Lynn Carlisle, DDS

Bud and Judy Ham introduced Kirsten and me to the concept of highlights years ago.

Every year around this time the Ham family gets together for an evening devoted to sharing individual highlights of the past year. Each family member gets to be in the spotlight as they share the highlights of the past year. It is nothing complicated. Whatever the family member feels is a highlight is celebrated by the other family members.

Kirsten and I have done this for the past 20 years. We sit down sometime around the beginning of the new year and share our last year's highlights. Kirsten keeps a journal of our past highlights. We review the highlights from the previous year and then talk about the current year's highlights. We expanded it with our grandkids. Now, they insist that we do this every year.

We also did this with our team and discussed practice highlights.

We have been doing this long enough to know that some year's highlights are better or more meaningful than others. Previous years may have been better or worse for you, your family and dental practice.

In this year of the "not so great recession", I'll bet you can still come up with many highlights for your family and dental team for 2009. Some may surprise you.

With 2010 ushering in a new decade, it is an excellent time to review the highlights of the "Aught Decade". (Time magazine called it the "decade from hell". The End of the 2000s: Goodbye to a Decade from Hell - TIME )

Highlights and lowlights are part of life. "Sometime the magic works and sometimes it doesn't." You enjoy the highlights and try not to get too low with lowlights. If you can correct what caused the lowlight you do and if it isn't correctable, you cope with it.

Try doing the highlights. You'll enjoy it.

This is an updated version of an earlier article that appeared on ISOC in 2004.

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