Key highlights

• Nice and kind aren't interchangeable. Being nice can mean avoiding discomfort, while kindness involves intentionally supporting well-being and growth.
• Kindness can require accountability. Honest feedback, clear expectations, and boundaries can be kind when they're delivered with someone's growth in mind.
• Psychological safety doesn't mean avoiding hard conversations. Clear and consistent expectations can help create an environment where learners feel safer asking questions and taking risks.
• Personal development supports professional performance. Clinical skills and CE matter, but so does having the bandwidth and stamina to keep using those skills well.
• Small habits count. Glenn's "bite-size wellness" approach focuses on manageable practices that can fit into the reality of a busy clinical or educational day.

Episode description

What if being kind isn't the same as being nice? In this episode of A Tale of Two Hygienists, Jessica and Dave sit down with Dr. Glenn Canares to unpack that distinction and explore what kindness can look like in dental hygiene education. They talk about boundaries, honest conversations, psychological safety, and why supporting someone's growth doesn't always feel comfortable in the moment.

The conversation also turns inward. Glenn shares his own wake-up call and explains why personal development matters just as much as professional development. From small habits between patients to creating more space for recovery, the group discusses how educators and clinicians can build the bandwidth to respond with kindness rather than simply react or placate. It's a practical conversation about teaching the whole person, including ourselves.

A Tale of Two Hygienists Podcast – Episode 551

Choosing kindness over simply being nice [00:35]

Dr. Glenn Canares: Kindness is a choice, and I think that's the biggest difference between being nice, because nice is passive. Hopefully some of us are just born that way, but when we choose kindness, we all have it within us. It's proactive; there's agency in it.

The true skill growth, the true growth of becoming kinder, is how do I deliver this authentic message in a way that can be heard, even when there's a mutual dialogue, right? So that the growth happens maybe even both ways.

Kindness is where we have real, honest discussions with each other and find ways so that the other person can hear it. "Kill them with kindness" was, let's overwhelm them with distraction, with niceness, with placating, with hyping up someone else's ego. And that just doesn't resonate with me anymore because I think it's not about killing people with kindness, but it's about choosing kindness.

Welcome to A Tale of Two Hygienists [01:33]

Dave Torres: A Tale of Two Hygienists.

Nobody warned us in hygiene school that one day we would be running a podcast, interviewing some of the most brilliant minds in dentistry and somehow convincing people to listen to us. And yet you guys are here listening to us.

Welcome back, listeners, to another A Tale of Two Hygienists podcast. I am your co-host, Dave, and I'm here with my very kind co-host, Jess.

Jessica Atkinson: Thanks, Dave. Today we're going to be talking about kindness, specifically kindness and education and how we can teach the whole person.

We have brought on a guest who is the kindness king. In fact, Dr. Glenn Canares is known as the Oracle of Kindness. He is a clinical associate professor at the University of Maryland and residency program director of pediatric dentistry.

Like many of you, his education came with a focus on the head while ignoring the heart. But today we're going to talk about how we can switch that. Glenn is on a mission to change it. He believes that great education should include the whole person because the way we approach education is the way our professionals of tomorrow will approach their patients.

He shares his kindness curriculum via keynote talks, workshops, webinars, podcasts, social media, and one-on-one coaching.

Welcome to the podcast, Glenn. We are so happy to have you.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure. I'm just super excited to chat with you both.

Nice versus kind [03:07]

Jessica Atkinson: Well, it's so kind of you to come on and to teach us a little bit more about what this looks like in the education world. The month of August, we're focusing on educators, and I had an opportunity to hear you speak about your kindness curriculum. I said, "We really need Glenn to come and talk about how we can be more kind in education."

I want to start by talking about the difference between kind and nice. Sometimes I think we think we're being kind when we're actually being nice, or we think we're being nice. I want to talk a little bit more about that. Tell me what you think about the difference between those two things.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Sure, absolutely, Jess. One of the things I always share when I share the difference between nice and kind is very much from lived experience. I can just consider myself a recovering nice guy, and it's something I have to keep waking up every morning to make sure that I don't go down that path of being way too nice and letting people walk all over me each and every day.

There is a difference between being nice and kind. I think there is this pressure, particularly for us in education, that we want to do the nice thing. We want to help our students along. But I think what's happened over time is that nice and kind end up being synonymous, where you can just change the words.

When I talk about being nice, being nice is when we choose comfort over honesty, or we choose, "Let's just have some agreement," over having an authentic type of conversation.

