Chiropractic Patient's-Point-of-View Blog

Do you think you're separate, different and alone? That no one has suffered as you do? That without tremendous self-effort you would disappear into oblivion? Those beliefs begin to explain all sorts of sabotaging behaviors that keep your practice small.

If you believe you're separate, you might be inclined to adapt chiropractic to fit your worldview, rather than adapting yourself to chiropractic.

If you believe you're different, you might feel compelled to shrink and "stay under the radar" in the hopes of not standing out and becoming a target.

If you believe you're alone, you might see scarcity where there is abundance and imagine that your success only comes at the expense of others.

Look around. This is what it looks like when your conscious or unconscious beliefs manifest. Want to see change, growth and improvement? Identify your beliefs and make sure they align with the truth.

Pain, whether physical or emotional, is a warning sign.

While most chiropractors are comfortable working in the realm of physical pain, when confronted by emotional pain, theirs or a patient's, it's disorienting. Yet, the approach is actually the same: find the "subluxation."

The subluxation linked to emotional pain is often a hidden belief that is untrue. Believing a lie is the source of tremendous anguish and an unwillingness to accept "what is" produces needless suffering.

What do you believe (that isn't actually true) that is the source of your emotional pain, fear or anger? How have you been deceived, causing a distorted perception of what is so?

Blaming others, or our circumstances, creates a helplessness that stops us with inaction. Yet, facing the truth and putting ourselves right with what is, is a source of peace. This is one way the truth sets us… free.

Pray for the discernment to know what is, and isn’t, true.

Your practice is a manifestation of what you’re doing, which is the result of who you’re being, which is the result of what you believe.

If your practice isn’t what you want, here are some ways to get unstuck:

1. Know your purpose. If you lack the language to describe your reason for being, you’re missing a critical component needed to move forward. (By the way, your purpose isn’t to adjust as many people as possible! Confusing what we do with our purpose is a common misconception.)

2. Uncover the beliefs of someone experiencing what you want to experience. Don’t get distracted by their doing. Find out what they believe to be true. It’s what you believe to be true (that isn’t) that has you trapped.

3. Discontinue all distractions and addictions. Avoid all media, especially television, sugar, alcohol, pornography or any thing else you use to distract yourself.

Ultimately, getting unstuck is a spiritual exercise.

“I think my problem is procrastination, but I’m not quite ready to admit to it yet.”

If pressed, you could probably list a dozen things you could be doing that would grow your practice. What you need to grow your practice isn’t a lack of knowing, but a lack of doing. It’s not an information shortage, it’s an action shortage. It’s not for a lack of ideas, but for a lack of implementation.

At its root, procrastination is a sign of living reactively, without a passionate purpose for your life. Procrastination “takes you out” as a leader and influencer, reducing your ability to make a difference. When mere survival is your vision, most action steps seem like too much work or don’t supply instant gratification.

This week identify something greater than you and even your survival as a reason for practicing. Do everything you know how to do with the sole purpose of advancing that greater something!

You will either discipline yourself or something else or others will.

Lack financial discipline? The threat of shame and bankruptcy will oppress you, making it difficult to escape mere bill-paying survival.

Are you averse to delaying gratification? Then you’ll be governed by the most pressing, the loudest or the most demanding.

Do you choose not to manage your time? Then chaos and disorganization will control your life and blunt its impact.

Are you unable to control your temper? Then your relationships will be restricted to those who fear you.

Ultimately, personal discipline releases, rather than restrains; frees, rather than controls. What have you allowed to control you and your practice because you’ve been unwilling to embrace personal restraint? A written financial policy? Regular progress exams? Staff training? This week identify and begin taming that which holds you in bondage by being more disciplined.

If you’re afraid to speak in public, consider the fear of those who are contemplating surgery because they don’t know about chiropractic.

If you’re afraid to hand out a brochure or business card for fear it would appear self-serving, consider how selfish you’re being by keeping the truth about chiropractic a secret.

If you’re afraid to urge parents to have their children checked because of what they might think, think about the psychotropic drug use, knee-jerk use of antibiotics, tubes in the ear and the lost potential resulting from your silence.

Personal and professional growth is to be found just on the other side fear. You’ve already done the easy stuff. When you brush up against your comfort zone, push on through. That uncomfortablness is merely the sign of an imminent breakthrough and the temporary feeling that precedes becoming a more effective servant.

It surprises many to learn that putting off the less urgent (procrastination) is related to the hyperactivity exhibited by those who are unable to turn down virtually any request made of them. They are the two sides of the same coin.

Both pathologies are manifestations of lacking a purpose beyond merely surviving, being liked or getting by.

Knowing your purpose gives you the courage to say, “No.”

Knowing your purpose helps you say, “I’m really sorry, I’m overcommitted right now.”

Knowing your purpose helps you say, “It sounds great, but I’m not available then.”

Knowing your purpose helps you pass up off-purpose opportunities and avoid getting sucked up into the emergencies of others. Knowing your purpose provides a benchmark for making courageous decisions; distinguishing between what is important and what isn’t. Knowing our purpose may be one of the most important things to know about ourselves.

Virtually every interaction with a patient can be categorized as either manipulation or ministry.

Manipulation is an expression of ego. To cause someone or something to conform to, or act in ways (even if it is in their best interest) that satisfies you. To control, rather than release. To impose, rather than facilitate. To exert influence for your personal gain.

Ministry is to serve without strings. To love without reciprocity or expectation. To accept without judgment. To honor the patient and their sovereignty, even when they make choices different from the ones you would. To assume a level of detachment that is only possible with clear boundaries.

When you care too much, you blur the boundary between ministry and manipulation. It’s like building a fence on your neighbor’s property. Instead of legal action, patients merely vote with their feet.

Doubt is the real barrier to the life and practice you want. Sure, procrastination takes many out of the game. As does fear. But the atomic bomb of spiritual warfare is doubt.

Just a mustard seed of doubt contains enough "kryptonite" to cause you to question your purpose or make your life seem but a cynical waste of time. Doubt provides an access point for the enemy to place thoughts that sabotage certainty and confidence--the two unspoken things patients crave from you.

This week, confront your doubt. Whether it's taking post X-rays, conducting progress exams, resolving inconsistent sEMG scans or admitting that you're not going to get those receivables you've been carrying on your books. Whatever is producing your doubt, confront it, face it and stare it down. The path towards true healing is to muster the courage to go through, rather than around. To look at that which you don't want to see.

