Episode 775: The Magic In Finding Joy

 Kiera takes a moment to encourage a re-centering in your personal and professional life.

Transcript:

0:00:05.8 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, dealer, office manager, regional manager, practice owner and I have a team of traveling consultants, for we have traveled 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.

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0:00:50.5 Kiera Dent: Hello, Dental A-Team listeners. This is Kiera. Oh my goodness, Happy, merry Christmas. Whatever you choose to celebrate today, I just wanted to bump on here because you guys know I live for holidays. I genuinely live for holidays, I think holidays are the spice of life, they're the things that allow us to stop in our day-to-day, look for other things and be able to truly 100% reset, refocus re-center because it breaks up our day-to-day. I live for holidays. So happy holidays to you, whether you celebrate Christmas, you celebrate Hanukkah, you don't celebrate anything at all, cheers to a day, a day off, I hope you guys enjoyed yesterday, I hope you guys just had the happiest holidays. I had to get on and just share, because honestly, when we stop and celebrate when we're here for Christmas, when we are here for all of those holidays, this is the spice of life, and I was just thinking about it this year of one, what are your favorite traditions that you do around this time of year?

0:01:49.5 Kiera Dent: For me, this year was an interesting year because as some of you know, and if you haven't done it with me, make sure you do it, this will be your little homework assignment, I always choose a word to be the theme for my year, so for this year, for 2023, my word that just came to my mind is the first word you think of, so thinking of 2024, you would pop in and you would say, What would my word be? And whatever the first word is that comes to mind, choose that one. Don't second guess it. Don't overthink it. It truly is that first word. And the first word that came to mind for me for 2023 was the word joy, and I just wanted to have more joy. I love the phrase enjoy because it's literally being in the moment of joy and this time of year, this season, the month of December, I think so many of us feel either the hustle and bustle or really feeling the joy of the season. I love this month because I feel like this month is where I open my eyes and I see people again. I see people as people. I see people as human beings with me. I see them as friends, not enemies. I see them as the kindness that they do to others. All of us become more giving, more thoughtful, and sometimes it can be stressful. I know holidays and all the hustle and bustle can be very stressful, but I think that that's also a cultural thing, and if we really want, we really break it down to the simplicity I do think it becomes magical.

0:03:13.4 Kiera Dent: And that was something that I've experienced this year was joy, and so that's really gonna be my theme today as we do the holidays of having joy, and this is a season of joy, and this year. I will tell you, I had so much more joy in my life by focusing on it. I saw the joy in the problems. We had some really big hairy audacious goals as a company, and it frustrated me because it wasn't easy and we didn't hit the growth goals that I wanted, but finding joy in those obstacles, finding joy in that experience, finding joy in being a business owner.

0:03:50.4 Kiera Dent: I was getting ready to speak in August at an event, and I texted my husband, and my husband is super, super brilliant, and I texted him and I said, I'm so nervous for this. And my dad also retired, just to give a little more point of reference, my dad retired this year, and so between my husband and my dad, I think both of them gave me a really good education and joy in life, and so right before I went to speak in August, my husband texted me, and he said, Kiera, enjoy this, you're not gonna get to do this forever, so go out there, enjoy it, have fun. Like, you know what you're doing. You're an incredible speaker. But remember, this isn't going to last forever.

0:04:28.5 Kiera Dent: My dad, at the beginning of the year, my dad retired in June, and so this was in, I think January of this year, my dad said, it's kind of surreal that I'm entering my last, if you will, semester of school, my siblings were all getting ready to go back to school, and my dad said it's kind of surreal for me that I've been working my whole life, and if you will, I'm going into my last "semester" of my career. And my dad retired in June, and I've been talking to him a lot since retiring, and he said, Really Kiera, just enjoy the moments that you get to have. He said, You won't get to do this forever. And he said, Do I enjoy retirement? Absolutely. He said, But I'm so grateful that I enjoyed every day. He's like, It's weird for me not to work anymore, it's weird to not have that piece of my life. And so I think between those perspectives of my husband and my dad this year, really making sure I'm taking time to enjoy. Making sure I'm taking time to enjoy these moments, the hard moments, the moments that stretch me, the moments of just pure joy.

0:05:25.7 Kiera Dent: My team this year, I had them come out again in August. I had quite a bit going on in August. Let me just tell you, August is a month to always be remembered in our company. You all have Sucktember, and I feel like we've got August, like audacious August. It is nuts, I don't know what happens in August, but our team came together and we did... I really wanted to do Dental A-Team survivor, and so our Dental A-Team retreat this year was white water rafting with our team and the pure joy of getting my team together and putting something fun together for them and just having all of us giggle and laugh and enjoy being together as teammates.

0:06:03.5 Kiera Dent: And doing a family reunion with my family this year, we got all... There are seven kids in my family with my parents, and we all got together, and while there were some times that were tricky, I mean that's a lot of people under one roof just to enjoy the fact that I got to be with my family and instead of trying to make it perfect or analyze everything to enjoy it, and to go into offices this year and truly just enjoy being with practices and helping them, and on my coaching calls this year, I read Unreasonable Hospitality. Shoutout to the doctor, he knows who he is, he sent it to me as a gift, that book changed my perspective because coaching calls kind of how sometimes you might look at your schedule like, Oh, the schedule. My coaching calls are kind of like a child prophy day or a crown seat day, they're back-to-back 30-minute to 60-minute appointments, and I go from 6:00 AM till 6:00 PM every Tuesday, every other Tuesday.

