Money alone is not enough: the five pillars of true satisfaction

Raj Jagadish explains how dental professionals can maintain long-term career satisfaction by prioritising five fundamental pillars.

When the diary is full, the implants booked, new smile assessments ringing and the UDAs completed well before the deadline, what’s next? Usually this is repeated over and over again, possibly for the next 20-30 years – but does this leave a feeling of something missing?

A lack of growth and an identity purely tied to work can lead dental professionals to feel trapped within the process. As I heard a colleague say to an inquisitive younger dentist: ‘You can’t take that with you after you retire.’

Early career highs

As a profession we have quite a structured career path, from the micromanaged undergraduate curriculum to the vocational training scheme many of us undertake. The pathway is pre-determined until decisions need to be made regarding career path and how we want to practice dentistry in the real world. Understandably what dictates this is very often the feeling that it’s time to actually earn – hopefully beginning to reap a reward from the seven or eight years of education and effort put in.

For many dentists, the early years are driven by clear goals: skill development, earn well, eliminate debt and grow financially and professionally. The rate at which this process occurs will naturally vary and can depend upon many external circumstances such as working environment and one’s own determination and mindset. These are not new concepts to dentists having gone through years of achieving highly academically.

With the career goals now established and the mindset to achieve them, our careers begin to take shape and hopefully begin to thrive. These gains are often tangible and reflected financially. Our skills and study manifest in our daily work life, ie more patients, more implant enquiries, more smile assessments. more recommendations and ultimately more income and financial growth.

Initiation completed, this ramping up or growth phase is exciting, gratifying and rewarding. More implants placed more smile makeovers completed more and more referrals being received. The result: more external gratification more financial freedom and more happiness… presumably.

The plateau of workplace satisfaction

A landmark study by Daniel Kahman and Angus Deaton demonstrated that emotional wellbeing plateaus once basic financial needs are met. That being said, we could be excused for deciding to worry about that at a later stage while things are still exciting and rewarding.

There is an obvious temptation to carry on the growth phase and enjoy the financial gains that come with it. After all, what’s the problem if patients are happy and you are financially expanding? However, this is where we need to reflect and look deeper.

The problem with the growth phase is it plateaus. It is our ability to recognise, appreciate, and then prepare intelligently for this phase of our careers that ultimately dictates our happiness beyond the plateau.

Recent work by Mathew Killingsworth suggests wellbeing may continue to rise with income, but only when other factors – such as purpose and relationships – are present. Deep self-examination in the following five pillars forms the fundamentals of a rewarding and aligned career: mindset, health, business and finance, relationships, happiness and purpose.

Which of the five pillars is holding you back from true satisfaction?

In dental school and early career stages, dentists often focus choosing the correct career pathway and being the best we can be within that pathway. As our careers develop, we need to be conscious of our own internal human needs changing and evolving. Is this need for certainty still what drives us? Perhaps it is now growth in a mixture of the fundamental five pillars. For example, the need for purpose through contribution to others beyond just our patients.

In our day to day, year after year quest to serve our patients, teams and businesses, we tend to neglect our own five pillars:

• Mindset – are you allowing growth or are you repeating the same year of dentistry for the next 20 years of your life?
• Health – many dentists sacrifice their health to build their careers only to later realise they’ve permanently damaged it
• Relationships – success often comes at the expense of our relationships
• Business and finance – are you building something for freedom or simply building more pressure?
• Happiness and purpose – what happens when external success stops creating internal fulfilment?

Making positive steps

Consider which of the five pillars may already be asking for your attention. What can feel like a plateau is often not a sign that something is wrong, but an indication that growth is ready to take a different form.

For some, this may mean beginning a new venture. For others, it may mean deepening impact, rediscovering challenge, or evolving the way you practice and experience your work.

Taking time and proactively discovering where that stretch might sit can be the first step towards renewed energy and fulfilment. After all, we as dentists know better than anyone that early recognition and diagnosis is better than the cure.

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