“Oh, I could never do that!”

That’s not true.

You could become an accomplished public speaker, sharing the chiropractic model of health with thousands.

You could get out of debt, have a cash practice and enjoy financial freedom as you practice chiropractic the way you dreamed of in chiropractic college.

You could work half the number of hours and earn twice what you’re earning.

You could become a success incubator for new doctors, clueless as to what real chiropractic is. And what it isn't.

You could. However, taking you and your practice to the next level will likely produce feelings of fear and uncertainty. Feel those feelings and do it anyway. The membrane defining your comfort zone is plastic and will conform to the slightest pressure. That pressure can come from the outside (reactive) or from the inside (proactive).

This week make a conscious effort to put a dent in that translucent film holding you back. Like health, growth comes from the inside out.

A recipe for unhappiness is to compare oneself with others. It is one of the surest routes to unhappiness.

For some, comparing the chiropractic scope of practice with that of a medical doctor may invite envy or jealousy.

Comparing your income with a patient or anyone else can invite feelings of anger or bitterness.

Comparing your patient numbers with any other chiropractor can breed confidence-robbing inadequacy or worse, prideful superiority.

Comparing yourself with anything or anyone distracts you from your purpose.

Someone, somewhere is wealthier, seeing more patients, better looking, happier, more fulfilled, more enlightened or more something than you. It’s also true that someone, somewhere is poorer, seeing fewer patients, having staffing issues or even more uncertain than you. (Perhaps because they’re comparing themselves with you?)

What are hoping to achieve by comparing yourself with others? It does not serve you. Catch yourself doing it and stop it. It is the fuel of resentment.

Fixation is unhealthy, whether in the spine, with your lymphatic system, your money or your love. A lack of circulation is a sure sign of pathology. Give and take, yin and yang, efferent and afferent, inhalation and exhalation are essential.

Chances are if you or your practice is facing the illusion of an insurmountable challenge right now, something isn’t circulating right. Some common culprits:

Your attention (focusing too much on yourself?)
Your energy (lacking enough to give to others?)
Your message (not communicated clearly enough?)
Your gratitude (failing to give thanks for what you have?)
Your love (self-serving, giving to get, strings attached?)

What have you stopped up, prevented from circulating? What unhealthy attachment have you formed to one side of the equation? What are you artificially imposing that is preventing ebb and flow? What have you dammed up, hoarded or grasped too tightly? What part of your life or practice can’t breathe?

What's the condition of your psychological immune system?

Just as a healthy physical immune system protects us from unhelpful viruses and bacterium, our psychological immune system protects us from emotional stressors.

With a healthy psychological immune system, rather than rationalization, denial and blame, we respond more appropriately to our environment:

Appropriate detachment. Trust patients to make the appropriate decisions about their health, even if they're not the choices you'd make.

Establish clear boundaries. It's your job to tell the chiropractic story. It's the patient's job to decide if chiropractic care is something they want. And for how long.

Comfortable with the truth. You accept what is so. You have banished the word "should" from your vocabulary. Your sense of peace affirms that the truth does set us free.

Frequent tendency to laugh. Laughter increases immunoglobulin A. Since you don't take yourself so darned seriously, you're a lot more pleasant to be around.

Truth health isn't merely being subluxation-free!

"How would you like things to be?"

It's a different way to begin a patient consultation and can reveal countless new possibilities rather than, "What seems to be the problem?"

The latter will likely produce a laundry list of what isn't working in their body and their life. Your role becomes reactive, assuming responsibility for solving their problem.

But the former, creates the opportunity for thinking about an alternative future, new choices and zeros in on what's important to them. Chances are they want something more than just their headaches to stop or their back pain to go away! When you tap into what they really want, you unleash a form of motivation that makes scare tactics and energy-draining compliance techniques unnecessary.

"What seems to be the problem?" implies you have the means to "fix" them. Careful. They will be doing the fixing, if there's going to be any fixing. You're a releaser, not a fixer!

Giving a better report, a better adjustment or cleaning up your procedures produce only modest gains. Sure, a 2% increase here or a 5% improvement there can add up.

But for significant growth, you'll want to look deeper. Breakthrough growth is only possible by changing what you believe. Busier practitioners hold a different set of beliefs:

A patient's rejection of care isn't a rejection of me.
I only invest my energy in things I can do something about.
I'm willing to risk a relationship if it means compromising the truth.
I focus on those who show up, not those who miss.
I have total certainty in what I do.
I must hold myself to high standards—even when no one is watching.
I know who I am and I'm comfortable with it.

These are rarely visible when touring a high-performing practice. They often use pretty much the same patient education materials, techniques and procedures that you do. But they show up embracing a very different set of beliefs.

Do you believe that?

Do you have a high maintenance practice? I don't mean a practice full of maintenance patients, but a practice that requires a great deal of emotional investment to maintain?

It may be a sign that you make patient relationships about meeting your needs rather than theirs. It means you have assumed a parental role, imposing your will on patients. Even if you justify your heavy-handed caring as in their best interests, your "mother henning" is disrespectful and unsustainable.

Patient's become the problem. You take their choices personally. Their rejection produces doubt, anger, fatigue and eventually burnout. When you live through others, you are unable to be the anchor patients secretly crave, impairing the most important component of all: hope.

By caring about what you have little or no control over (the pace of their healing, their desire to follow through, the priority they place on their health, etc.) your impact is blunted and your capacity reduced.

Do you take time out for you? If you're like most chiropractors, you're so busy doing, doing, doing that you've neglected you!

When was the last time you ducked into your favorite ice cream parlor? Or sat with a cappuccino on a park bench? Or indulged in a massage? Or just stopped to study a flower or listen to the birds discuss the day?

Have you become a human doing?

Many of us have been misled into believing that success and happiness is acquired through doing. Doing it better, faster, this way or that way. It's not true. If you study the busiest practitioners they are first masters of being. Being certain. Being clear. Being decisive. Being discerning. Being intuitive. Being present. Being comfortable in their own skin. All of which is nearly impossible if your head is always down, bulldozing your way through each day, simply doing the doings of chiropractic.

Pamper yourself. Clear your mind. Come up for some air. Be!

Do you listen or merely hear?

