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Know Yourself
Why – Why do you do what you do? What will be your sentence?
Self-Image – Who are you when you are at your best? What are your best qualities?
What areas of personality and behavior do you want to improve?
Material Things –What is your goal for financial success? How much is enough?
Home – How is your home life? Enough leisure time? What could make it better?
Health – What are you doing for health, fitness, and athletics – personal appearance? Do you
have a pleasant personality and positive mental attitude?
Relationships – Describe your relationship with friends, family and staff members? How does
your personality and behavior profile relate to others?
Work – Are you happy in your work? Are you a continual student? Are you doing what you
really want to do? Do you work with people you enjoy and respect? Do you produce
excellent comprehensive care? Do you work for people who appreciate you? If your answers are NO, how would you make changes?
Life Style – What are you doing to pursue an active life style? What do you want out of life?
What will it look like when you have it? How will your life be different when you have it? What are you willing to do to realize your dream?
Life Purpose –Your life has a unique purpose fulfilled through what you do your relationships and the way you live. Describe that purpose as a reflection of your aspirations.
Spiritual Health – Describe the spiritual influence in your life. How does your belief system
and values influence your behavior and spiritual health?
If you could have everything you desire, what does it bring you? How would your life change?
M. William Lockard, Jr. DDS
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START not with WHY… but know HOW:
ü WHY do you want to create this dental practice – for what purpose?
ü HOW- is your Philosophy of values and principles – doing what is right. HOW and WHY give people in an organization a sense of values by which to work and live. It sets the standard for your character and integrity. How we do things manifests in the systems and processes within an organization and the culture.
ü WHAT- is your style of practice that you create; the dental procedures that you provide.
Have you developed a strategic plan, step-by-step, to achieve your dream?
ü Have you shared your Vision, your WHY and HOW with your team?
ü Is your office well organized? If not, why not?
ü Do you obtain professional financial, organizational, psychological and team management advice?
ü Describe your leadership style: visionary, directive, democratic, coaching or empowering.
ü What will the physical environment of this new practice look and feel like?
ü What are the characteristics and expectations for your team members? Are they clearly understood? Do you have a system to hire the right people first – then train them to your standard of excellence?
ü How will you and team members handle good and bad times?
ü How will this practice allow your personal life to flourish?
ü Do you have inner peace?
ü Have you established the Seven Systems that run your practice? Clearly defined with standard of excellence and responsibility assigned?
Financial Management Patient Retention
Exceptional Team New Patient Development
Technical Excellence Time Management
New Patient Experience
After you answer each question…..assume that you actually have what you want.
Ask yourself, “What would that bring me….how would my life change?”
The Power of Positive Attitude
Attitude is the all-important key to success and happiness. The winner’s edge is more than talent, education or money; it is a positive attitude, good self-image and likeability. We can’t capture success, nor can we buy it, or inherit it. We can only create it. And the only way to create it is by changing our thoughts and habits. We become what we think about most; our thoughts become our reality. Our only limits are our thoughts. Many times a positive attitude is more important than actual fact, regardless of how impossible the situation. Our attitude of confidence and passion for our ‘purpose’ will determine our capacity because it affects and releases our full potential.
It is our attitude that causes us to think, act and believe as we do. Our behavior is a result of our physical, mental and spiritual health. When we radiate a positive attitude of wellbeing and the confidence of a person who knows where he is going, good things will start to happen. Happiness and enthusiasm are contagious to everyone around us. Humor and joy are the ingredients with healing power that keep everything in proper perspective.
It is a positive attitude at the beginning of a task that affects a successful outcome. We get what we expect more often than not. All our actions, feelings, behavior and even our abilities are always consistent with our attitude and self-image. What we expect to see, in large part, we see. What we expect to have in our life, we have. What we focus on most expands. It is a cumulative process.
Our attitude toward others will determine their attitude toward us. The way we see, think or feel about people affects the way we treat them, and the way we treat them affects the way they respond. If you will treat everyone you meet for the next 30 days as the most important person on earth, you will do it for the rest of your life. The reward will be life changing – for you and them. Before a person can achieve the kind of life he wants, he must first become that kind of individual. He must think, look, and conduct himself as would the person he wishes to become.
We have been given the opportunity to assume the responsibility for the quality of our life. Accept the responsibility and develop the characteristics of honesty, integrity, empathy, sincerity and good humor. Thinking that you will make it happen and then doing it is the key. It is the defining characteristic of all successful people.
This life is yours.
Take the power to choose what you want to do, and do it well.
Take the power to love what you want in life, and love it honestly.
Take the power to walk in the forest, and be part of nature.
Take the power to control your own life;
No one else can do it for you.
Take the power to make your life happy.
-Susan Polis Schulz
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Self-Knowledge, Happiness and Character in Relationships
Character and Predicting Happiness
Do you know what will make you happy? Many people live much of their lives saying, “If only I could really have the love of that person,” or ”have children,” or “get that job” or “that promotion,” or “live in that house,” or “win the lottery, then I could be happy.”
The study of happiness is a major new field of study in psychology. Dr. Martin Seligman and his colleagues have done a great deal of research on happiness. His research supports the argument that happy people are those who have developed their character and strive to be good people.
The psychologist Daniel Kahnemann won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his research about how people choose and make decisions. His work shows that after getting the things that we think will make us happy, and after indeed experiencing a brief spurt in our level of happiness, which may last for as long as a year or two, we return to whatever level of happiness we had before we got the desired person or thing. Whatever positive feelings we do have are usually not as intense as we think they will be, and they don’t last as long as we expected.
We overestimate what the fulfillment of a wish will do for us, in part because we don’t realize what demands will be made as a result of having the wish fulfilled. Getting the things that we think will make us happy often requires us to change in some unexpected but significant ways. They come with requirements for us to adapt to new realities. Winning the lottery is one of the best examples of this.
Happiness is determined by who we are, the kind of people we are. It is a mistake to expect marriage or winning the lottery to make you happy if you were not happy with yourself and your life to begin with.
Aristotle said that happiness is first of all, about being a good person. He said being happy is inextricably tied in with virtue. He believed that successfully developing and strengthening our character would produce the most satisfaction in life. Those who have a weaker moral life are not as happy, no matter how successful they appear to be. They foolishly pursue wealth, status, security and material things as a way to feel better about self, and it does not work.
Self-Knowledge and Happiness
A basic attribute needed for becoming a better and happier person in life is self-knowledge. We all think we know ourselves, but that is a fallacy. It is not easy to know ourselves. It requires a great deal of objectivity. Self-knowledge, knowledge of others, and a correct understanding of the situation we are a part of or the context in which we live all go hand in hand. People of good character have a better grasp of these three areas than do others because their perceptions are more accurately based in reality.
Self-knowledge requires awareness of how we are behaving. The problem occurs when we allow our imagined picture of ourselves (what we want to believe about ourselves based on our subjectivity) to obscure any knowledge of our actual behavior.
M. William Lockard, Jr. DDS
