With the Paris Olympic Games in its final week, we’ve all been watching triumphant feats by America’s best and the world’s best. Whether an athlete wins a medal or not, we can all agree that every single one of them shows a level of high performance in their sport that is amazing.

So, what do all these athletics and teams competing in the games have in common? None of them are there by accident. How did they get to that level of performance to even be selected to compete in the biggest athletic competition on earth? Here are a few takeaways that you can apply to your own life, practice and team:

Personal dedication to progressive improvement

Olympic athletes are competitive and want to win. To do that, they train so they can match and exceed the abilities of their rivals, who are also competitive and want to win. But if you rewind the timeline of all those competitors to before they were even future Olympic hopefuls, you will find young athletes who love their sport and want to improve and become better every day for the fun of it.

That level of personal dedication is fundamental to any kind of performance scenario, whether you are a track and field star, or a dental assistant, or a doctor. Creating culture within yourself and your team that encourages and celebrates progressive improvements sets up the fundamental framework needed for your practice to rise in performance and success. People need to care that they are doing the best they can do, and that tomorrow they will strive to do better than today.

Coaches, mentors and vision

It is one thing to have the personal dedication to improve, and another thing to have the knowledge and resources to improve. Every Olympic athlete has a team of coaches and mentors around them. Self-improvement to master the fundamentals is vital, but it eventually becomes self-limiting. Coaches bring in decades of expertise and a focused path to the next level vision that an individual athlete or team can’t do on their own.

This is an exact parallel to the dental team in your office. Everyone knows their individual fundamentals and the basics. But you probably have some team members who have never worked in another endodontic practice in their life. All they know is what you’ve always done in your practice. They don’t have the scope of experience to even know what the next level is, and what is possible. Even for doctors, seeing beyond your existing circumstances can be difficult. Coaches and mentors provide the insights and resources you need.

Commitment in the starting moment

Probably the biggest takeaway is understanding that all the years of preparation, training and coaching come down to a moment in time when the competition starts. Every athlete on the starting line is probably worried in the back of their head about something. Did they sleep well last night? Did they eat right? Have they recovered completely from a past injury?

You could probably write a list of 100 things for every athlete that could make them wish for more ideal circumstances. But in the moment when the starting pistol fires or the referee blows the starting whistle, all that really matters is that they commit to the highest performance they can. It’s begun and there are no more delays and no turning back. If you waited until every athlete felt 100% ready without hesitation or doubt, there would never be any Olympic Games at all.

In endodontics, there aren’t starting pistols or referees, so it’s entirely up to you when to start your commitment to high performance. I think many doctors have an internal list of things that holds them back:

• Is my team ready and capable?
• Am I too busy or distracted?
• Are my goals clear and meaningful?
• Have I tried something like that before?
• Is it practical and will it pay for itself?
• Is the economy too risky right now?
• Will it take more time or cause stress?
• Etc.

If these questions or 100 others like them are controlling your decision on whether to commit to the next level of growth and practice performance, you will wait forever for them all to be resolved. It just doesn’t happen because we are risk-averse by nature and there will always be doubts.

Once you realize that and push through to begin, you are just like an Olympic athlete. Commitment in the starting moment is the most crucial factor that will drive your success. It’s the only way to win.