For me, what shows up as this recovering nice guy is that it oftentimes means I'm not going to set a boundary here. I'm not going to set an expectation because I just want to be nice about it. I want everyone to be agreeable.

With kindness, kindness is a choice. I think that's the biggest difference between being nice, because nice is passive. Hopefully some of us are just born that way. But when we choose kindness, we all have it within us. It's proactive; there's agency in it.

There are two components of choosing kindness. The first is, "Am I doing something? Am I choosing something to support someone's well-being?" And then, secondarily, "Am I choosing something to promote growth?" That could be in someone else or in ourselves.

I think the biggest difference is passive is being nice. Kindness is a choice. Those two areas are really, really important: supporting well-being and fostering growth.

Kindness and psychological safety [05:52]

Jessica Atkinson: I love the differentiation of kindness being something that you're consciously acting to do.

Kindness is often our natural response, the carnal response, the lizard-brain response of, "I want to be comfortable. I want to be amicable. I don't want any waves." But to be kind would be to actually say something that would benefit the person that you're talking with.

How does this help the psychological environment of safety in learning environments when you add kindness?

Dr. Glenn Canares: That's such a good question. I think what I'm hearing is we're getting at the disconnect in our educational environments. When there isn't a sense of—you brought up the word psychological safety, right? It's this idea that I would hope, in an ideal learning environment, our learners can ask questions, can have ideas, can take risks in terms of, "I don't need to just get the right answer. I actually need to learn this stuff."

When we see those things, that's actually a symptom, in a good way, of a psychologically safe environment.

I suspect we've all been in different environments where we don't feel that safety. It's like, "You know what? This is not the time. This is not the battle. This is not the hill I want to die on. I'm going to keep my mouth shut and not share what I need to do."

When we bring kindness in, and that can be expressed in so many different ways, that's what I love about it. At its simplicity, it is a choice; it is agency.

One of the ways it can get expressed is when we are choosing kindness, we are creating these clear and consistent expectations in our environments. I know this is focused more on education, but I think it applies to any environment we're in.

In these educational environments, when we choose kindness, there is an intention to create these clear and consistent expectations, which in itself—and the science shows that it actually helps foster more psychological safety.

I kind of want to get at what you were exactly saying, Jess, is that sometimes the kind choice is having to share something that might be uncomfortable.

I kind of want to put out here: kindness is hard sometimes. Kindness can be uncomfortable, but oftentimes kindness is honest. It's truthful. When we share that truth with the want of supporting someone's well-being, it often is expressed in an expectation to someone else that's clear and consistent and something that we can come back on.

It's not because I was feeling good one day and feeling poor the other day. It's that same clear, consistent expectation. I think it's one of the simplest, easier-said-than-done, but simplest ways to continue to foster psychological safety in any environment.

We're focused on education, but even in my own lived experience, you know where else it works? In a marriage, in working with my children, in friendships and other groups. When we choose kindness, sometimes it's hard to be clear and consistent on our own expectations. But, man, it really allows the other person not to have to second-guess.

Again, I share that because maybe it's not the first thing you think about being kind, but it is a clear expression of that ability to say, "I'm fostering my own growth or someone else's, as well as supporting the well-being in that statement."

Is kindness for ourselves or for others? [09:31]

Dave Torres: Glenn, help me understand this at a deeper level. Because I'm thinking about, is kindness mostly for them or us? Or is it for both?

Because I feel like when I'm nice, I feel like I'm nice for them. But is kindness for both, or is it just mostly something that you do to kind of say, "Okay, this is something that, you know, like the vibe, the energy, the psychological aspects of it"?

Dr. Glenn Canares: Dave, I love that question, and thank you for the permission to say, "All right, let's dig deeper into this." That's such a good question.

My quick answer is I think kindness is the choice we do for ourselves, right? Because I think you bring up a very good point, Dave, that being nice—that's for everyone else, right? There's this external focus.

I think kindness also has an external focus, and there's this beautiful balance of both the internal and the external.

I suspect some of your listeners on this podcast, as soon as I said "recovering nice guy," they immediately resonated with that. I would say for that, kindness is for ourselves because I don't know if this resonates with you, Dave, or you, Jess, but oftentimes, because I've been so nice, I wouldn't say that I couldn't say the meanest thing or whatever to someone else, but my goodness, I have said the worst things to myself that no one else has said about me—like, to myself. That self-criticism.

I recognize there's healing in that. I believe that choice to foster my own growth and support my own well-being is a kind choice for myself.

