A few weeks ago my out of office message told anyone that sent me an email that I was unavailable because I was having my wisdom teeth removed. The plan was to go in and have all of them yanked out at the same time - to just be done with it. I'm an advocate of change, but this wasn't the kind of change I'm usually excited about. So my out of office was simple and somewhere along the lines of:

"HEY, THEY'RE JUST TEETH... Apologies, but I'm out of the office today because I'm having my wisdom teeth removed. (yes, all of them.)"

Nothing terribly fancy per-say, but it was when I received a comment from a peer about the message (because it had made her laugh) that I took pause and looked at what I had written in a slightly different light.  Initially, she had thought I was referring to the common phrase you hear from people that are struggling to get information or push for change in a less than accommodating environment.  Something along the lines of, "Getting that done was like pulling teeth!"  Of course, I've had my share of challenges when pushing forward and have certainly used the phrase, but it was in that moment that I was reminded of something...
The process of pulling teeth (aka: making difficult or scary change happen) is typically easier on the person that's doing the pulling than the poor sucker in the chair!

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