“Passie bye bye…”

I just had to send you this quick note about Olivia, my sweet little fireball 19-month-old.

For the past month or so, Elizabeth and I have been "warning" little Livy that her pacifier is going to go bye bye. She has only ever used it when sleeping, but she really likes it...it's part of her nite nite routine.

"Passie bye bye!" she started to say herself, about 2 weeks ago. Pretty cool, I thought. She'll drop the habit no problem, because she understands it, right?

Well, kind of. Even though we're now successfully getting her to sleep quickly without the passie, it still took us several nights of:

"WAAAAHH...PASSIE BYE BYE...WAAAAHH...PASSIE BYE BYE!"

It would've been so easy to just plug it back in to keep her "happy" for the short term. But that would've made it much worse later to kick the habit. So we fought through, and she would calm down and sleep great. No thumb sucking either...yeah!

Actually it took us a little less time and was easier than I thought. So it got me thinking.

How many old habits am I hanging onto in my practice?
How many old habits are my team holding onto?
How many old habits are YOU holding onto?

When you get right down to it, it's not THAT bad to get rid of old habits and develop new ones...but it does take some effort and discipline, as well as PERSISTENCE.

But the payoff is often HUGE, and worth the trouble.

So...when you're considering implementing positive changes in your practice, but you're uncomfortable in letting go of the false security of the old way of doing things, just say to yourself:

"Passie Bye Bye!"

All my best,
Chris

Dr Chris Bowman - Dental Insiders Alliance
www.DentalInsiders.com/testdrive