all articlesJuly 22, 2009
Successful Dentists Know How to Fail
Using the word “failure” in the same sentence as “dentistry” is a scary idea. Years of social and academic conditioning make most people terrified of failure and consequently lead them to avoid even mildly risky endeavors. How can we expect to learn from our failures if we don’t know how to deal with them.
In his book From Lemons to Lemonade: Squeeze Every Last Drop of Success Out of Your Mistakes , Dean Shepherd points out the two most common ways people deal with failure – denying and overreacting. “If you don’t talk, you keep emotions down, but after awhile you have a severe reaction,” Dean says. On the other hand, talking about your failure too much is also unhealthy, as persistently discussing negativity escalates other problems.
The most beneficial way of dealing with failure is to discuss it with colleagues from an objective point of view without emotionally dwelling on it. Few tips to help you along:
Take responsibility without blaming yourself.
Just because your dental practice or any business for that matter is failing, does not mean you are a failure. Analyze the influential factors which lead to your undesired situation and understand what role your involvement played in the process.
“Don’t let failure become normalized”
Dean Shepherd warns, “If we end up failing a lot, failure can become normalized, and when we fail, we don’t feel any emotional reaction. That may sound good, but if you become desensitized to failure, you’ll become desensitized to commitment. This creates a bad cycle: you have less investment in your endeavor, so you fail, and you don’t learn from it.” It’s easy to fall into this bad cycle if you avoid taking responsibility for your actions.
Avoid making the same mistakes
This concept requires constant practice because it’s really easier said than done.