Myo Life

Transcript

Hey, I'm Carmen and welcome to Myo Life. That's short for my outrageous life, which is exactly the kind of life I get to live since I found the courage to ditch dental hygiene and build a life I'm bonkers about as a myofunctional therapist and entrepreneur. Here you will find all the things Myo business and how to build a life that you, too, are bonkers about. I'm very happy you're here. Shall we dive in Well, hello, friend, and welcome back to the Myo Life Podcast. I am so glad you're here because we have a great topic today, so we're going to just get into it. If you have been thinking about whether or not it is time to get out of dental hygiene, but then you immediately get scared and talk yourself out of it, then this episode is for you, my friend. We're not going to be bashing hygiene. We're going to be talking about being honest with yourself, because if your heart is not in it anymore, if your body is screaming at you to slow down, if your brain is constantly fantasizing about what else might be out there that you could do, it's time to ask the question is this still right for me? And let me say this loud and clear you haven't done anything wrong. Okay, you're just ready for something else. So let's start with the signs that you've been ignoring. You know the quiet gut whispers, the ones that say this cannot be all there is, or? I used to enjoy this. What happened, my friend? That is not rebellion, it's wisdom. Let's check in for a second. Let me ask you a few things On a scale of one to 10, how excited are you to go to work most days? What is your body telling you when you get home after a full day of work? What is your gut reaction when you imagine still doing dental hygiene in five years? I'm sorry, I laughed because, man, I remember that. What lights you up about your job and what completely drains you? These are the questions from my recent new workbook that I created for you. Is it time to ditch hygiene? And these are not just cute journal prompts, they are wake up calls.
My friend, if you are like a lot of the hygienists that I talked to, you might have already tried to fix the problem. You might have switched offices, you might have cut back your hours, you might've even took a break and for a hot minute. It helped, but then the dread crept back in. Why the reason is is because surface level tweaks do not fix a misaligned career. Okay, my friend, you don't need less hours at work. Okay, you don't need different offices, you need a new vision.
Burnout isn't just about how hard you're working. It's about whether the work that you're still doing, or that you're the work that you're doing, if that still matters to you. So here is what I want you to try right now Close your eyes, unless you're driving, in which case eyes on the road, friend eyes on the road. I want you to close your eyes and picture this waking up and knowing you're in control of your schedule, schedule, working from home or anywhere with Wi-Fi or even no Wi-Fi. I mean, let's face it, I do need Wi-Fi a lot of the time, but, like, for example, when I'm on an airplane, I'm not having Wi-Fi, I'm just working on my iPad. So you don't even really need Wi-Fi. But obviously, to see clients you do.
What about earning more and working less? That's a biggie. What about making a difference in people's lives on a deeper level than you ever could do in a 60 minute cleaning? This isn't fantasy. That is my life and it's also the life for many of my students inside the Ditch Hygiene Academy. It didn't start that way. Okay, nobody starts with a full client calendar or a six-figure business, but what it does start with is a decision and a little bit of belief.
So let me quickly give you the Reader's Digest version of how I made that decision. I was bored, I was burned out. I was so tired of helping somebody else build their golden parachute. The other thing is is I let me back up. So I worked for a boss who was more interested in her first class flights than anything else in the office. And when I talk about building her golden parachute, my production numbers continued to increase because she needed a cost of living raise. Of course I wasn't getting one, and ultimately I was building her golden parachute because for every you know $100,000 that I produced in her practice, I was helping her create a saleable asset because you know she's going to sell it someday. So that's what I mean by golden parachute.
The other thing is is I had spent so much time and money getting my dental hygiene degree that I just felt paralyzed, that I couldn't do anything else. Okay, I felt like looking for another career was going to be cheating on dental hygiene. Okay, and the other thing? I felt like I'm saying the other thing a lot. Um, I still had debt, you guys, when I started my myofunctional therapy business, I still had $37,000 of student loan debt which, little pat on my back, I paid off in, I think, two payments to finally, you know, become debt free.
So that was the hardest thing is, I had spent so much time to get this degree and I just felt like I was letting somebody down by admitting and being honest with myself that I didn't want to do it anymore. Also, it did not help that I grew up in a household with a dad who drove semi at night in Montana for 40 years and he never complained, he never switched jobs, he just did it. And so, you know, growing up in a very pragmatic family, he just thought that I should just work, okay. And my husband, he also thought that I should just suck it up, stay the course. You're making, you know, 75, 80,000 a year, you work three days a week, you're good. He just felt like I should keep my secure job.
But then I met Jenny Blake and I read her book Pivot and I did the exercises and for the first time I didn't just think about changing careers. I started believing it was possible. And that belief did not come fully formed. Okay, it came in flickers. One other thing about those exercises from Pivot I revisit those once or twice a year and it brings my heart such a warm hug and many emotions, excitement. I'm proud of myself. I'm so thankful and grateful for what I have been able to accomplish in the life that I get to live. But I love to review those exercises because it really just reinforces that I did the right thing, okay. So, like I said, the belief didn't come fully formed, it kind of came in pieces.
Now, one thing that I teach with my coaching clients and also inside the Myo Business Accelerator is belief before bank, because you cannot build a business if you do not believe that it's possible. You won't market confidently if you secretly think that you're making a mistake, and you won't sell your services if you don't believe in your ability to help. You won't sell your services if you don't believe that somebody is willing to pay you Okay. So the same is true when you were at this fork in the road with dental hygiene. If the thought of leaving feels impossible right now, oh, that's okay. Your only job today is to plant a more useful belief.
So something like this. I don't have to stay stuck. I am allowed to want more. Even scared, I can move forward. And that is where it starts, not with a perfect plan, but with the boldness to believe that your next chapter gets to be better than this one. So what happens next? You don't have to quit tomorrow, my friend. You do not have to sell your house, shave your head or run away to Bali. You just have to tell the truth and then take one step.
So I mentioned the workbook. Download the workbook. It is called. It is time, or is it time, to ditch hygiene? Okay, download the workbook, start imagining, stop gaslighting yourself, okay. And when you're ready, really ready, you let yourself believe that maybe, just maybe, you were made for something more than clocking in, clocking out and living for the weekend. You're not crazy. You're not crazy for wanting out. You're actually courageous for even thinking about what else is possible.
If you haven't grabbed that workbook, wherever you're listening to this, you can download it. I will walk you through the question, or it will walk you through the questions that I asked earlier, plus a few others that will just kind of help you really determine if it is time for you to ditch hygiene. Okay, if your inner voice is shouting yes, then stay close, my friend, because come September you better believe we have something special planned when that enrollment opens. So you do not have to stay stuck. You don't have to figure it out alone, you just have to decide is it time? So I'm going to leave you with that, my friend. Until next time, go on and build a life you are bonkers about, and I will be back soon with more exciting myofunctional business goodness.