| interview When your habits hinder your productivity, replace them with new ones Nathalie Schüller, Dental Tribune International Dr Ben Bernstein is a clinical psychologist and veteran educator specialising in optimal performance. Known as the “Stress Doctor”, he is the author of four books on how stress affects performance and writes a popular blog for the Psychology Today website. As a national speaker for the American Dental Association, he has travelled exten- sively offering talks and workshops on reducing stress in dentistry. He lectures worldwide, live and online, on stress and performance to audiences of healthcare pro- fessionals, business executives, athletes, teachers and parents at conventions, corporations, universities, schools and hospitals. Dr Bernstein, reading about your story, interests and projects made me so look forward to talking to you. In interviewing people, I first like to ask how the person I’m talking to came to find his or her calling. With you, it seems like the answer might be quite complicated! Is it? I think that life chooses your choosing, circumstances line up, you get moved in a certain direction. When I graduated from college, it was the height of the Vietnam War, 1969, and I had intended to go on and study theatre, being very active in acting and directing. At that time, I would have been drafted to go to Vietnam, and though I believed very strongly in national service, I did not want to serve in that war. There was an option open to men my age to teach in very poor areas of cities and I chose that option, which led me to education and being exposed to some amazing people and wonderful ideas that led me to psychology. Connecting to my creative interests, in my internships, I wanted to do creative projects with patients in psychiatric hospitals, so I ended up making films with these patients and getting them to write plays that were performed for the public. When it was time to open a private practice, I wanted to be more engaged than just listening to patients. I wanted to help bring forth what wanted to come out in my pa- tients, so I started to coach people, which 30 years ago was not the big thing it is now, especially for a licensed psychologist. I started coaching people and ended up working mostly with people in high-stress, high- performance careers, such as CEOs, athletes, and stage-performers, and then after being invited to give a talk about stress in healthcare at the University of California San Francisco, I became involved with dentistry and medicine. Do you feel that the fear you had in performing music and the stress it brought came to be a blessing in switching direction from music as a career to psy- chology and helping people confront their fear? I did not completely switch careers, but I think that we are all here to serve other people and that all your life experi- ences build you more and more towards becoming a per- son who can serve other people. Everything that happens to us is an opportunity to grow. We are part of nature. What really underlies my work is a progression of three things to find your path to optimal living. The first is to accept what is coming to you in your life, rather than fight- ing it. The second, once you accept this, is to grow, asking yourself how you can grow from what is happen- ing to you and not why it is happening to you or what you did to deserve this. The third is to appreciate and honor the point of growing. It is to serve other people. To quote you, “When I work with people, I see what they are capable of, what binds them to unproductive habits, and I train them to be their best”. It seems to be such a blessing to have this ability, but it cannot be so easy, right? I have been doing this for 40 years. It takes a lot of work on myself. It has been a lifetime of work to be able to be of service, to be able to see and pick up on all the things that are happening. I have had in my life the most extraor- dinary teachers and trainers, people who saw something in me and trained me in different ways to be able to have that ability in myself. We are here to cultivate each other really; we are all gar- deners. If you want to find out what someone is capable 08 aligners 1 2023