Being Mindful Can Improve Your Dental Practice
In today’s fast-paced and demanding work environments, professionals can easily become overwhelmed and exhausted at their work places. This leads to more stress and being unproductive.
Workplaces are greatly impacted by employees feeling stressed, worn-out, apathetic and unhappy. This negative, counter-productive cycle can affect your dental practice, as well.
The good news is, there’s a notably more powerful approach, one that’s being considered more and more nowadays – and it’s all about practicing mindfulness.
It has already been proven that mindfulness can improve immune and brain function, and reduce anxiety and stress.
If you’d like for your employees and your dental practice to thrive, consider these tips on how to practice mindfulness and incorporate it into everyday life:
Focus On the Now
When you notice that you are not present, but instead over-analyzing what happened in the past, or worrying about the future, do your best to bring yourself back to what matters: the now. Be mindful of the present – this is where your life unfolds, not the past or future.
A great way to accomplish this is to pause and for about five minutes, or more, do nothing but focus on your breathing. Make this your daily practice, and it will help you to be more mindful of living in the now, as well as promote blood flow, increase circulation, and reduce stress and blood pressure. By practicing deep breathing and meditation you will have greater capacity to do more and feel better.
Get Grounded
When you are not grounded, even the smallest thing can bother you, distract you, and throw you off. You can become more forgetful, and feel scattered and overwhelmed.
Getting grounded means being connected to your self, your body, and your environment. When you’re grounded, your awareness is sharper, it’s easier to prioritize, and you’ll gain more clarity and focus.
Activity plays a big part, so make it a habit to take a break every two hours or whenever you feel overwhelmed and get your body moving. Go outside and walk barefoot in the grass, feel the connection with earth or any other solid surface beneath your feet. And, remember to stay hydrated and drink plenty of water.
Get Centered
Pay attention to your awareness, attention, and intention. When things get chaotic and stressful, finding your center will bring you back to your purpose and vision, and raise your vibration.
To do this, start by setting an intention for each day, a part of it, or for a specific event, meeting, project, etc. Keep the vision of how you want to see yourself and the experience and feel yourself moving through it effortlessly, with clarity, and awareness. If throughout your day you lose focus or feel stressed, practice being in the now by taking purposeful breaths and use positive affirmations – both will help slow things down, release stress, and get you centered.
Raise Your Vibration
You’re going to attract what you put out, so when you’re feeling low, you’re not in integrity, and expect the worse – that is what you’ll attract more of. Your low vibration will negatively affect others and pessimistic outlook will keep you from seeing the greater picture and opportunities. When you lack faith in yourself, others see and respond to you in a similar way.
Since everything you think, say, and feel becomes your reality, taking steps to turn negative thoughts around will benefit you in every area of your life. And, instead of pushing them away, acknowledge them and become curious as to the origin and validity of those thoughts; in other words, ask if it’s true or for the highest good of yourself and others. You will raise your vibration by making selfless, ego-less, positive choices in life. A simple practice can be to switch your “buts” to “ands”- you’ll notice you cease with a negative stream of thoughts when you stop saying “but”.
Practice Gratitude
Gratitude is more than saying thank you. Mindful gratitude slowly, but surely, alters the way we perceive life – as we change what we focus on.
Studies have shown that giving and receiving thanks increases the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to the brain’s complex system of motivation and reward.
Practice noticing three things for which you are grateful each day – a person, an experience or a thing that touches you and brings joy to your heart. At your dental practice, this can be an employee who goes an extra mile, kind words from a satisfied patient, and things you may have taken for granted.
Before bedtime each evening, spend a few moments thinking about these things you are grateful for. Keep a gratitude journal – it can have a profound change on your perspective, and help you achieve all other mindfulness goals. Describe how experiences and people for which you’re grateful made you feel, and why. This practice will gently steer you into greater awareness – living in the now, being grounded, centered and mindful.
At Compass Network Group Inc., our goal as your dental IT company is continued commitment to enhancing your business with high-quality IT support and the most suitable dental office systems, as well as overall productivity and well-being.
Does your practice have the right dental IT software, communication, networking and other IT solutions you and your patients deserve?
Contact Compass Network Group today.