Great communicators are thought to be those who speak eloquent words. But effective communication is more about listening than speaking. Patients are drawn to powerful listeners:

Be present. Be completely with a patient. Don't try to simultaneously monitor a front desk conversation in the midst of a patient consultation. Banish your worries and personal distractions. Completely surrender to the moment and be fully present.

Show up empty. Be so certain of what is true that you can afford to set it aside and be filled by the patient's story. You can't receive if you're already full; full of yourself, your chiropractic story or your plan to "win them over."

Speak less. Constant chatter is a sign that you lack confidence and need to assure yourself. Pick your words thoughtfully. Slow down. Less is more.

As you become a better listener patients become more attentive.

While the fear of failure gets all the press, that's not what really holds us back. What actually stops us is the fear of blame. The fear of criticism. The fear of judgment. And the big one: the fear of responsibility.

Turns out, mistrusting our ability to achieve pales in comparison to the sting we imagine from what others may think or say about us. This keeps innovative projects from being launched, lectures from being delivered, convictions from being expressed and lives from being inspired.

"Who am I to make a difference?" we lie to ourselves.

Living small doesn't become someone who knows the truth about health and healing. Attempting to fly under the radar doesn't suit a revolutionary. Trying to fit in, be accepted and toe the line is actually a treaty with doubters and detractors.

Be responsible. Tell the truth. Plant your flag. And do so boldly.

If you've fallen into the common trap of seeing yourself as a patient "fixer," you're likely feeling a bit tired and overwhelmed. Carrying patients, rather than caring for patients, puts an unrealistic burden on you. It overlooks the immutable fact that patients do the healing, not you. At best, you're merely a "releaser."

Being responsible (response able) for something you can't control (their recovery), creates an overdraft on your emotional "checking account." It can produce resentment from patient choices, frustration due to their unwillingness to change, anger from missed appointments and defensiveness when results don't come as expected.

Patients (and their sometimes poor follow-through) aren't the problem. Attempting to practice with poorly defined boundaries and choosing to see their problem as your problem, is. Set clear boundaries. "Here's what you can expect from us... And here's what we're expecting of you..." should be part of every report of findings.

Is it part of yours?

Are you a new patient farmer or a miner?

Do you see your community as fertile soil for planting seeds, or a place to stake your claim on new patient "ore" to be extracted before another chiropractor moves into your territory and gets it?

Farmers plant seeds, cultivate, fertilize and trust nature. They know there is no reaping without sowing. Miners take what is already there and rely on their self-effort.

If you believe there are a limited number of new patients to go around, you're practicing as a miner. If you tell the chiropractic story to strangers, trusting enough seeds will fall on fertile ground and move them to become new patients, you're a new patient farmer.

New patient mining is risky. You're at the mercy of insurance companies and ever-changing state and provincial laws. Want to help more people? Do more farming.

If patients think your adjustments are doing the healing, you've created an unhealthy co-dependency that obscures the truth.

Showing up as a "fixer" is an all too common symptom of underperforming practices. It makes the relationship about you and what you're doing, rather than the patient and the potential their maker gave them to heal from the inside out. What they bring to your table is more important than what you do on the table.

This week, be slow to accept credit for the progress mentioned by patients. Similarly, be slow to become defensive when patients seem frustrated over the pace of their recovery. Instead, be curious about what other factors may be preventing the healing process from manifesting.

In the same way your car keys merely unleash what was built into your car when it was manufactured, adjustments help release what each patient was given by their maker. Taking credit for it is tempting, but unwise.

Are you toiling merely for the promised reward of retirement?

Remember, we're wired to move, create, serve, right wrongs, alleviate suffering and commit ourselves to the pursuit of something meaningful and bigger than ourselves. Yes, we must rest from time to time to recreate and renew. But the notion that our purpose is to endure a wearisome daily grind so we can finally languish unused, is to trivialize the gift of life.

If you're not experiencing frequent bouts of deep, soul-satisfying fulfillment, an exotic vacation will be a hollow reminder that you're squandering your gift. A month or two of retirement would likely be even more disappointing.

If practice is a struggle, you've either made chiropractic small, reducing it to a spinal therapy, made practice about you or have allowed your practice to become irrelevant or outdated. No wonder it's tempting to look forward to three-day weekends, yearn for do nothing vacations and dream of retirement.

An exercise guaranteed to make you less effective is to compare yourself with others.

There's always someone else seeing more patients, making more money and playing with more expensive toys than you. And by the way, the reverse is also true. Regardless of your situation there's always someone else in more dire straits who would gladly trade places with you.

Comparing yourself with others is a sign of ungratefulness. Envying what others appear to have is being unappreciative for what you've been given. It's one of the ugly facets of pride that blocks further blessings. It keeps us small, petty and ineffective.

Instead, be genuinely thankful. If you have a challenge, be grateful. If you have troubles, be appreciative. If you have a void you need filled, remain cheerful. It's an opportunity to prove your worthiness for greater responsibility, greater service and further blessings. Only when you honor what you have do you prove that you can be entrusted with more.

Do you worry? The scriptures tell us not to worry about what we are to eat or wear or anything else. But we worry anyway.

Related to fear, and rooted in the future where we are powerless, worry is a prayer for what we don't want. We forget that our thoughts have power. What we give our attention to, grows. Turns out, worry helps manifest the very thing we don't want.

Oops!

When I was going through the toughest times launching Patient Media, I did my share of worrying. As a spiritual exercise, I took on the responsibility of keeping our several bird feeders filled. I saw it as a way to express my faith. It was a way of surrendering to and trusting nature. It was a way to be an instrument, attending to "the least of these."

What are the acts of faith you could perform to free yourself from worry?

How long can you focus on a single idea or task?

Whether you're in the adjusting room, reading a book or in the middle of a prayer, many of us lose our ability to focus.

The consciousness created by effective healers (by their attention and intention) is achieved by the ability to remain present. Athletes call it being in the zone. It requires complete attention to the task at hand. Being fully present is the only way to suspend the pull from the past or the projection of the future.

If you allow yourself to be distracted by what the patient will think or do, some little worry or fear, a conversation just out of earshot at the front desk, you give up the powerful present. Achieving your goals or serving a patient is based on how well you can be present; in the now. It's what the busiest practitioners are being as they go about their doing.

Do you steal from patients?

When you encroach upon a patient's responsibility or attempt to rescue patients from themselves (in the hopes of secretly receiving admiration) you're stealing. You're not taking their watch or wallet, you're taking the lesson their body is trying to teach. By making their problem, your problem, by attempting to fix rather than facilitate, you're making the relationship about you and your precious reputation.

