I was giving my nephew some life coaching recently. He is graduating this year from dental school and I agreed to spend some time with him to provide some real-world advice. As I spoke with him, I came to realize that what I was telling him were universal truths that apply to anyone young or old, in any line of work.

These are truths that most of us come to learn over the course of our lives but that we tend to forget as we focus on just getting through each day, truths that we all need to remind ourselves of from time to time.

 

First of all, I explained to him that everything in life comes down to how you handle three things: your time, money and relationships. Most of the pain in life, whether it's just daily stresses or something more severe, can be traced to neglect in one or more of these areas. Master these essentials and you basically master your life.

Always remember that success can be measured by the tangibles but is largely driven by the intangibles. For instance, as a dentist if you are doing $3,000 a day in production and you reach a goal of $3,500, it's easy to see and easy to measure. But how did that increase happen? Always remember that today's success is the result of what you did in the preceding weeks and months, and this is where the intangibles come in. These are the things that are the hardest to measure, quantify, or be consistent with, because you don't see the immediate return. The time you spend getting good at what you do such as reading, taking courses, meeting with the team or with colleagues in study clubs is instrumental to your growth. You can't necessarily put a specific number to these things, but they are important. When you look at it this way you realize that the tangible results are really just the scorecard that reflects the impact of your intangible efforts.

We tend to lose sight of this reality the deeper we get into our professional lives. It's easy to let your calendar be dominated by tangible revenue-earning time and to forget that it is the all-important intangible "me time" that ultimately shapes you and leads to those tangible results.

After having this discussion with my nephew, I re-examined my own life and recommitted myself to those priorities. I make sure now that I take at least 30 minutes a day for reading and 30 minutes for other growth-oriented activities such as watching online videos that will help me develop my leadership skills. One hour each day completely focused on just getting better at what I do. That's a small price to pay for living a life of ideal fulfillment.

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