Top tips for achieving your aesthetic goals in 2023

Reflection is a great tool to help aesthetic practitioners hone their craft as both a clinician and an entrepreneur.

In this blog, Dr Tim Pearce reflects on his learning from the past year and discusses how you can shift your mindset to develop, grow, and achieve your goals, allowing you to excel in your aesthetic career as we embark on 2023.

Do you feel anxious about causing complications? Many clinicians feel so overwhelmed with the thought of causing a vascular occlusion that it stops them growing their aesthetics business. Dr Tim is currently hosting a webinar series to help you overcome your fear of complications so that you can uplevel your knowledge, and increase your CPD-certified learning to build a successful aesthetics business. Sign up here >>

Do not let resentment stop you attaining

Dr Tim recalls a time in his youth when he was out with another car-loving friend and saw a Ferrari. He stopped to admire the vehicle, whilst his friend chose the shocking behaviour of spitting on it – something which Dr Tim realised was resentment, a feeling that made his friend angry at the car, yet conversely, he felt inspired.

Resentment is a common reaction in human psychology. When people see something that they think is unattainable, they feel resentful towards it. Yet, if you really want it, the alternative is to realise that you have some power in you to move closer towards that goal.

This can happen on many occasions as we go through life, not just when thinking about our dream cars or material items. Dr Tim advises all his followers to pay attention for those moments where instead of feeling inspired, you start to feel resentful, because you probably have a story going on in your mind that is telling you that you will never achieve the thing you really want.

Firstly, even if you cannot achieve ‘IT’, it is better to acknowledge what is going on. It is not the fault of the person who has achieved ‘IT’ that you will not achieve ‘IT’. But, more importantly, do not believe that you will not achieve ‘IT’; this can be the tricky part.

According to Dr Tim, there is an unconscious desire within some people to believe that they cannot achieve something. If you believe you cannot achieve ‘IT’, there is no pressure to try, there is no chance of failure. If you ‘Dare to Dream’, you must DARE because there is inherent risk – the risk of failure. It is painful to fail, but do not let that stop you wondering what is possible, resorting instead to resenting those who have already achieved something that you would desperately like to achieve.

Look for inspiration, not excuses

When looking at successful people who you identify with, and Dr Tim admits that he does this too, you often ask yourself the question, ‘does this apply to me?’.

He remembers thinking that he would never do well on Instagram because he had not been ‘in the game’ at the right time. Back in the day, it was easy when you first started, you took some ordinary photographs, put them out there, and you would have hundreds of thousands of followers, if you were persistent. Thus, Dr Tim believed that those successful people who had far more followers than him got there because they were ‘there at the right time’ and his lack of followers was not his fault; wrong. What he had done with this way of thinking was let himself off the hook. This is a way for your ego to protect you.

There are always reasons why someone has got a better deal than you in life, but if you focus on those things, you are confining yourself to staying where you are. Dr Tim realised that he needed to look for inspiration from those successful people, looking for what he could learn, rather than for reasons why they got it easy, or excuses for why he believed he was never going to catch up with them.

If you do focus on looking for inspiration rather than excuses, you have the hope of moving forward and developing, ultimately making your goals more likely to occur. As entrepreneurs, we must focus on what is possible and not allow our brains to take us to a mindset where we can never do something – described as the scarcity versus abundance mindset.

Everyone is a critic

Dr Tim took an honest look back over 2022 and realised that it had been one of the best years of his business life, by a long margin, but he also did a lot of things in his private life that put a strain on family life – including getting a new puppy and helping a Ukrainian family who have been living with them since the summer. Whether professional or personal, he took criticism from others – taking in a Ukrainian family was branded as fake and virtue signalling, and various training opportunities, including the Inner Circle event in Switzerland with Julie Horn, were criticised for being too expensive.

But he is not unique, and he knows that this is happening to many of you involved in the private aesthetic sector – you may experience criticism from colleagues within the NHS as you embark upon your aesthetic career, thinking it is all vanity and that you are making money out of people’s insecurities. They may think that you do not care about your patients or that you are wasting your qualifications in medical aesthetics.

Other people come up with these negative points of view because your growth is a challenge to them; are they going to stay still or are they going to do something new in their life and try and make things better? A lot of people who do not want to move forward will criticise those who do, causing friction and pain that you need to be prepared for and navigate around.

Listen to your tribe – you, your family, the team that you might build, and the clients that you serve – they should be your judge about whether you are doing a good job or not. Remember, it is not the people who are buying your products and services who are criticising you. We must look for our validation in the work that we do and not be judged by those on the side lines who have no skin in the game and are probably just justifying their own inertia.

“Let it go, let it go…”

On reflection, Dr Tim has been delving into understanding the process of human motivation and how it impacts on both business building and your interaction with patients. He believes that, as well as knowing the core skills of injection technique and facial anatomy, aesthetic injectors must understand human motivation to optimally advise and treat patients.

This year, he also realised that there is a new aspect of human motivation which he had not fully built into his model of understanding – being able to let go.

His existing model involved the understanding that, to start with, we all need a compelling vision – you must picture a goal in your mind that excites and motivates you. The next step is the need for a plan or clear path which you believe will get you there. If you cannot see your path clearly, your motivation will decrease. The third step is down to you and whether you trust yourself to execute that plan. If this is lacking, do not lose hope because you can build trust in yourself by executing smaller plans that make you realise that you really are capable, essentially building confidence by taking small incremental steps out of your comfort zone to develop trust in your own abilities.

Dr Tim learnt the fourth element when he was in Switzerland with Julie Horn. People do not move forward in their life, even when they might have a compelling vision, a clear path to get there, and even trust in themselves to move in that direction, because they are too afraid to let go of what they have already got.

Humans will often choose certainty over personal growth. For example, if you are okay in your job – it is not that bad, but it is not fulfilling, you are miserable, and wishing you could build something better – you will still tend to stick with what you know, rather than moving forward, because of the fear of losing something that is good. It is the fear of ‘letting go’ and not a problem with executing your plan that is stopping you.

Once you understand this element of human motivation and apply it to yourselves, you can start to develop a strategy to let go. Establish the stages you need to complete to change your current position and then it becomes easier to let go of the ‘good thing’ and move towards the ‘great thing’.

You can find Dr Tim Pearce on Instagram if you have any questions or comments about facial anatomy, including fat pads and ligaments.

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Aesthetics Mastery Show

How To Achieve Your Aesthetic Goals In 2023 | Expert Injector Advice

In this episode Dr Tim reflects back on 2022 and shares his learnings from the year so that you can shift your mindset and excel in your aesthetics career for 2023. Watch the full Aesthetics Mastery Show here.

Filler Complications eLearning Courses

If you want to increase your confidence by learning how to handle complications, Dr Tim Pearce offers two comprehensive courses that are highly rated by our delegates:

• Botulinum Toxin Complications Mastery
• Dermal Filler Complications Mastery

Both give CPD and certificates on completion.

In addition, browse our FREE downloadable resources on complications.

Dr Tim Pearce eLearning

Dr Tim Pearce MBChB BSc (Hons) MRCGP founded his eLearning concept in 2016 in order to provide readily accessible BOTOX® and dermal filler online courses for fellow Medical Aesthetics practitioners. His objective was to raise standards within the industry – a principle which remains just as relevant today.

Our exclusive video-led courses are designed to build confidence, knowledge and technique at every stage, working from foundation level to advanced treatments and management of complications.

Thousands of delegates have benefited from the courses and we’re highly rated on Trustpilot. For more information or to discuss which course is right for you, please get in touch with our friendly team.