Their symptoms are a lesson. Will you obscure that lesson by taking credit for the results chiropractic care so consistently produces? Will you steal the limelight by hiding the meaning of their ache or pain? Will you steal their freedom by attempting to create a dependency? Will you steal their self-esteem by elevating the adjustment and your delivery of it?

Patients are so accustomed to having doctors step in as the hero to save them from themselves, few will even notice. Nevertheless, it's still stealing.

What's your creation story?

Virtually every religion has a story to explain how the world was created. Many businesses do as well. Hewlett Packard started in a garage. Dell computers began in a dorm room. Patient Media started in my guest bedroom and the garage was our warehouse.

So it's not surprising that the most frequently-requested slide from my seminars is the Welcome to Our Office paperwork coversheet. It's an example of how you could more deeply connect with new patients by revealing a bit about you and your practice.

Did you have a miraculous experience that prompted you to become a chiropractor? Were you skeptical? Were you originally going to be an MD? What was it that inspired you to snub the conventional to become a chiropractor? When did you receive the affirmation that you had chosen the right career?

Share your creation story. Virtually every patient is craving to hear it.

Round up everything you expect new patients to read and watch during their first two visits.

Start with your website or yellow page ad, include your admitting paperwork, office policies, videos, brochures, wall charts, report documents—everything. You've probably forgotten what all these communication devices are saying. Moreover, since each piece has likely been added over time, see them through "beginners mind," like someone new to your office.

Are they all congruent with your philosophy? Can any of them be consolidated to reduce the amount of paper? Do they advance your purpose? Do they enhance your ability to create the type of patient relationships you want? Do they project the quality, attention-to-detail and aesthetics that would attract the caliber of patients you enjoy seeing?

While it's convenient to complain against the mainstream media, this week become more mindful of the media and messages you're sending new patients within your own office.

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Things change.

When change becomes disorienting it may be a sign that our internal compass is set to the wrong reference point (admiration, pride, looking good, money, etc.) rather than the truth. When we allow circumstances to dictate our attitude (we're up when the business is up—we're down when the business is down), we've become a victim. Naturally, patients have little interest in consulting someone so unanchored!

If you find yourself in this pattern, it may be helpful to create a list of what you believe is true. Here's a head start:

The sun will rise tomorrow.
I can't control patients.
Income is an effect of my service.
Patients do the healing.

List as many as you can. Then test them with someone you trust. Do they stand up? When we align ourselves with the truth we are free to be a humble servant and have the faith to rise above petty circumstances that are constantly changing.

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Are things going great? Fantastic! Things aren't going so great? That's fantastic too. Just remember the wisdom Solomon's wise men inscribed on his ring to provide guidance in either situation: This too shall pass.

If you're enjoying an endless supply of new patients, 100% compliance and zero no-shows, remember, this will pass. And if you're struggling to pay your bills and you're questioning your career choice, know that this too will pass.

Neither extreme is sustainable. It's when we face challenges that test our resources and creativity that we feel fully human. We don't want it too easy--or too difficult.

Same with patients. Ask patients to participate in their recovery by urging a change in their diet, exercises or making some other change. Too difficult and they'll become discouraged--or too easy (because you're doing all the work) and they won't appreciate it, it'll invite dependency, or worse resentment.

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The meaning of the word "health" has become corrupted.

You and I know health as optimum physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. But patients think it's about feeling good or being symptom-free.

Perhaps a more helpful communication strategy, especially in the stress-filled world of patients is to substitute the concept of ease instead.

Physical ease: Balance, alignment, poise and freedom of movement.

Mental ease: Confidence, harmony, creativity and peace of mind.

Social ease: Comfort around strangers, fearlessness and generosity.

Naturally, a lack of ease is the perfect introduction to dis-ease, the precursor to disease. Help patients understand that subluxation is merely their body's best survival strategy in attempting to accommodate the stress in their life. Since patients understand stress, linking chiropractic care to an improved stress response can better justify on-going chiropractic care.

What if it's actually ease patients want, not health?

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What if all the focus on doing this or doing that was replaced by a greater emphasis on being?

Instead of wondering what you'd need to do to stimulate referrals, consider how you'd need to show up so patients would be inclined to refer. Instead of concentrating on what to do to generate new patients, what character would you need to posses to attract vast numbers of new patients? Instead of the content and form of your report of findings, what if you invested your energy into being confident, optimistic, certain and compassionate?

Who you're "being" begins with your beliefs. Do you believe you're a spine fixer? A symptom reliever? A healing facilitator? A visit schedule enforcer? A problem solver? A health care provider? A skeptic converter? A miracle worker? A healer? A coach? An educator? A savior?

The number of patients showing up for you is merely a reflection of who you're showing up as for them!

Greater impact can be achieved by removing, rather than adding.

We seem inclined to think that by acquiring more techniques, knowledge or procedures we'll enjoy greater success. But that's window dressing. You and I show up fully equipped. Instead...

Remove procrastination, rather than adding to your to do list. Remove interferences, rather than adding a work-around. Remove distractions, rather than adding more hours. Remove generalities, rather than adding excuses. Remove complexity, rather than adding new procedures. Remove attachment, rather than adding blame. Remove deception, rather than adding compromise. Remove friction, rather than adding force. Remove distrust, rather than adding rules. Remove tension, rather than adding relief. Remove doubt, rather than adding faith.

Our influence is blunted and our vision obscured by the needless baggage from the past. By believing we lack the ingredients of success, we tend to search, collect and accumulate. Instead, shed what is no longer needed. Simplify. Grow.

This summer I'm commenting on a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

15:2 A wise teacher makes learning a joy; a rebellious teacher spouts foolishness.

Do patients find your patient education overtures a pleasure and a delight? Or has it become an unpleasant chore that is inconsistent and involves repetitious explanations in which patients remain passive and are largely feigning their interest?

If so, you've been teaching rather than educating.

True education is Socratic and interactive. It requires you be curious enough in what patients believe, to ask questions. (And listen!) You can only make chiropractic relevant by knowing what's meaningful to patients. Then, you must appeal to their right brain, not just their analytical left-brain. That means telling stories.