When we start there, we have space, we have bandwidth, and then we can share that energy, that vibe, as you were saying, that kindness with others.

That being said, sometimes for some of us, it takes practicing in an external area, in an environment, to see the external results of sharing kindness with someone else, which then can inform us.

I think there are two different—not two, but I suspect there are two types of people in your audience here. The ones that say, "Okay, I need to start with kindness to myself first, because often I've found I'm most unkind to myself before anyone else." And there are others that need to practice and see the effects and express it in a way in an environment and see how that responds to them.

Jessica Atkinson: I'm thinking about an education environment, and I'm thinking about times where I have chosen to be nice because I can control the outcome of being nice.

I know if I'm being nice, I'm doing it for somebody else, and I know that I'm going, "Oh, this is interesting." I'm working through this as I say it.

When I'm being nice, I'm saying something that I know is going to satiate that person, but then in that same breath, I'm saying, "But then I get to control how I'm perceived. I'm going to be perceived as nice."

But kindness, sometimes when I make a decision to be kind, that's going to be for the person's growth or for my own growth. Sometimes that's not perceived as nice. Do you experience that?

When kindness doesn't look nice [12:59]

Dr. Glenn Canares: Oh, I love that you brought this up. There was literally—I think it was back in March—I was giving a talk to a group in my state.

That same concept was brought up. I will say it like this: A person had this epiphany and said, "My gosh, Glenn. I thought I was being this mean, too-direct person, all these different types of things. But what I recognized is I was actually trying to be kind. I have to find a different way of modifying my way of sharing it so it's heard."

But I kept beating myself up saying, "I'm this mean person. I'm too direct about this." All the stories, right? "I'm too direct about this."

When this concept hits, you just have this epiphany like, "Actually, I'm being quite kind because I'm trying to do those two things. Where I need to modify is not the message, but how I deliver it."

Does that make sense?

Jessica Atkinson: So that could be the words that you use, or the tone that you use, or the time that you use.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Right. The timing on it, as opposed to, "Let me just do something to appease everyone," but you don't actually get your message out.

It's just hard. It's stifling, right? And it's just like, "Now you're playing a game of what did I say to make sure this person was feeling okay? Let me monitor them emotionally."

Versus, "Here's my truth," and the true skill growth, the true growth of becoming kinder is, how do I deliver this authentic message in a way that can be heard—in the way, the time, the tone it's delivered, even, you know, and sometimes there's that mutual dialogue, right? So that the growth happens maybe even both ways.

To me, a kinder world is not necessarily where everyone placates each other, but it's where we have real, honest discussions with each other and find ways so that the other person can hear it. I mean, maybe I'm thinking too big, but we can do that in a...

Jessica Atkinson: I like this big world. I like this world of accountability. I really like it.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Yeah, I just—

Rethinking "kill them with kindness" [15:12]

Dave Torres: We believe in the Glenn-verse, and today we're joined by the Glenn-verse, right? And I have to ask you: When you hear "kill them with kindness," where does your mind go to?

Dr. Glenn Canares: That is such a good question. Okay, so I'm just going to react. I'm just going to respond and react.

Before, I used to be like, "Oh, yeah, that's kill them with kindness, man. Let's be super nice. Let's bring them up with all these compliments so they can feel so good that there's no other emotion they could ever feel than joy or happiness, and they couldn't be angry about it."

And now, with the reframe, "killing with kindness" just doesn't work.

For number one, we don't have to kill anyone, right? But it's not, to me, that is...

"Kill them with kindness" was, "Let's overwhelm them with distraction, with niceness, with placating, with hyping up someone else's ego." And that just doesn't resonate with me anymore because I think it's not about killing people with kindness, but it's about choosing kindness.

I wish it sounded catchier than that, but it's not an action to overwhelm someone, but to choose and have the space to be uncomfortable if we need to, have the space to listen. It's not a competition.

Does that make sense? "Kill them with kindness," to me, sounds like a competition. Where kindness, when we really accept it as what it is, it is a really...

If I can expand on this, I believe kindness is a high-level skill that we can practice. It's definitely a leadership skill. To me, it is an essential educational teaching skill.

But when it comes to kindness, there's a lot we need to do in order to practice and have that skill appropriately.

I think about it like this. Right now, we have the World Cup going on. As we're recording this, we have the NBA Finals. We have these high-performing athletes that we know need to be well-rested, well-fed, and need to do all these things so they can perform at the highest level.

