Last week I had a trip to Switzerland, first overseas trip since the longest time and the first work trip for even longer but I went to visit Geistlich at their production facility in Wolhusen to see how all the products are made, to meet scientists and researchers and production engineers and chief operating officers and all sorts of people on a trip that I should have done years ago.
That was not particularly essential but I was there for another reason the following day and therefore was able to provide a lecture to the Geistlich team about reduced times for sinus grafting as we now have tons of material on this from the past 13 years that we are starting to present in all sorts of places to bring sinus graft times from 9-12 months to 8-12 weeks.
I went for dinner with some important people at Geistlich on the Friday night in Lucerne which was amazing but on the Saturday I was then expected to do surgery on models which was being recorded for the Geistlich online academy and the Swiss are pretty strict on the way they want things to be done.
I’m not going to deny the fact that I was terrified and wondered whether I’d be able to pull it off.
The worse thing was that we only had 5 models and therefore if I made a mess of it enough times my trip would have been completely wasted.
That might seem like a lot models to work on but it has to be absolutely spot on for the video which is under high magnification and so, the pressure was really quite tough.
So, therefore when the Saturday came to film I was loaded with self-loathing and imposture syndrome, realising the other people that are coming after me (and have come before me) in this project who are like the superstars of world implant dentistry.
You just have to zone out, eyes down and do the best you can and I think in the end it went ok.
The point is though that I’m still too young (even though I’m old) to be in my comfort zone and god knows I wasn’t comfortable then and the other thing is that regardless of what everybody says, everybody encounters imposture syndrome pretty regularly and if they don’t they are either stuck in their comfort zone or deluded.
Failure only comes when you try as hard as you can and imposture syndrome only comes when you understand what you don’t know.
Blog Post Number - 2930