Chiropractic Practice Blog

It is easier to do than to be; to act than to have faith; to plan rather than to trust.

Often when chiropractors ask what they can do to extricate themselves from a rough patch or an unpleasant circumstance, I’ll often suggest that they do nothing. “You’re already doing too much. Instead, who do you need to be?”

Being accepting, forgiving, appreciative, understanding or tolerant are more difficult than adding a new procedure, saying a new script or establishing a new policy. Putting your faith in what you do rather than who you are, confuses effect with cause. Actions are always the effect of who you are being. Any action without the appropriate accompanying belief is ineffective. You become an amateur actor rather than authentically you.

When you’re unsure what to do, it’s usually a sign you don’t know who you are. Be still. Know yourself. What you need to do will become clear!

Many arguments, misunderstandings and disappointments are caused by two parties attaching different meanings to the same word. In fact, most words only mean what we decide them to mean.

What does it mean when your patient volume is down? Here are some possibilities:

I’m a failure. (Find a new career?)
I’m going out of business. (Cut costs?)
I need to make a change. (New report?)
Get more new patients. (Advertise?)
I need to help more people. (Look for opportunities?)
Market my services differently. (Lectures or a website?)
I’m not relevant. (Discover what patients really want?)

The meaning you attach to it affects how likely you’ll be able to correct it.

Before you can effectively overcome a challenge, make sure you know what it means. Otherwise, you may apply the wrong solution. That’s what patient education is: helping patients attach a new meaning to their symptoms and its correction.

Do you understand patients?

Many chiropractors understand a patient’s health complaint and what it will take to restore their ability to self-heal. Yet, these same chiropractors are often woefully inadequate when it comes to understanding patients.

To understand is to “stand under.” That is, to support the patient. To supply a foundation for them. How do you support patients without bumping up against an unhealthy co-dependency?
Help them make a new, more appropriate meaning of their health complaint. Help them become present to the stresses in their lives that produce the survival mechanism we call subluxation. Help them to know that they have been a co-conspirator in creating (and then neglecting) their health problem. Help them to know that you’re attending to them, not merely their spinal “boo-boo.”

When you help a patient truly understand, they have one of the most attractive, referral-inspiring experiences possible: to feel that they were understood.

Those who follow this column know that for the last nine months my dad has been wrestling with lymphoma, the same thing that killed my mom back in 1991 and her brother soon after. Now, after eight infusions of poison (at an oncology center he jokingly referred to as The Cancer Shoppe) designed to kill the cancer without killing him, the report from his PET scan yesterday revealed… no presence of cancer.

Praise God!

After the initial congratulatory portion of our telephone conversation last night, I asked my dad a question that stems from 28 years of hanging around the vitalistic profession of chiropractic.

“So, what did the doctor suggest that you do differently from now on to best assure that you remain cancer-free?”

His answer alarmed me.

What are you waiting for?

It’s tempting to believe that we’ll be happy when… or I’ll we’ll have greater success when… such and such circumstances are just right. But waiting for the economy, the kids to leave the house or some other arbitrary event is mechanistic and reactive.

Waiting for a more opportune time, justified as being “better” or making the task “easier” is rarely true.

Waiting overlooks the power of intent, decisiveness and certainty—each changes the fabric of space and time. Waiting treats the world as a giant pinball machine and our role in it as hapless victims. Waiting is based on the false assumption that circumstances must be ideal. Waiting surrenders our say in the matter of our lives and overlooks our role as co-creators.
Instead, a ct with unshakable faith. Act with unwavering clarity. Act with doubtless confidence. When you do, you actually create the circumstances you were waiting for!

Telephone calls like this one have become increasingly common as chiropractors, who have been deposited at the high tide mark of insurance, find themselves further and further away from the receding reimbursement they used to enjoy.

Before I share the gist of my phone conversation with this chiropractor, allow me to install an uncharacteristic plug for my tenth book in the Patient’s Point of View series, Adjusting, Observations of a Chiropractic Advocate During a Time of Change. Between its 240 pages and the hundreds of blog posts here (click on Musings in the “Categories” index to the left) I give more complete direction for a way out. So if you find the following suggestions wanting, realize that this is merely a quick overview.

After I called Jim back and we exchanged pleasantries, I asked him a simple question. “So tell me, why did you become a chiropractor?”

His first answer was predictable.