It’s Not Luck
Live a few years like most people won’t, so you can live the rest of your life like most people can’t
Three years into general dentistry, I took a year off to travel the world.
Two and a half years later, I took another year off, this time to travel around Australia.
Every time I share this, the response is almost always the same:
“Wow… you’re so lucky.”
I understand why people say it. But it grates on me because it wasn’t ‘luck’.
It was planning, prioritising, and making very intentional choices about my goals at that time, it was being willing to give up other things to make it possible.
I didn’t have an investment portfolio, rapid career progression, or a stable income.
But I had the most incredible experiences and unprecedented freedom. And that’s a trade-off I was more than happy to make.
The same principle applies to everything else, including your career.
I spent 18 months working in a rural beach town with not much for entertainment. But I saw the most spectacular ocean sunrises and sunsets, and a cozy workplace with easygoing patients.
More recently, I chose to go through 3 brutal years of periodontics specialty training with a 3-month old baby. I couldn’t say if I would do it all again, but it would’ve been harder later.
I pushed through because I knew it would provide the life and career I wanted- to have more time for my family and life beyond dentistry. So it’s not luck that I now work shorter hours, that I get to go to weekday school events, it’s not luck that I have the freedom I crave.
We all sacrifice something. The question is whether you are choosing your sacrifices consciously. Not being intentional about it is still a choice. So, what’s something you would like to choose, but haven’t? Is it because it feels selfish, risky, and just all round uncomfortable?
Are you avoiding more training, less work, different hours?
A pause. A pivot. A boundary. Or a difficult conversation?
Every version of your future comes with sacrifice.
The only power you have is choosing which version you’re willing to live with.
xx Tiffany