Turn your dreams into reality with some thought-out planning.

There’s nothing like checking a goal off your to-do list. It delivers instant satisfaction and makes you feel more accomplished. This especially applies to big career goals, which can alter the course of your professional and personal life. Does the idea of organizing your dreams into a list seem a little daunting? If so, it helps to start with a more general career vision.

As a dentist, what could you achieve if there were no limits to how high you could climb? What big changes would you make or different courses would you take if you grabbed the wheel to your own destiny? The answers might not come quickly, but they’re there if you listen.

Today, we’re sharing 5 reasons why writing down this vision is a can’t-miss step on your path toward that work/life balance you deserve.

1. To Create the Dentist Career You Love

Did you know that people who write down their goals are 42% more likely to achieve them? This can be a wonderful way to organize your ambitions and create a tangible checklist of the dreams you want to pursue.

What are some of the targets you want to reach at your practice? Do you dream of expanding into a specialty? Are there exciting dental technologies that you want to implement? 

Your career vision is the first step toward those goals. It provides the general direction that can inspire a more detailed timeline for the future. As you make it, you’ll ask big questions such as:

• What do I really love to do?
• What am I great at?
• What is holding me back from reaching my full potential?
• What am I afraid of?

You could store all of this information in your head, but think about everything that’s already there. We’re more stressed and stretched than ever before, and it’s making us more forgetful, too. So, go ahead and write it down!

2. To Be Intentional With Your Goals

You won’t land your dream career by accident. Canadian educator Lawrence J. Peter once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”

Don’t let your dreams slip away from you while you’re busy chasing the wrong ambitions. Creating a career vision helps you stay on track with your goals and take meaningful steps toward them.

The most successful people are those who don’t wait around for their plans to come to fruition. Instead, they figure out the next right thing to do, and they move forward incrementally but intentionally.

3. To Find Work/Life Balance

According to a recent survey, nearly 70% of employees would consider changing their current career. The catch? They wouldn’t switch jobs for more money. They’d do it to create a better work/life balance.

Are you tired of burning the candle at both ends? We weren’t meant to run ourselves ragged, even if it is to grow our careers. Your dental practice should be a source of pride, but it doesn’t have to own you.

When you have a clear vision of your future career, you can map a better journey for yourself. This is a future in which you feel satisfied and fulfilled at work and home, and you don’t feel like you’re sacrificing one for the other. 

4. To Encourage Your Team

Every great dream is worth sharing, and few things are more inspiring than someone who’s clearly living the dreams they set for themselves. 

When you write down your career vision, don’t keep it tucked away in your office drawer. Post it in a spot where it can encourage and motivate others. Dreams are catching, and you may find that it’s easier to reach yours when you have dedicated team members alongside you!

In time, you can create a workplace culture that prioritizes collective goal setting, and that’s the most effective blueprint of all. As famed consultant Peter Drucker eloquently puts it, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Looking for another reason why dream sharing is so important? As scientist and lecturer Peter Senge said, “A shared vision is not an idea…It may be inspired by an idea but once it goes further – if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person – then it is no longer an abstraction. It is palpable. People see it as if it exists.”

If you want others to believe in your dreams as much as you do, then they have to move from the abstract to the reality. Writing your dreams down, sharing them, and talking about them together is one way to catalyze that shift.

5. To Create the Life You Love

Close your eyes and allow yourself to dream big for the future. What does your ideal life look like? You can start moving in that direction today, with just a single step forward.

To understand the answers, take a step back and get a little nostalgic. Why did you become a general dentist in the first place? What did this profession spark inside of you? What did you envision your life would look like in this career, and how would it affect your family?

Ultimately, your life vision should work in tandem with your career vision. When these two are supporting one another, you can strike that coveted balance of all-around contentment that so few find. Write down your thoughts so you can remember, reflect, and act on them.

Turn your career vision into reality.

Life is too short to spend your time wishing you would have done things differently. It’s never too late to create a new career vision for yourself and your dental practice. 

Our orthodontics programs are designed to help you move forward with those goals. With the right plan in place, you can succeed in every aspect of your life, and encourage others to follow your example. When you’re ready to get started, feel free to browse our full list of courses online.

This next step is a big one, so let’s take it together.