We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jason Cellars a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jason, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Confidence, self-esteem, and anything in life needs to come from your inputs. I don’t focus on results as much as I focus on what I am putting in. In business, I make sure to work hard and keep strong morals, and in my personal life I make sure to spend time daily working on myself and my relationships.
No one is perfect, and if you look for imperfections in yourself or in anyone else you will find countless numbers of them. I focus on working on my strengths and weaknesses daily, and don’t focus on the results. You can’t honestly judge yourself – if you are over-confident you will focus too much on your attributes and if you are insecure you will focus too much on your short-comings – so I never try to rate or quantify myself. Instead I channel all of that focus to slight betterment every day and find confidence in knowing that regardless of who I am, I am the best version that I could be.
For as long as I can remember, I have sprinted away from confrontation. I was suffering in my personal and professional life because I wasn’t able to speak my mind from a crippling fear of confrontation. It took me awhile to realize how much of an issue this actually was in my life, but when I did, instead of worrying about it or criticizing myself I started working on it. I asked some mentors that I had at the time and one of them said the quote to me that “your success is directly proportional to the amount of uncomfortable conversations that you have”. I took this ran with it. Blocked out time in my calendar to do one thing that I didn’t want to do every day, and also blocked out time to read books and listen to talks on the subject.
It is years later now, and I still have anxiety about having difficult conversations, but I have come leaps and bounds from where I was. I still choke up sometimes and don’t say what I need to say, but exponentially less than I used to. And the best part is that I am too focused on trying to fix my short-comings to worry about them. Having an action plan keeps me focused on actions and looking forward instead of looking at my past behaviors and finding insecurities.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a cosmetic dentist in Orange County. What I love about my job is seeing our patients after they have had their new smile for a few months and come in beaming ear to ear with a totally renewed energy.
People often don’t realize the effect that their smiles have on their lives. People like it when other people smile at them, it makes us feel loved and it makes us feel happy. And when we don’t smile, people assume the opposite and assume it is personal and about them. Many times with my patients, they don’t love one part of their smile so they hide their teeth and smile as little as possible. When we are able to restore the confidence in their smiles it is amazing how the relationships in their lives improve and how everything seems to magically become better just from rejuvenating their teeth.
Hearing the stories of getting new promotions or just hearing that they are learning how to smile again gives us so much joy and purpose and makes all the hard work more than worth it.
To also spread this joy as hard as I can, I started a non-profit that partners with women’s shelters to give free cosmetic and dental work to women in need and their families. Because cosmetic dentistry is so unattainable to some people, I wanted to do as much as I could to give confidence to deserving people who can’t afford it in their current situation.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
It might sound weird, but planning, mindfulness, and communication would be the three most impactful skills throughout my journey. They are all very broad skills but have been extremely important and are things that I still actively sharpen
Planning is the key to everything in my professional life – purposeful planning that is. I start with the end goal, determine every important aspect that I will need to get there and need to have once I’m there, and work back words to plan each step of the way. This keeps me focused on manageable goals while still working towards my larger vision. An amazing thing that I learned from a good mentor of mine is to “copy genius” – everything you want to achieve has already been achieved by someone in a relatable way. So reach out to those people to determine what those end goals are that you need to plan backwards form.
Mindfulness has been my anchor in the chaotic currents of life. Beyond finding moments of calm, mindfulness has taught me the power of being present in every situation. It has taught me how to control my emotions and how to be stable and level-headed. The hard thing about mindfulness is that it is boring and seemingly useless when everything is good, and once you need it and life starts throwing obstacles at you, it is hard to get back to that steady state of mind. I have gone through many morning and evening routines for mindfulness. Currently, I take a cold plunge after the gym in the mornings while doing a release and set intentions mantra. What the routine is is not as important as doing the routine consistently.
Communication has been my biggest struggle and the most important skill. I believe that it is important to always find a win win. Whether in a quick exchange or a large merger, finding win wins has been extremely important in my life. Until I learned how to communicate well, I wasn’t able to express my needs and wasn’t able to understand the needs of others effectively enough. With still room to grow, this is the most important skill to me, allowing me to strengthen relationships and build networks.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
The E-myth was been the one book that I continuously return to over the years. While there are countless other must read books that have shaped who I am, this book has been the most influential on my life.
Especially when owning a business that I also work in, it is very easy to get caught up in the day to day grind. But the entrepreneurial myth really clarified the need to intentionally build my business so that it can become its own entity. When me business works for me, instead of the other way around, I have all of the freedom that I should have as a business owner. It made it so my efforts progressed my business instead of just keeping it in place.
I highly recommend this book to any entrepreneur or anyone who manages people or an organization. It is very helpful in taking back control of your life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jasoncellarsdds.com
- Instagram: drcellarsdds
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasoncellarsdds
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncellarsdds/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jason-cellars-dds-sea-cliff-dental-huntington-beach
Image Credits
BrendaBravo