0:06:56.0 Kiera Dent: And while I love coaching, sometimes I allow myself the perspective of, woo that feels daunting. And Unreasonable Hospitality literally changed my perspective of, that's a day that I get to create magic moments for my clients, and so I actually put that at the top of every Tuesday and it says, today's magic moment day. And it's been joyful for me to do those coaching calls when they used to feel a little bit more like a job, they became something that I genuinely look forward to. And so really just having joy in all that we do, I feel like this is a season for us to reflect, I feel like today's a day and a time of year and a season for us to reflect and to really enjoy, enjoy time with family, enjoy time with those people that were around. And I just thought of how often do we not allow ourselves to enjoy. How often are we limiting our joy in life, how often are we not giggling like little kids playing in the backyard on summer nights? Because we're so stressed about the next day. How often are we not enjoying dentistry because we're so hung up on the business and the stress of it, that we're not enjoying what we actually went to school for years to do? How often are we not enjoying being a treatment coordinator, a position that we dreamed of being for years, or a dental assistant or a hygienist. How many times have we forgotten that we don't get to do this forever and to seize and enjoy the moments?

0:08:15.9 Kiera Dent: So as this holiday season is here, as this is a month where we tend to reflect and we look outward and we stop looking as inward, really finding spaces and places for you to enjoy to enjoy more, to allow yourself to enjoy life more, to be in joy, to not just have to make it to where when I hit this level, then I will enjoy life, but to find more and more and more opportunities for you to enjoy, for you to flourish, for you to change people's lives, for you to remember, like my dad said, This season is not going to last forever. You're not going to get to do this forever. And I think we sometimes feel like time is infinite until it's not. And we don't know when that day will come. We don't know what tomorrow holds. Ryan Isaac with Dentist Advisors, he gave me a really awesome quote this year, he said, Kiera, the only thing that's real is today, he's like, You can sit here and save all you want for retirement, but the only guarantee is today. He said, So you got to freaking live, Kiera, you've got to live, you've got to be in the moment, you've got to enjoy this time that you've got. Because the only thing we have is today. And I've sometimes forget that because I think I have unlimited time, unlimited opportunities to serve clients into podcast, but this chapter will close at some point.

0:09:33.5 Kiera Dent: Hopefully not for like 20, 30 years for me, but all of us will have our chapters closed, and I hope you look back and you've enjoyed more than you've hated, you've enjoyed more than you've stressed, you've enjoyed people more than they became problems for you. You've enjoyed the hard struggles because they're making you stronger, you've enjoyed the time with your families, you've enjoyed this incredible business that you built even if it's hard, but you literally are looking for more opportunities to have joy, so instead of it just being the month of December, putting that filter on of how can you have more joy. How can I enjoy this more?

0:10:11.1 Kiera Dent: And my husband, there was an office, he knew my word was going to be joy, and last year, at this time of year, we walked past an office and they had the word joy in their window sill, but it was facing them, and so it was interesting because if you flip joy around it, so that would be why YOJ, but that J is kind of flipped backwards, it actually kind of looks like you, you and I thought about that. And I think Joy genuinely does come from you, joy comes from you loving who you are, joy comes from you finding gratitude. Another really, really, really fantastic quote, I just heard is, We can never be happier than we are grateful. Just thinking of starting with you and being grateful for these opportunities, if you look at everything that I've learned through this year, everything I've shared with you from my husband's perspective when I was speaking to my dad's perspective, from retiring, to seeing joy flip backwards to saying you, it all starts with gratitude and internal.

0:11:12.6 Kiera Dent: I have a filter, I can choose to see these things as amazing or terrible. What's good and amazing, it's just as available as what's terrible and awful. Both perspectives are available at any moment of every day, you just get to decide which one you're going to look through, you get to decide the moments that are gonna light your fire, you get to decide... And so like on the road in life, in work, find ways to sprinkle those little magics like holidays do, find ways to add those little moments of joy, you can have joyful moments, you can have the happy moments, you can not call it sprinkles in life, but look for more ways to have that filter in that perspective through your life and I promise you, you'll have a more abundant year, AKA more successful, you'll be happier, you'll still be stressed, but you'll be less stressed 'cause you'll have a further outreaching perspective. And your life is going to look radically different.

0:12:04.7 Kiera Dent: And so for you guys this season, today celebrating, I hope that you give yourself a gift of joy. And remember you don't get to do this forever, and how can you have those little simple moments of joy. Joy doesn't have to be grandiose. Joy doesn't have to be anything monumental. Joy doesn't have to require anybody else. Joy doesn't require money, doesn't require time, it doesn't require anything other than a perspective on a filter of you choosing to see it that way. And I would encourage you to give yourself the gift of joy. So again, you don't have to choose this for your word for next year, that's not what I'm implying, I'm just saying, right now it's fresh. This season's been busy, hopefully it's been more joyful for you, but to look to see where can you sprinkle that joy, like those little sprinkles of holidays throughout your life this year, and give yourself the gift of more joy in your life, more freedom to be happier, more freedom to be playful and silly. More freedom to enjoy this moment because it won't last forever, and you won't get to do this forever. And with that, I hope you guys have an incredible day, an incredible season.

0:13:04.3 Kiera Dent: If I can help you, if Dental A-Team can help you experience more joy in your life, don't wait, guys, give yourself the gift, hire a coach. I've hired so many coaches and they have literally helped me have more joy, less stress because they give me a perspective I can't see, so reach out, [email protected]. And as always I'm giving you the biggest hug, cheering you on, celebrating you and wishing you guys the happiest of happiest of happiest of holidays, and I will always. Thank you guys for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A-Team podcast.

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0:13:46.7 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.