Holidays do that to you, don't they? They make you think about things.
You also see the world a bit more clearly outside of your day-to-day, the things that are important, the things that matter, the things that could, or did or will go wrong, the things that could go right and then you start to think about what you're doing now and then you start to think about what you'll do next.
One of the great things that I've realised over the past few years of travelling with my work and seeing lots of brilliant people present lots of brilliant things in lots of brilliant places is that there are an awful lot of people who are very good at implant surgery and implant restorations.
The standard gets better and better, the bar gets higher and higher, but the number of people who get close to the bar or above it (whenever you consider the bar to be) gets greater and greater.
The methods by which to skin that particular cat get greater and greater, and the disputes about who's doing it right or wrong get louder and louder.
In essence, though, there are a lot of people vying for the top few positions in that world.
Long ago, I gave that up, passed that aside to other people.
I'm always totally happy to present aspects of my work to people in order to help educate and make things better, both for the dentists, but mostly for the patients who are treated by the dentists.
I'm happy to show stuff that's gone well, but equally, or even more happy to show stuff that didn't go well because the people who present like that are the people I consider to be the best and the bravest, not the guys who can present the most extraordinary work, case after case after case, but the guys who can present stuff which wasn't quite ideal and can explain how they dealt with the patient in those circumstances or how they talked about it (because that is likely to happen more and more often in our world).
And so, for me, what comes next?
It's not the chase to be a better implant surgeon with better photographs and better presentations of the things that I do, but there's the opportunity to help teach people from all the bad things that I've seen, done, and experienced and how to pass that on to make it better for dentists and patients.
For me, it is about empowering other people to be a better version of themselves in order to make a greater difference because that is what will keep me in the job, and that is what will keep me motivated going forward.
It would be really, really easy just to ‘cash in’, just to take the money and run, not look back, create my own safe little bubble over here in the countryside, ride my bike, play some golf, walk my dogs, and then die, but not for me is that.
Not for me as a quiet life into my dotage definitely for me, this is not going quietly into that dark night and so finding ways to be able to share the experiences that I've had, to help people navigate the difficulties that they see now (history only ever repeats itself) that's what keeps me going, and that's what motivates me.
No amount of money really could substitute that for me; all that would happen is I would just sit staring at my navel, wondering why I gave up the opportunity to do the things that I previously did.
Blog Post Number - 4248
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