Do you often feel under pressure in practice? Do you wish you had more hours in the day? Could it be that what you lack is energy, not time?
Professor Jo Clarke, Founder and Managing Director at Petros – Resilience for life, suggests making sure you have energy is the key to achieving our aims and goals.
If you’re feeling under pressure, it might be worth thinking about your energy. We often feel we don’t have time to do things. However, a different way of thinking about this is to ask whether we have the energy to do things?
It’s about energy management
The idea that we should look at things differently comes from work done by sports psychologists Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz who say that managing energy, not time is the key to high performance, health, and happiness.
They very helpfully divide energy into four domains: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Do I have the physical energy to do this? Am I eating well, sleeping well, and exercising? Have I got the emotional energy? Am I regulating my feelings? Am I managing any anxiety? Have I taken sensible steps to overcome any psychological experiences, difficulties that I might be having?
I would always advocate seeing a therapist in the same way as I see the dentist. So, go for regular checkups maybe three or four times a year. And if you’re feeling well, then that’s the time to go because that’s when it’s easiest. So that would be emotional energy.
Then mental energy. If you’ve been studying hard or you’ve had your head peering into somebody’s mouth almost all day, they can both be very demanding mentally. So how are you taking breaks? How are you ensuring that you rest your mind? It’s worth noting, we can really only control our attention for about an hour-and-a-half at a time maximum before we need a break, or we start slipping and making mistakes.
Are your values aligned?
And then our spiritual energy is more about our core values: is the work I’m doing what I intended when I set out to become a dentist? Am I working in an organisation that accords with my own core values? Am I living my life according to the way I want to live it? These are deeper, bigger questions and it may be useful to have a coach or a therapist or a mentor to chat with. But all those four domains of energy, if we manage them well, can help prevent us declining.
A lot of people neglect taking the time to rest and recoup, and almost feel guilty for spending time on themselves. However, the expression, “if you do not make time for your wellness, you’ll be forced to make time for your illness,” may encourage all dentists to think about the importance of self-care.
So, this is advice from a psychologist on the importance of looking after your mind. If you were my dentist giving me advice to look after my teeth and I responded with: “I feel guilty doing that. I don’t think I should put in the time because there are so many other important things that need to be done.” I think most dentists would be disappointed that I didn’t see the importance of what they were telling me. Of course, you need to look after your teeth and I’m saying exactly the same. Of course, you need to look after your mind.
About Jo
Jo is the founder and MD of Petros – resilience for life, a not-for-profit organisation committed to helping people live more resilient, balanced, and productive lives.
Jo spent 23 years working as a forensic psychologist in the criminal justice system, which is where she became interested in the concept of resilience, both for individuals and the organisations in which they live and/or work. Since completing a PhD in this area in 2004, she has worked with a wide variety of organisations and individuals applying research evidence to practice, to enhance psychological well-being.
Jo is a regular speaker and trainer, nationally and internationally, on the subject of individual and organisational resilience and has authored a number of chapters and papers on the subject. Committed to life-long learning, she remains abreast of current research and developments in the area, and with her dedicated team, strives to continually develop evidence-based interventions to promote thriving at work and at life.
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