When I think about kindness in a leadership or an educational system, to me, that is the high-level skill. Just like a professional athlete, they need to be rested and regulated. In the same way, I believe that as leaders, as educators, the more regulation, the more grounded we are, the more bandwidth we have for ourselves and others, the more healing we've done for ourselves, right?

We can respond rather than react. We tap into that higher performance, that high skill level where we choose kindness. We respond with kindness rather than react with niceness.

It's just this really powerful skill that—I believe kindness is one of the most challenging high-performing skills in leadership and education that we can do. Yeah, and we need to be on point. We need to be grounded. We need to be solid to be able to use it in a way that's effective.

Becoming a "pro kindness" athlete [18:27]

Dave Torres: How do we start? You said performance, right? So you're like the pro-level kindness person, right? But how did you start recognizing that with yourself?

Do you remember the time when you woke up and you're like, "Man, I really got it. I'm nice, but I really got to be kind to myself so that I can be kind to others"? And what advice do you have for that person who's like, "That's me. That's 100% me."

I'm excited for what Glenn is saying and to be a pro-kindness athlete.

Dr. Glenn Canares: I like the pro.

Jessica Atkinson: I like this pro-athlete thing. I want to know what your daily regimen is. I want to know what you're eating. I want to know how much you're drinking.

Glenn's wake-up call [19:14]

Dr. Glenn Canares: So there's two ways I'm going to answer this, and I'm sharing this because I'm on the other side of this.

I'm a very experiential person. Sometimes I like, "Okay, let me put my head down and do this till I get it done." I can push through discomfort. I can do all these different things.

That also comes with an issue of where sometimes I need these hard life experiences to literally go, "Glenn, wake up. Here's the lesson. Pay attention."

I'll share with you that the genesis, or the beginning, of this really intentional focus journey on saying, "Glenn, you need to stop being so nice. It's about being kind," is that I was standing in the middle of clinic.

We had our residents, like I said, I'm an academic, I'm an educator. Our residents were doing their thing. There was nothing crazy going on. There was no emergency that walked in. There was no trauma, whatever.

I'm standing in the middle of clinic, and I am feeling these sweat beads come down my forehead, come down my head. I start to feel my chest just start beating really, really, really, really, really fast.

For the next one to two minutes, I don't know where I am. I don't know what's happening.

I'm like, even part of it, "I had a good life. I guess this is how I go out."

Then it just kind of calmed down.

There was a nurse on the floor, so I went over to that station. I kind of sat, checked my blood pressure. It's through the roof, my heart rate's going. I drank some water.

Finally, after about 20, 25 minutes, I calmed down.

Then I made my way back to clinic, finished out the clinic session, came back to my office, and kind of just processed what just happened.

I was like, "Did I have a heart attack?"

I understood later, on reflection, that I had a panic attack.

It was one of those things where I was like, "I'm in my mid-40s now," and I was just like, "What have I been holding in and just gutting through?"

The reason I share that is that was my wake-up call.

What I hope for your listeners is that if you have experienced that or something, your own version of a wake-up call, you have nothing but empathy for me. And that if the lesson you learned from your wake-up call in your life is some significant motivation or change or reflection, that's what happened for me.

For others in your audience where you're like, "You know what? Exactly. I know I'm a nice person. I want to do more of the kind thing, and I don't need a panic attack to wake me up to do that change," that's amazing and actually the healthier way to do it.

But what I'll share is that was my moment where I was like, "Okay, now it's time to understand what I'm doing."

Small habits and "bite-size wellness" [22:09]

Dr. Glenn Canares: So the little habits and things that help me understand how to be kinder was actually finally just checking in on myself.

When you asked earlier, Dave, "Is being kind more about ourselves or others?" and I said, maybe there's two different types of people in your audience, for those that resonate with this, it was like, "Oh, I need to be kinder to myself," which is understanding, why am I not supporting my own well-being?

Is my growth actually about just putting my head down and doing something over and over again? Or is this about what I'm understanding my growth as an educator is? How do I impact more students' lives? How do I connect more in a way that not only do they grow and learn, but learn at an exponentially faster rate?

Those are two of the lessons that I learned for myself.

The things that have helped me understand how to be kinder is we hear these different things, right? You need to set boundaries. You need to learn how to say no. All these different things which are out there as cliches almost feel like it—all these things that I had to understand, what am I doing about being nice, and what is actually for me?