"A while back we were seeing a patient that thought…"
"When I first heard about chiropractic I was skeptical…"
"One of our many once-a-monther patients was in the other day and they were telling me…"

Abandon any preconceived notion of what patient education is supposed to look like or sound like. Once you start having fun, patients will too.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

18:15 The intelligent man is always open to new ideas. In fact, he looks for them.

Some of the most successful chiropractors I know are those who avoided the temptation of Not Invented Here, suppressing the urge to reinvent the wheel, modeling the beliefs and behaviors of those already successful.

Ironically, the folks who are struggling are those who dogmatically cling to their own notion of what patients should do. When patients don't, patients become the problem! They persevere anyway, trying to superimpose their notion of reality onto patients until they're sufficiently humbled. Then they're available for a new way of practicing.

Who's doing what you want to be doing? Who has what you want to have? Become a student. Believe what they believe and you will be able to do what they do. Like a necktie that goes out of style and then returns, it's an idea so old it seems new!

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

12:27 A lazy man won't even dress the game he gets while hunting, but the diligent man makes good use of everything he finds.

Are you being a good steward of your inactive patients? Do they know they'd be welcomed back to your practice? Do you still express interest in their life and their health?

It's tempting to write off inactives as having somehow rejected you and chiropractic. This prompts many offices to spend inordinate amounts of energy trying to acquire new patients. But the real opportunity is to cultivate the dormant relationships of those whom had a positive experience, know where your office is located and would prefer to return to familiar place when they experience their relapse, rather than start over with someone new.

Many inactives are merely waiting for a reminder or an invitation. They think you're angry with them because they let you down by dropping out. Remember, it can take a series of relapses that span several years before a patient "gets" chiropractic. Be diligent and make use of all your resources.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

15:22 Plans go wrong with too few counselors; many counselors bring success.

Who are your counselors?

My experience has been that in many offices, the support team is one of the most overlooked, undervalued and virtually ignored source of advice. Many chiropractors shut off the wisdom from this source by ignoring their suggestions, making the staff afraid to offer a competing viewpoint or simply never asking for their perspective.

Same with patients. Many chiropractors pay lip service to the importance of patient feedback, even offering up lengthy surveys, but ignore the findings. More effective would be quarterly focus groups run by a staff member or even an interested patient. Focus groups give you body language and verbal cues absent in written surveys.

Seeking the advice of wise counselors doesn't eliminate your responsibility, it merely broadens your range of options and reduces the chance of oversights or mistakes when considering new policies or procedures.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

28:20 The man who wants to do right will get a rich reward. But the man who wants to get rich quick will quickly fail.

As third party reimbursement continues its death spiral, it serves to expose the motives of thousands of chiropractors. Some search for other services that they can bill insurance companies for and still get reimbursement. Others get back to the basics. And still others freeze with uncertainty as their fear creates a confusing fight or flight response.

During this time of change it's especially important to remain mindful of these two simple truths: 1) Income is the effect of service, and 2) There is no shortage of new patients.

We've all heard that if something seems to be too good to be true, it probably is. Just glance at the increasingly shrill advertising in chiropractic publications. Is it really about the money? Or is money an effect? Is it really about new patients? Or are new patients an outcome or result of truly serving?

If you're numbers are down, look for ways of being a more generous servant.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

10:2 Ill-gotten gain brings no lasting happiness; right living does.

Cheating, or using means that unfairly give you an advantage, such as leveraging your social authority as a doctor, produces a hollow "success" that never creates lasting joy. Worse, it creates a mistrust (of ourselves) that we must constantly cover up, fearing someone will see through our cover up.

Are cash payments carefully recorded and reported? Laxity here sends powerful signals to your staff and can result in even far greater damage due to privacy breeches or even theft.

Related to this is the inclination to treat a patient's insurance policy, rather than the patient. These and other lapses of judgment, which often occur when we think no one is watching, weigh us down with guilt, shame and the fear of being found out.

If you've found yourself the recipient of ill-gotten gain, regardless of how you've justified it, make amends. Confess your trespass, change your ways and get back on track.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

12:25 Anxious hearts are very heavy but a word of encouragement does wonders!

Chances are, if patients are showing up with patterns of vertebral subluxation, they have far more going on in their lives than compromised spinal biomechanics. Tending to these emotional-psycho-social issues, even if it means merely being an receptive listener, is the key to more complete and lasting healing.

Great healers are mindful of this larger picture. Remove your technician's hat long enough to see this person in the greater context of their life. What are they facing this week? What are they worried about? What's distracting them and putting a drag on their life spirit? What's behind their lack of ease? Are they reliving in the past or worried about the future where they are powerless?

Rely on your instinct to provide some encouragement. Offer a word or two that can uplift them and provide a sense of hope—the most important ingredient of healing.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

28:13 A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful. But if he confesses and forsakes them, he gets another chance.

We all make mistakes. It's how we respond when confronted by them that makes all the difference.

Our culture produces an incredible pressure to succeed and look the part of success. Yet, I count my failures as the most significant and meaningful moments of my career. And it wasn't because I intellectualized and accepted my mistakes and made a course correction. It was the humbling effect requiring me to surrender to a higher power.

If you've made some mistakes along the way, which prompt inactive patients to avoid you in the grocery store or cross to the other side of the street, apologize. Spend a day going through your inactive file folders and making amends. Ask for forgiveness. Ask to be given another opportunity to serve. Humble yourself.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

16:23 From a wise mind comes careful and persuasive speech.

The scriptures tell us to seek wisdom because it is more valuable than gold or silver. By feeding our minds with wisdom we have the potential of becoming wise ourselves. Our speech, whether it's what we say to ourselves or to others, reveals our wisdom. In this way, our words are effects; symptoms. Our grounding and command of the truth is revealed by the words we use and the distinctions we make.

Begin by guarding what you allow into your mind. Which probably means eliminating or significantly reducing the amount of television you consume, along with the rest of the media that propagates superficiality, image-over-substance and a herd mentality.

Do more reading (in and especially outside of chiropractic). Listen to inspiring CDs. Increase your awareness of ideas that have lasting truth, having withstood the test of time. The wiser we become the greater the impact of our words. And our life.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

14:28 A growing population is a king's glory; a dwindling nation is his doom.

A practice grows because the chiropractor grows.

In the backseat of a stagnant, languishing practice is a chiropractor who is no longer learning new skills, trying new methods or inspired by the possibilities of enlightening patients about the nature of true health. Even more detrimental is simply trying to maintain the status quo, clutching to what you already have.

