Mahmood Mawjee suggests taking a holistic view of your health to reach your goals.
How important is your mental and physical health while trying to achieve your goals? Which should you focus on to become the best version of yourself?
It is crucial to build and protect both your mental and physical health if you are to become the best version of yourself. You cannot have one without the other. You can also not grow as a person and be everything you want to be without first being mentally and physically healthy.
Mental resilience
Both self-confidence and mental resilience are vital for your personal and professional growth as a dentist, but there are important differences between the two. Self-confidence is knowing what you do well and doing more of it. Mental resilience is getting up after you have been knocked down.
For example, say you complete a dental implant course and start providing treatment in practice. You can increase your patients’ satisfaction and boost your earning potential, so as you get confident with treatments, you might decide to do more.
However, what happens when a patient complains about their treatment experience? Or maybe a case doesn’t go to plan, so you have a problem with the aesthetic result delivered and the patient complains. How do you handle the challenge? Do you worry every day about the complaint escalating and going to the GDC, or do you address the issue with the patient and turn the experience into a motivator that drives your future skill development?
Finding a positive response to such challenges demonstrates your mental resilience and will help you protect your mental health even during low points of your life.
Physical health matters too
To achieve peak mental strength, you have to be physically healthy too. There is a massive body of research that demonstrates the bi-directional relationship between mental and physical well-being. Those with psychological issues are at higher risk of various conditions, from heart disease and stroke to musculoskeletal problems, irritable bowel syndrome, respiratory diseases and even cancer. The impact of poor mental health on physical health costs the NHS approximately £8 billion a year. Similarly, people with chronic physical health conditions are more likely to suffer from poor mental health.
You are likely using much of this research when educating and supporting your patients, but how often do you stop and consider your situation? Do you prioritise your own health? Do you make time to look after your body and mind?
If you don’t, you are immediately creating a barrier to your own success.
Get into the healthy mindset
The only way to build both mental resilience and physical health is to be disciplined in your approach to looking after yourself. It should not be an afterthought and just fit in around everything else in your life. Instead, allocate time – every day if you can – to caring for your mental and physical health. The key to both mental and physical health is consistency.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Set aside 10 minutes for a walk around your neighbourhood before or after work. Take some time at lunch to stretch your legs, or go to the gym for half an hour on your way home. Can you commit to doing 10 press-ups a day or joining a local running group for a jog three times a week?
Apply the same to your mental health. Can you spend 10 minutes in the morning meditating or organising your day so you are mentally prepared for what is to come? Do you have an activity scheduled each week that you enjoy and find relaxing, like watching a movie with the family or playing football in your local community?
Being mentally and physically fit will allow you to do all that you want to do. Whether you wish to grow your practice, move into a specialism or establish a lucrative side hustle, you have to be healthy in order to dedicate the necessary time, effort and passion needed for successful and significant growth.
Action points
- Allocate the equivalent of 10 minutes a day to some sort of physical activity. It might mean getting off the tube one stop early and walking the rest of the way home each day or taking up a new sport in your spare time. Start this week, don’t put it off.
- Introduce an activity dedicated to strengthening your mental health and resilience. Consider meditating for 10 minutes at lunchtime or making time to prepare yourself for a difficult patient just before their appointment.
When both your mental and physical state is optimised, this is when you will do your best work, see the most growth and be at your happiest. To learn exactly how to achieve all this and to discover how you could set yourself up for exponential personal and business growth, The Re-Iginte Academy can get you started on your journey.
For more information visit www.thereigniteacademy.com