Last night we watched Toy Story 3 and my wife and I both commented on how much a surprise the ending was and even more so about how sweet it was. I don’t want to ruin it for you but it was such a pure passage of childhood and one you never saw coming in the movie at all. And I admit it..i got teary eyed at the end.
And then there was the greatest love story I have ever seen in life in the movies…the first couple of minutes of the movie ‘UP’. There was so very little dialogue (if I remember correctly just one or two words) but the love between the two characters was so easy to feel.
Over the years as my kids have been growing up I have had more than my fair share of opportunities to see a lot of the Disney movies, even the ones made for TV. I can remember how my eyes once again got teary when the older dog (voice of Don Ameche) showed up at the end of Homeward Bound. And another movie, the name escapes me, where the little girl actually became the horse jockey and won the race. And there are so many more…
OK, it seems that Disney has a formula to make me feel great about the ending of their films. (I know other films can do it too, I remember the sound of an entire theatre starting to cry at Terms of Endearment). But the formula works because I want to see the new Disney movies.
So let’s make the jump over to “Conscious Prevention”. No, it’s not about crying at the end of movies. But it is about getting different levels of satisfaction or positive re-enforcement to keep one on the path of better health. And using even the smallest feedback to help you stay on a path which leads to a healthier lifestyle. For some it could be just losing a pound a week on a course of weight loss. For others it could be fitting into those clothes you couldn’t wear last year. And to make this even more personal, in the dental office it could be as simple as the hygienist saying that you are doing a great job with your home care and your gums are healthy. And by the way, since there is much literature to suggest more than a casual link between gum disease and other life threatening illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes, your conscious prevention of the mouth is helping your entire body.
But now I get to the hard part for me. I am going to challenge every team member at our dental office to try and make every patient’s experience at our office the best they can for all of our patients. It’s not that I want patients to cry at the end of a visit (you don’t know how much I want to cry with my patients when they do cry in the office…but that’s the type of guy I am), but I do want the patients to walk out knowing that my office got it right and that the patients want to come back for their next visit. It’s all about the experience.