Even if you've already had your biggest day in practice, you can still grow, intellectually, perceptually and intuitively. Learn a new adjusting technique based on principles opposite to what you're doing now. Hire an associate and become an incubator of more successful practices. Volunteer your time in community service, enlarging your personal network. Confront whatever you're uncomfortable facing. Stretch yourself!

Look at nature. Living things are either growing or dying. What are you doing? What's your practice doing?

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

25:28 A man without self-control is as defenseless as a city with broken-down walls.

To the degree you can control yourself you'll be able to control your practice.

You can't control patients. Those who try, are the recipients of resentment and anger. Not only are they greeted by failure, but they get the longer lasting legacy of patients who would never give them the pleasure of returning to the practice when their problem inevitably returns.

At its root, attempting to control others is about getting your needs met.

Do not attempt to have your physical, mental or emotional needs met by your patients or staff. Exhibit discernment when you sense that a patient is coming on to you. The reverse is even more crucial. Do nothing in your practice that you wouldn't want your spouse to see or your community to read about on the front page of the newspaper. Either we discipline ourselves, or something or someone else will do it for us.

This summer I'm sharing a handful of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Put his wisdom to work in your practice:

22:28 Do not move the ancient boundary marks. That is stealing.

Property lines are important. If you've ever built a fence, only later to discover it encroached upon your neighbor's property, you know it can be an expensive mistake. As is encroaching upon the territory of patients.

Know what is theirs and what is yours.

For example. It's your job to provide a care plan that is most likely to produce the greatest results in the shortest amount time for the least amount of money.

But it's their job to embrace your suggestions, follow them, show up for their appointments, do the actual healing and pay you for your service.

Blur these boundaries and you encroach upon the patient's property, making the encounter about you rather than them. Attempting to control patient priorities and behaviors that you're powerless to control is not only emotionally exhausting, it's unsustainable. Worse, few patients appreciate your overtures and often come to resent your rescue attempts to save them from themselves.

This summer I've shared a few of the 3,000 proverbs written or collected by King Solomon. Here's the final one for the summer:

3:3 Never tire of loyalty and kindness. Hold these virtues tightly. Write them deep within your heart.

It may surprise you, but most inactive patients still see you as their chiropractor. Do you see them as a patient? It's tempting to abandon patients who are in the dormant phase of their relationship, but the true test of a practice is maintaining a connection with those you've helped in the past.

A birthday (one of the two times each year a patient is likely to think about their health) is the most obvious opportunity. As patients age, they get fewer birthday greetings, so your thoughtfulness can have high impact.

Exhibit kindness by acknowledging them without a direct overture to resume care. You're merely keeping in touch, letting them know that they're on your mind and you still see them as part of your practice family. Consider using our Relief & Wellness patient newsletter, our wide range of postcards and 50 Patient Letters to demonstrate your loyalty.

What you give your attention to, grows.

When you take a patient's apparent rejection of your recommendations personally, your anger and frustration grows.

When you focus on your seeming need for more new patients, the need seems to become even greater.

When you ruminate about the patients who don't show up, rather than being grateful and attentive with those who do, you produce even more no shows.

When you concentrate on survival and paying the bills, you sentence yourself to just getting by and preclude the abundance you really deserve.

When you worry about what others think, you undermine your own certainty, causing others to have their doubts, further fueling your insecurity.

When you take a patient's irresponsible or disrespectful behavior home with you or devote an entire staff meeting to discussing it, you produce even more such behavior.

Be mindful of what you water and fertilize in your mind's garden.

When your memories of the past are bigger than your dreams for the future, you're on your way to the grave.

Do you long for the past when your practice was more fulfilling? Do you long for your youth when you had fewer responsibilities? Do you long for the days when life was simple and decisions easier? Do you long for the time when patients would follow your commands? Do you long for the era when insurance reimbursement was more generous?

If you're living in the past, focused on the "good old days," you've surrendered to a memory and resisting what is. Life is supposed to be an adventure! Resisting change and clinging to a romantic notion of the past is merely a feeble attempt at making your world small enough to control. Not only will your effort be in vain, but your attempts will make you increasingly brittle, irrelevant and unappreciated.

Dream!

Our physical world is merely a manifestation of our spiritual world. It's easy to get distracted by what we can see, and in the process overlook the world we can't see.

What lessons do we need to learn, or become present to when we're confronted by chronic health problems, chronic marital problems, chronic financial problems, chronic procrastination problems, chronic staff problems or chronic new patient problems?

It's tempting to address the physical world, when the real solution is in the unseen world of our spirit, beliefs, emotions, habits and tendencies.

This week, take some time to reflect on the recurring issues you face; the "speed bumps" that keep slowing you down. These are signs and symptoms of something far deeper and significant. Permanent solutions are located here. They likely involve gratitude, forgiveness, tolerance and acceptance. In other words, more love. It's the ultimate personal and professional problem-solving tool.

Self-esteem is what you think of you. Social-esteem is what others think of you. Of the two, self-esteem is more important.

Like health, acquiring self-esteem is an inside job. It can’t be raised by the kind words of others. It can’t be purchased. And it can’t be obtained by more education, more initials after your name, more new patients or even more take-home pay. Those hollow attempts obscure the underlying source of self-esteem: having risen to the challenge of accomplishing something difficult.

The wide, easy, path-of-least-resistance saps self-esteem. We get flabby. We lose our nerve. We become consumed by doubt. We find ourselves trapped in a life of mediocrity.

If you’ve been coasting, resolve this week to take on something difficult. Something that will require high levels of creativity, perseverance, courage or risk.

Then, as you naturally come to think of yourself more highly, others can safely do the same.

Are you inclined to take it personally when patients don't follow through or drop out of care unexpectedly?

Attachment to what others do, especially patients, is risky business!

Naturally, if absolutely no one follows your recommendations, or most patients vanish without so much as a good bye, you have a problem. But that's rarely the case. Instead, it's a small percentage of your patient volume that dogs you. You turn their behaviors into a fascinating little story that ends up producing doubt, uncertainty or self-blame.

Please stop.

By accepting fault you've crossed the line. You've assumed responsibility (ability to respond) for circumstances and patient choices out of your control. You're attempting to usurp their God-given ability to express free will, conveniently setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.

Take heart in the fact that 100% perfect patient compliance would be boring after a month or so, anyway!

Are you inclined to take it personally when patients don't follow through or drop out of care unexpectedly?

