun because she made it a game for me. And so it's Tetris, but that's not enough motivation for me to do it either. I mean, some days I do it, some days I don't, but I know if I had a...

If you don't track your food, you have to work out every single day. I probably would track a lot better. Because now I've just created a reason and a motivator to get me to do it. So it's just been a question. It's been a thought of why is discipline so hard? And I think it really is. We're expecting willpower to carry us through, which is not realistic. Human beings are constantly thinking. We're constantly evolving. Like we are being, that's a human being. And so therefore we're...

We're relying on something that's not realistic. And I think that that's truly where discipline is. It's not hard to do these things, but are they a priority? Do we have it set up towards basically automatic? This is where AI is coming in. This is where so many outsourcing things are coming in because they're not reliant upon humans to remember and to have willpower to do it. So the more we can automate, the more we can simplify, the more we can prioritize and make sure it's really what we want it to be, the better off we're all going to be. So my challenge to you is, look at it.

Kiera Dent (11:40.082)

Look to see the things you're implementing. How can you make these things a must? How can we make them be a priority? Can we challenge ourselves that like, food was really not the reason I signed up with a personal trainer. Yeah, it's nice, but the real reason I signed up was to have strength training. That's why I'm doing strength training every day and I haven't missed a single one because that was my true need and my true priority. Tracking food is just a nice benefit. So the days I do it great, the days I don't, and I think about food a lot differently.

High five, I think it was good, but I'm not gonna be disciplined on it. And also think for all of us, to choose which things are we really going to be disciplined on and own that. Own it. Don't commit to something unless you're actually going to do it. Don't say, yep, I wanna get that done. Like life is filled with so many good intentions, but what if it was just filled with like actual executed intentions? That'd feel a lot better because then whenever I set an intention, it's not a wish, it's something I'm actually going to do.

So just some things for you to ponder on, some things for you to think about. I love to send out things to ask your team. If I was you, I would take this podcast to my team and I would say like, let's talk about it. Why are these things hard for us to implement? They're easy. It's not like they're hard, they're easy things, but are we asking for things that aren't a priority? Is the pain really not that bad that it's a nice to have? Well, if it's a nice to have, throw it on a list and then look at it and bring it up every quarter. Truly, I have that. I have an idealist. I have all these great ideas.

but they're not priority, there's not pain, and it's not something that's a must right now, so I'm gonna delay it. And I think the more we can train ourselves that when we say we're going to do something, we execute on it 100%. And I think that's a conditioning of human behavior too. I think so often we allow ourselves to scapegoat, we allow ourselves to be out of it that we don't require ourselves to follow through, so it's easy to make would be wishes instead of actual commitments. So I would just.

I would just think about this. I have nothing to have you action on other than to think about it. Because I think sometimes these are pondering thoughts that will come to you, that will make you think differently, that will make you act differently, that will make you have your team be different. I will say, I lied, I always wanna give you a tangible because that just feels right. Think about your commitments and is it a need? Have we made it as automatic or as easy as possible?

Kiera Dent (14:00.35)

Is there a consequence or a pain associated with it? And is this truly something that's a priority right now or can it postpone?

And then when you do commit to something, be disciplined and start to train yourself that when you commit to something, you're there. I did not commit to this girl that I would track every single day. What I did commit to is that I would do strength training three times a week. Tracking is just an added benefit. And then give yourself the grace that if it's not a true commitment, not something that you've truly committed to, that you also have space to be a human. That you don't have to be perfect and that's okay. But on the things that you do commit to, show up 100% and set yourself up for it.

And with that, we can help you in any way. I know it's hard, but Hey, if you could have a fairy godmother in your practice for a day, day and a half, and we come and put in so many systems that are basically automatic minimal effort for you with massive ROI and changes. I think it'd be pretty awesome. We just had an office struggling with scheduling, went out to our practice two weeks later, most of her stress is gone. Schedule is more profitable. Team is rocking and rolling because it was so easy for them. Of course they were going to do it. And the patient experience is happier.

If that's something that would benefit you guys, email us, hello at thedentalityteam.com or head on over to thedentalityteam.com and click book a call. I'd love to help you. I don't believe that business should be hard. I don't believe that running a dental practice should be hard. I don't believe that having a team of accountable people and ownership should be hard. I don't believe that having to be disciplined should be hard. I believe let's make it automatic. Let's make it fun. Let's make it easy. And let's have consequences or follow-ups that we know we're gonna do so we all can commit to it.

crazy. I can get a team who's quote unquote not accountable to be accountable very quickly because it's important. They know the process and it's so easy. Of course they're going to do it. So I would say do it yourself or reach out. Hello at thedentalyteam.com. I'd love to help you. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental Team Podcast.