What I'll tell you is, it's kind of a way to get there. Remember how I said when we're actually being at that pro level, we can practice the skill of kindness, but if we're not actually having the space for ourselves—the space for ourselves to be regulated, to have the bandwidth within ourselves to actually be kind to ourselves and then be kind to others—

What I've learned is that these... I also talk about this in other parts besides the kindness stuff, this idea of bite-size wellness. As busy professionals, I would love to go on a 10-day silent retreat and say that solves everything.

But for everyone listening here, most people do not have 10 days to go on a silent retreat and abandon—not abandon, put a pause on—all their responsibilities.

So it's this idea of bite-size wellness, where these consistent small habits can help.

Take a physiological sigh, which takes less than 30 seconds between patients. Two inhales through the nose, at the end, get that last sniff, and then empty your belly. You do two of those in a row, you shift from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic system, a more regulated state.

So doing those things in consistent habits throughout the day between patients, waking up and going for a walk immediately to reduce my cortisol levels, right? These are little—I'm talking like a 5- to 10-minute walk in the morning, first thing, before my coffee.

Journaling was extremely powerful for me, being reflective there.

I don't know if this is the quick fix or not. I don't want to call it a quick fix, Dave, but the simple thing is that what I learned is that being nice for so long—here's the lesson.

Being nice for so long, chronically nice, let's call it a chronic thing. Being chronically nice for so long put my mind and myself in a state of dysregulation that I found it very difficult to be kind to myself.

And I was still probably being more nice than kind to others, which was kind of just what you were getting at: telling the truth about our true skill development.

When I'm dysregulated, it's a lot easier just to be nice.

Kindness takes practice—and recovery [25:40]

Jessica Atkinson: You're just regulated, you're stressed out, and there, all those things make you want to go, "Well, there is an option to do this a better way, but we'll take this mediocre way because it's here and it's now and it's easy."

Dr. Glenn Canares: Yeah.

I mean, we still like, if we go back to the pro-athlete kind of analogy, you still have to shoot your shots, right? You still have to practice shooting threes from the free-throw line, all those different things.

So acts of kindness, where we see "be kind," random acts of kindness, those are shooting the basketball to practice to make sure that we actually have the skill to do it when we're available.

But the greatest and the best athletes have a great nutrition plan. They rest, they sleep, they have good coaching. They have all this different support.

And it's the same thing with kindness.

It's one of the biggest pushbacks that I get when anyone's like, "Maybe we could use this talk." "This is a soft-skill workshop. This is an extra thing."

My reframe on the kindness thing is kind of what we're talking about, like shooting the basketball, getting in the hoop. Yeah, that's a skill.

I believe kindness is that skill.

What are we doing? Kindness is not the soft skill to do the other stuff to perform. Kindness is actually the skill.

So what are we doing else to make sure we get at that level?

And gosh, so many areas that I want to go into this now.

Personal development is part of professional development [26:56]

Jessica Atkinson: I think so often we get caught up in professional development that we forget personal development.

I'm trying to put this into our analogy. So you sporty people are going to have to help me, but maybe we're getting so involved in how many tickets we're selling at the games or what does our jersey look like? Or we're getting—or are we paying for the best equipment? Are we doing all these things?

Are we really investing in the hard skills, but we're burnt out, we're sad, all of these things that are showing up in these systems that are having effects on our students being able to use those things that were maybe focusing on because that's professional development?

I know more about staging and grading. I know more about instrumentation.

I guess I think my invitation here from our podcast today, Glenn, is what steps would you recommend we take for personal development that's going to show up in improving our professional development?

Dr. Glenn Canares: That's like a really good question.

Jessica Atkinson: Yeah.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Therapy.

Jessica Atkinson: Yeah.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Okay, so here's what I'm thinking.

Again, what I love about you two is just like these are really thoughtful questions, and also I'm just going to respond from here.

Jessica Atkinson: We're in this together.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Yeah, this is awesome. This is truly—you make it feel like we're just talking with friends. This is awesome.

Jessica Atkinson: You are a friend.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Yay. Thank you.

Building the stamina to stay in the profession [28:48]

Dr. Glenn Canares: Okay, so again, I think you kind of framed it beautifully, Jess, where the professional development is going to happen regardless, right?

Whether we're in an educational system, whether we're in a practice and there's continuing CE and professional development, there is an expectation that we perform a craft at a certain level.

The personal development is going to the steps that I think it kind of relates to what I was talking about before, but as you said that, it just made me think that the professional development is the actual performance of the skills, while the personal development is, "What is my stamina to do that over time?"

Right?