Attachment to what others do, especially patients, is risky business!

Naturally, if absolutely no one follows your recommendations, or most patients vanish without so much as a good bye, you have a problem. But that's rarely the case. Instead, it's a small percentage of your patient volume that dogs you. You turn their behaviors into a fascinating little story that ends up producing doubt, uncertainty or self-blame.

Please stop.

By accepting fault you've crossed the line. You've assumed responsibility (ability to respond) for circumstances and patient choices out of your control. You're attempting to usurp their God-given ability to express free will, conveniently setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.

Take heart in the fact that 100% perfect patient compliance would be boring after a month or so, anyway!

Do patients who are bold enough to announce that they're only interested in a visit or two for the most superficial pain relief offend you?

The My-Way-Or-The-Highway crowd inflates with self-righteousness by driving such unenlightened patients away. Their ego, pride or false sense of control often ends relationships before they can even begin.

This is the difference between caring for patients and loving patients. When you care, you do so with strings attached. "I'll do this if you'll do that." When you love, you serve without judgment or expectation.

Allowing a patient's limited understanding or financial constraint to make you indignant or slighted is a needless form of self-abuse. It may take a decade of starting and stopping care several times before they "get" chiropractic. What's the hurry?

By showing up in your office, you have a lesson to teach patients. More fascinating may be the lesson of patience they are showing up to teach you!

Time to reboot?

If my computer gets a little sluggish it seems happier and more responsive if I take a moment to restart it. Apparently, this clears its memory, reloads the software and creates a clean slate.

Your most important CPU, your brain, could probably benefit from a restart too.

If you have the tendency to keep your head down and push, push, push and do, do, do, consider this a friendly reminder to come up for some air. Are you on purpose? Have you been pushed off course by the cross winds of third parties? Are you encountering the friction of doubt from the behaviors of patients?

Carve out some time at the beginning of each day to stop. Listen. Reflect. Refresh. And renew. Raise your antennae. Like pulling in a weak, distant station, slow down, quiet yourself and receive divine direction from that wee small voice you’ve ignored.

If you focus on the problem, you won't see the solution.

Stage magicians are masters at using simple diversionary techniques to misdirect the audience's attention. Practice challenges can be just as distracting, misdirecting your attention to the most pressing symptoms, causing you to overlook the underlying cause.

Like patients who think their headache is the problem, the illusion that the problem is the problem is what keeps us stuck.

The "problem" is often only the symptom. Avert your eyes for a moment and you may be able to see the underlying cause. The lack of certainty. Poor preparation. The unwillingness to role-play. Untrained staff. The shunning of consistent and predictable systems. The risk of taking a stand. The fear of standing out. The anger that patients don't "get" it. Wanting to be liked.

Consider the high mountain stream. Sure, a few boulders are in the way, but gravity calls.

What's calling you?

What are you avoiding?

Anything that you're unwilling to look at, face, confront, examine, question or discuss is holding you in bondage. Like a bully that compelled you to avoid part of the playground or caused you to take the long way home, whatever you choose to avoid holds you hostage.

Secret behaviors, hidden habits, addictions and our basest nature are common suspects. Or maybe it's an employee who needs to move on. Or a checkbook you avoid balancing. Or perhaps clothes you'll never wear again that you hang onto because discarding them means accepting your weight issue. Need I go on?

This week identify at least one issue that you've been avoiding and commit to facing and cleaning it up. Avoidance has made it bigger than it really is. You'll be rewarded by a renewed sense of ease, simplicity and peace.

Which could inspire you to tackle another. And another!

If you still have emotional wounds from being turned down for the high school prom or find patient rejection painful for other reasons, you may not understand what “yes” and “no” mean in patientese.

“Yes” can mean, “Sure, but it better work in three visits or I’m out of here.” Or maybe, “I’m putting the responsibility for my recovery on your shoulders.” Not to mention the popular, “Whatever my insurance company will pay for.”

“No” can mean, “Not yet.” Or, “I need to think about it.” Or, “Maybe some other time because I have more pressing priorities.” Or perhaps, “Chiropractic makes total sense but I need Ralph’s approval first.”

Turns out a “yes” may not mean, “By all means!” and a “no” may not mean, “No way!” So, be less inclined to pat yourself on the back when you encounter a yes, and even less inclined to beat yourself up when you encounter a no.

Even if you used to be the last one chosen for the team, these days you're the team captain. Patients expect (deserve) an enthusiastic, optimistic and confident chiropractor who is prepared to lead them to a better future.

This invokes the Law of the Lid, which means that patients rarely get healthier than you, physically, socially and mentally. Thus, if you're promoting healthier habits, better spinal hygiene, prevention or especially wellness, you and your team must be an example of extraordinary health. Otherwise, you lack the authenticity required to lead and influence. Who you are determines whom you can attract.

You're the leader. Either you have the credentials to inspire patients to follow you to higher levels of health and wellness, or patients detect a hollow, "do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do" attitude and leave, outgrowing your leadership.

Perhaps it's what Gandhi meant when he observed, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

I still meet chiropractors unfamiliar with the work of Michael Gerber. His insights into the small business trinity of entrepreneur, manager and technician should be required reading at every chiropractic college.

So, if you left chiropractic college thinking you just had to be a great diagnostician and proficient adjuster, and a line would form in front of your office, immediately get a copy of The E-myth Revisited at your nearest bookstore! (Or click the link to buy it at Amazon.com) Install systems that will free you. Rise above the temptation of “doing it, doing it, doing it.”

If you want to help more people, make a difference and leave a legacy, you must develop your managerial and entrepreneurial muscles. Otherwise, you’ve sentenced yourself to a job. Maybe a great job, but a job nonetheless.

While you’re at it, jettison the myth that great businesspeople aren’t great healers. In my travels, I’ve seen just the opposite.

Certainty prevails.

On the perceptual side of the doctor/patient relationship (where patients find hope, an essential ingredient for healing), is your ability to project certainty. Great healers emerge by combining certainty, extraordinary intuition and showing up as an egoless servant.

Seven pillars of certainty include:

Wisdom—your confidence derived from a history of applying knowledge.
Faith—your willingness to trust chiropractic principles and banish doubt.
Clarity—your ability to accurately visualize the hoped-for outcome.
Intention—your purity of thought, word and deed. Can you be trusted?
Boundaries—your acknowledgment of what’s yours and what’s theirs.
Resources—your energy, skill, abundance and even your own health.
Discernment—your awareness of subtle nuances overlooked by others.

