Doing Vs Being in Dentistry

In my experience in teaching mindfulness to dentists, one of the main reasons that lead them to seek mindfulness and meditation is the need to slowdown. The need to press pause and slowdown is not only about physically stopping but, more importantly, the desire to put a stop to the incessant internal agitation that seems to control the state of dentists lives.

We spend much of our life waiting to arrive somewhere else. It's like driving in a car and all of a sudden realizing we have no idea of the landscape we've been through. Can you relate?

If our habit is to be on our way somewhere else, we miss out on whatever is in front of us.

Mindfulness teaches us how to actually slow down and live our moments right now. Through mindfulness practices, we can actually observe how it feels to disengage from a busy mind and shift into “being” mode.

Our mind is brilliant and extremely useful: it gets things done, help us solving problems, allow us to achieve our goals, enable us to learn and memorize information, empower us to achieve our wildest dream. However, we can get “stuck” on the goal-setting mood, and it can be difficult to let go of expectations, comparisons, or judgments of how things should be.

We operate in two basic modes, which are the reflection of core patterns in brain activity. These mental modes are the “doing mode” and the “being mode”.

Becoming aware of these mental modes can have a great impact in our daily dentistry.

“Doing” mode

Our mind is basically goal-oriented, these goals can be related to our external world: ?not being late at work, doing a good filling, learn a new technique, or, in a more internal way our goals can be feeling happy, never feel guilty again, trying to be more kind.

The basic strategy for achieving these goals is by reducing the gap of how things are and how we want them to be.

Dealing on how things are not as we want them to be can create a further negative mood. In this way, our attempts to solve a “problem” by endlessly thinking about it can keep us locked into the state of mind from which we are doing our best to escape.

There is nothing wrong with the doing mode. It is very effective in getting things done in the external world. But when we tempt to solve internal problems using the doing mode, things can go wrong, because we cannot sometimes find the strategies or solutions to solve a particular situation. Sometimes the solution is just to accept and allow.

When the doing mode is working on internal, self-related goals, we can more accurately call it the “driven–doing” mode. Whenever there is a sense of “have to,” “must,” “should,” “ought,” or “need to,” we can suspect the presence of the driven-doing mode. Its most common feature is a recurring sense of unsatisfaction, reflecting the fact that the mind is focused on processing mismatches between how we need things to be and how they actually are.

Driven–doing mode also involves a sense of continuously monitoring and checking up on progress toward reducing the gap between these two states (“How well am I doing?”). Why? Because where no immediate action can be taken to reduce discrepancies, the only thing the mind can do is continue to work on its ideas about how things are and how they should be, in the hope of finding a way to reduce the gap between them. Over and over again.

In this situation, the mind works consists of thoughts about the current situation, desired expectation, explanations for the discrepancy between them and possible ways to reduce them, which leads to experience thoughts and concepts as “real” instead of events of the mind.

Equally, the mind will not be fully tuned in to the full actuality of present experience. It will be so preoccupied with analysing the past or anticipating the future that the present is given a low priority.

Driven–doing underlies many of our reactions to everyday emotional experiences—we habitually turn to this mode to free ourselves from many kinds of unwanted emotions.

“Being” mode

?The being mode is not defined by achieving goals. In this mode there is no need to monotonize, evaluate, judge or compare. Instead, the focus of the being mode is “accepting” and “allowing” what is, instead of changing it.

“Allowing” arises naturally when there is no goal or standard to be reached, and no need to evaluate experience in order to reduce discrepancies between actual and desired states. And this means the present moment can be processed in its full.

The being mode brings us a shift in our relation to thoughts and feelings: they are seen as passing events in the mind. They arise, become objects of awareness, and then pass away.

This gives us space to not be triggered by feelings and not react with habits of action trying to get rid of unpleasant feelings or hanging on to pleasant ones. There is a greater ability to deal with uncomfortable emotional states.?Thoughts of “I should do this, I have to do that” do not necessary link to related actions, we can see them simply as events on the mind.

This brings a sense of freedom and freshness to life.

Being AND Doing

?Both mental modes are useful to us. Learning to recognize in which mode our mind is operating can be extremely useful for a more meaningful and happier everyday dentistry.

There are many benefits in trying to find a balance between doing and being. Learning how to access the being mode gives us the possibility of experiencing our job in a direct way and we open up to the infinite possibilities, that usually we do not have because of our judgements or preferences.

Neuroscience research has shown that the part of the brain responsible for all forms of sensing grows with mindfulness.

Mindfulness training is a way to learn how to become aware of our mode of mind at any moment and gives us the skills to disengage from unhelpful modes of mind and to engage more helpful ones.??

And being aware of your senses and the sensations in your body can enhance empathy and help you make wise choices.

When our senses are open the adventure of living begins, we start taking in our world with immediacy and freshness with vividness and wonder!

To enjoy your Dentistry journey it's possible, you just have to learn to be in the moment, and I guarantee, it will make you a happier and (even) better Dentist.

Take good care of you,

Manuela Rodrigues

DMD, Creator of Mindful Dentistry Training