Digital Smile Design - Mar 17, 2020

My views on how to respond to the Covid-19 situation: An open letter by Christian Coachman

My views on how to respond to the Covid-19 situation


“My dear colleagues, DSD Community and dental professionals from all over the world, 

What a tough and unique moment we are all living in…

For me, this uncertainty creates stress and anxiety – we don’t know what will happen to us, to our family, to our business. 

We think that if this is happening now, even if we overcome this, it can happen again. 

Our minds turn to how we can protect our businesses, make enough money, how we can support our families and protect our health – and the health of the ones we love.

I’m an optimist. But I believe we need to practice smart optimism, not blind optimism.

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Smart optimism means we need to understand everything we can do, everything that is in our hands to protect ourselves, to protect the ones we love, to protect our business. 

But everything that is out of our hands, we need to understand how to stop wasting time, being afraid, or being stressed about it.”

Putting things into perspective

“Everytime I face tough moments – and we all go through tough moments – I always like to exercise some thoughts to help me overcome these tough moments.

The first thing I like to do is to put these things into perspective by thinking about people who have been through much worse moments.

During this period where we don’t have freedom, we cannot move around, we cannot connect with people, one thought that came to my mind was about WWII in Europe. And thinking about this puts things in perspective.

I thought about countries where people are living under dictatorships. Or in crazy, unhealthy situations And warzones. I thought about being a teenager in Syria for the last decade, the lack of freedom in North Korea. I thought about the disasters in Africa that have been happening for decades. I thought about what it must feel like being a minority and suffering prejudice every day.

And these thoughts put things into perspective for me.

This is a unique moment we are living in.”

 

 


Focusing on the worst, to focus on what you have

“Everyone that knows me knows I’m optimistic and very positive about everything, always – even during the worst moments of my life. 

So when I’m under stress, or facing a tough moment, I usually do an exercise that helps me.

I like to think about the worst. I mean, really think about the worst...

Think about the worst things that can happen to you right now. The worst things that can happen to your loved ones, to your company, to your financial situation, to your health. And these thoughts come to my mind, preparing me for the worst. 

But the key is to prepare yourself without letting the negative feelings come in, allowing you to understand that life is out of control. 

And once I’m thinking about the worst, I can only think about being grateful for whatever I have and bring this thought back to the moment I’m living in right now and understand that we are far from being at the worst, because it can always be worse…

And this naturally makes me optimistic about what we are living through now. About being grateful and being positive.”


Becoming a better person

“Going through tough moments is also very useful to understand opportunities. 

Take advantage of the time we have now, to strategize, to meditate, to visualize what we want to do when things go back to normal

There’s only two certainties about what is happening to the world:

  1. We will all be hit by this virus and the crisis that it will generate. Every professional, every company, every human being.
  2. This will pass

We don’t know if it will be in 2 months, 4, 5 months. But once this passes, we’re back to normal – to our life and work. And by knowing that, we allow anxiety to go away and optimism to come in.

And instead of wasting time with stressful feelings, to smile, to clean our minds and think about how we can take advantage of our free time to become better human beings. 

So when the world goes back to normal, I can do even better for people and for myself. 

I intend to use my unexpected free time to become a better person and through the DSD Company, to help the DSD Community to take advantage of their time as well, to become better dental professionals. “

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Let’s stay connected

“I hope we can all be connected online for the next few weeks and months, since all our in-person activities are cancelled or postponed. We will definitely be strengthening our online presence and communication channels at DSD and we hope that you all stay tuned and interact with us even more online – so we can all help ourselves and help each other get through these tough moments. 

All the best, stay safe, be smart and stay optimistic. 

We will survive,

Christian

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For more information about how Digital Smile Design is dealing with the current COVID-19 situation you can read our official statement here

Or if you have any questions or suggestions about how we can help you during this difficult time, please get in touch with us via our social media channels, or email us at dsd@digitalsmiledesign.com.

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