If you think about it like, okay, the quality of scaling and root planing or some sort of procedure, or the ability to manage in an office, interpersonal skills with your patients, that sort of thing, right? That's our professional development.

But I think what our personal development does is say, "Okay, how long is this performance able to be sustained for?"

I would think most new grads could go—they always say it's a marathon, we're going to use a cliché, say it's a marathon, not a sprint. But I think my gut feeling is that the average new grad coming out of school can sprint for five years and be like, "All right."

They're going to continue to learn. It builds upon itself. And after about five years of practice, they're really in a solid place or a really good place.

And then from there on, right, Dave, you've been practicing for over 20 years, right?

Dave Torres: That's beautiful.

Dr. Glenn Canares: That's a level of personal development and stamina, right, that comes into the profession to perform at a high level.

So my thinking is that personal development related to professional development is related to the amount of time that you can perform at a high level without getting burned out, as you're saying, Jess, or being like, "I need to change my career. I need to do something completely different. I need to show..."

And that's okay, right? We have all different levels.

For personal development, I keep coming back to it, but I believe it's the amount of internal bandwidth we allow for ourselves.

Making space to recover [31:03]

Dr. Glenn Canares: There is a culture where we—I think in our professions, we—

Again, this is—I mentioned this before we started recording. I had a former life in corporate America as an auditor, sitting behind spreadsheets and computers and all that stuff, where we are in professional fields that are patient-focused. We happen to be—just, we happen to be educators that also are learner-focused.

I think what's really interesting is that we need to share space with others. And I think that professional development comes to the amount of bandwidth that we have for ourselves.

Oh, that's what I was going to say. There's this culture of overperformance for us, right? It is like, okay, get that grade, move it to that next course. All right, good. You've got these CEs done. Let's up the level. Let's bring up the production.

And I think that constant thing works for that sprint time, but if we're looking at long-term personal development, it doesn't allow a lot of bandwidth for us to recover from that performance.

Like, coming back to the pro athletes, there's no one at the World Cup that, after they—you know, I guarantee they have not been performing at the level they need to for the last months. I think what they've been able to do is ramp it up throughout the season.

And now that it's go time, they're performing at the highest level possible.

I feel like with the same thing with us, I don't know if there's ever a finals, right? We're like, "All right, we're always in the finals."

We're always performing at this high level where, when we talk about professional development, doing the kind things for ourselves is really about creating that space and bandwidth for us to be able to recover.

And just like the high-performing athletes, we're the kind-performing athletes. The highest-quality ones are able to rest and recover in a faster way than the less-performing athletes.

I don't know how you want to describe it.

So I feel like the steps we do for personal development would be that: How quickly can we recover from performing? Do we allow that same bandwidth?

For me, it has been a lot of, like I said, the intentional look at reducing cortisol levels within myself, the stress levels, whether people do that through community, friends, breathing, meditation, whatever it might be, or learning more or—

Jessica Atkinson: You have been lowering my cortisol, Glenn.

Dr. Glenn Canares: That's what I'm saying.

Like, this is a creative social podcast.

Jessica Atkinson: It's awesome.

Small actions can improve our bounce-back time [33:50]

Jessica Atkinson: Yes. And my takeaways are because we are in an environment in education where it doesn't feel like there's an ending.

We just graduated a class and people are like, "Oh, you have the summer off." And inside I'm like, "Ha ha." I'm like, "I can't tell you that—no, I don't have the summer off." But no, I don't have the summer off, and there's not that end goal.

To remind myself to take those micro-actions so my response, or my bounce-back time, is faster and faster.

So, listeners, I hope that you have also taken away something that you can micro-do in the next week and improve your bounce-back time and become an elite kindness athlete with Glenn and Dave and I.

Welcome to the kind team.

Thank you so much, Glenn, for being with us today.

Dr. Glenn Canares: Thank you so much.

Dave Torres: Glenn, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Keep learning, keep laughing, and keep showing up [34:49]

Jessica Atkinson: That's a wrap on today's episode of A Tale of Two Hygienists podcast.

If this conversation made you feel seen, inspired, or even just a little fired up, share it with a fellow hygienist or fellow dental professional. Share it with your neighbors, your friends. Share it with everyone.

That is how this community grows.

Dave Torres: Make sure you subscribe, leave us a review, and connect with us on social media so that we can keep on going with this conversation.

Remember, your career, your voice, and your story matter here.

We're Dave and Jessica, and until next time—

Jessica Atkinson: Keep learning, keep laughing, and keep showing up for yourself and for each other.