Daily Inspiration: “It’s impossible to align yourself to the future if you are going to let pessimism be at the core of your existence!”

“It’s impossible to align yourself to the future if you are going to let pessimism be at the core of your existence!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Yup, here I go with that optimism thing again, but I’m optimistic about my optimism!

Here’s the thing – today’s quote is the actual closing sentence from my keynote in London, UK last week – and my story about what goes wrong if you fall prey to a mindset of negativity driven by economic gloom. Give it a look – it’s right there at 6:19! I don’t just make this stuff up -I preach it!

The story in the video is key to my ‘innovate for the future despite uncertainty’ message – it’s early 2009,  and the global economic meltdown from the crash of 2007-08 is well underway. I’m on my way to see my client Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa – and the radio is advertising this book of doom and gloom on the radio. That didn’t sit right with me – and so began to explain why! Watch the video to get the gist of the story – this is important stuff with respect to dealing with doom and gloom.

Here’s the thing – everyone arrives at their gloom in a different way. In the case of my London keynote, my room full of dentists could place themselves in a pretty sour mood about the future, with a potential recession on the news each and every moment, just after they took a massive revenue hit from the lack of in-person patient care during Covid. Heck, just the day before my keynote, the new British Prime Minister, who probably won’t last more than a year in her new position, announced a series of deep tax cuts as a means of trying to stave off a potentially bleak future, to which global stock markets reacted with extreme negativity. (Which probably means they are a dumb idea!)

It’s not like these folks haven’t had enough challenges already. Consider what they’ve been through already in terms of the recent hit on their dental practice with Covid. I dug out a pretty significant statistic as part of my talk:

In 2021, dentists saw 2,215,478 patients – a drop of more than three million from the 5,337,195 seen in 2019, prior to Covid hitting.
Only half of adults have seen NHS dentist in last two years, report shows
25 January 2022, Independent Online

Yikes! Digging below the surface, so to speak, here’s what has happened with their base of patients as the result of Covid:

• 43% delayed checkups and cleaning
• 40% delayed cosmetic dentistry including whitening and veneers
• 32% delayed teeth straightening
• 1 in 5 was treating themselves at home!
• result: we saw the acceleration of tooth decay, infections, and complications

This has come on top of some large-scale systemic challenges:

• NHS (National Health Service) funding issues and a private/NHS clash, with some patients choosing to opt-out of the  healthcare system and go on their own
• industry consolidation, making it more difficult for a small practice to survive and thrive
• a Brexit exodus (30%!) as individuals leave the industry due to immigration/visa issues, resulting in even more staffing challenges
• an increase in dental tourism, with people seeking lower-cost treatment abroad
• self-dentistry!

Wait? What’s that? Self-dentistry? 1 in 5 patients were treating themselves at home during Covid. Yikes! I looked into that further – check this out: during Covid, some people went so far as to pull out their own teeth!

Double yikes! And so some dental professionals have expressed concern (rightly so) about the DIY-dental movement:

Troubled is an understatement!

Here at Diana Dental we have been troubled with the recent influx on our social media feeds offering mail order aligners and DIY ultrasonic scalers promising to save you £100s on ‘unnecessary’ dental fees…..

And so now, given everything you’ve been through, if you’ve got a recession now staring you in the face after all this, it’s a pretty brutal time to be a dentist. it’s a pretty easy time to be depressed and spend your time focusing on the negativity of the future.

So what do you?

Don’t do that. It’s simple.

Refuse to take part in the recession.

Just decide it’s not for you. Maybe it’s for other people, but it’s not for you.

Because the future is about growth, opportunity, the future, trends, and fascinating new opportunities. And with that in mind and out of the way, I proceeded to tell them the story of what I learned during my visit to Cedar Rapids, and why they should simply opt out of the recession – and where they will find that growth and opportunity.

Because you don’t need to take part in a recession if you don’t want to.

History tells us so – watch the video.

Listen to what I’m telling you – because I told the same thing to the clients who booked me after the downturn of 2001 and 2008 – and most of them became breakthrough performers.

The future is about mindset and attitude.

Change yours.