Which of these have you allowed to sabotage your certainty? Which have you neglected? Which produce doubt?

As your certainty rises, so does the quality of your life, the depth of your influence and your ability to get things done.

What is a perfect day for you?

If you don’t know what would make a day perfect, it’s unlikely that you have many of them. The way you have more perfect days is to distinguish what a perfect day includes. That begins by using language to describe the aspects of your ideal day. Write it down. As you do, here are some areas to consider:

The three things: How much of your perfect day involves each of the following and in what proportion: people, things or ideas?

The four relationships: Make sure your perfect day includes a healthy mix of the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual.

The five senses: We experience the perfect day through our nervous systems. Consider the role of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste in your ideal day.

Living consciously is a choice. What you regularly give your attention to grows. If one of your beliefs about a perfect day is that it can’t be planned or worse, that you don’t deserve one, start there. Because that’s a lie.

Anyone who has heard me speak or listened to The Seminar, know that I place a high importance on the precision of language. Sloppy language is a sign of sloppy thinking which manifests as a sloppy life and practice.

Here are some words that are often used interchangeably. Which of each pair is more congruent with your purpose and intention?

Appointment: a specific time reserved for something or someone
Visit: the act of going to see a person, place or thing for a short time

Admit: allow to enter; grant entry to
Accept: welcome into a group or community

Diagnose: the process of identifying a disease by its signs and symptoms
Assess: To determine the value, significance, implication or extent of

Treat: subject to a process with the aim of alleviating a symptom
Care: attending to someone or something; to feel concern or interest

Adjust: to bring to a more satisfactory state
Manipulate: to control or influence skillfully

Is your fear of strangers interfering with your ability to get new patients?

If you're like many of us, your mother imbued you with a fear of strangers. This may have served you as a child walking home alone from school. But today it's wreaking havoc on your new patient acquisition ability, since new patients come from telling the chiropractic story to as many strangers as possible.

The Disney organization refers to the essential skill necessary here as being "aggressively friendly." It's an unusual combination of words!

It means being deft at introducing yourself. Speaking first. Having ease around strangers. Volunteering something about yourself. Being proficient at small talk. Making others feel comfortable around you. Explaining what you do in a way that prompts others to want to know more. Having a well-developed sense of curiosity helps.

Here's what's so ironic. To the strangers you're apprehensive about, you're the stranger!

Once the wrapping paper and ribbons are cleared away, we're left with the realization that the tangible gifts we give and receive, pale in comparison to the gift of life and the forgiveness of our shortcomings. The spiritual supersedes the physical--the eternal trumps the temporal.

Same in your practice.

Your words and procedures pale in comparison to your purpose and intent. As you release each patient's potential for health restoration, look beyond the immediate gratification (yours and theirs) and consider the consequences that you often don't get to see:

A more loving spouse
A more understanding parent
A more dedicated employee
A more generous boss
A more considerate commuter
A more confident teenager
A more creative teacher
A more energetic senior

Reducing symptoms gives you job. Educating patients creates a career. But enhancing the way others live their lives produces a legacy.

You make a profound difference. Thank you for being a chiropractor!

It's time for some self-reflection. Something most of us in our hurry-hurry bulldozing into the future don't do nearly enough of.

Is next year tinged with dread? Is there uncertainty, because you allow doubt to corrode your vision and outside circumstances to make you reactive? Is there a sense of heaviness that things won't work out as you hope?

Then, so it will be.

Or do you see next year as the best year ever? Is there a sense of optimism as the lies of symptom-treating create an even greater demand for chiropractic? Do you have profound gratitude for the knowledge and skill you posses? Is there hope, faith and confidence that come from walking in the truth?

Then, so it will be.

You can't control the winds, but you can set the trim of your sails. What course will you set? You're more likely to stay on course if you write it down.

What types of questions do you ask?

Who questions involve people, usually others.
How questions reveal methodology and procedure.
What questions are used to clarify.
When questions focus on past, present or future.
Why questions explore cause and purpose.

As you work with patients, "why" questions can be helpful.

"Why do you think that is?"
"Why do you suppose parents bring their children to our office?"
"Why do so many drugs require a prescription?"
"Why do I adjust your lower back when the symptom is in your neck?"
"Why does chiropractic work?"
"Why do we ask so many questions?"

The quality of your practice (and your life) is the result of the quality of questions you ask. Ask poor questions and the answers are sure to be equally unhelpful. Of the five types, the least helpful questions are the ones that are never asked--either by you or by patients.

Rather than confining, a boundary can be liberating.

For example. Each week this message runs about 150 words, plus or minus. Without such a boundary, these messages could become long and unwieldy, losing their focus. Forced brevity, while more difficult, is a far better taskmaster than your attention span.

Same in your practice. Having razor sharp edges identifying what is your responsibility and what is a patient's responsibility, grants you tremendous freedom. It helps you avoid taking certain patient choices or behaviors personally. It reduces the burdensome need to micro-manage patients. It gives you greater discretion to apply your energy and attention where they can have the most impact.

You must have clear boundaries if you wish to help more people. In under performing practices, it appears as if you can afford to meddle in the lives of patients. Busier practitioners know better. That's one reason they're so busy.

Take some time to reflect about your life and your practice.

Since so many of us obtain our esteem and self-image by what we do, we often risk becoming human doings rather than human beings! In the heat of battle, doing it, doing it, doing it, we can lose our bearings. As we fight the crocodiles of running a business we forget our mission was to drain the swamp.

Turn off the television. Ignore the newspaper. Turn inward and listen for that wee little voice that so often gets ignored. Listen for the whisperings of your heart. Not the impending symptoms of a heart attack (although I’m guessing it’s a related), but the yearnings and achings that offer clues whether you’re being mindful of, and honoring your purpose. That voice.

Your purpose isn’t to adjust patients. It probably helps advance your purpose, but it’s not your purpose. Do you know what it is? You may find these two resources helpful. Being On Purpose. The Conversation.

Do you have the habit of making patients wrong?

Even if justified as "patient education," attempts at correcting patients are often done in ways that make patients feel wrong. Or stupid.

How can you educate patients without making them wrong? Become more agreeable.

Patient: "My husband thinks chiropractors are quacks." You: "I've heard that too." Patient: "Will I have to come for the rest of my life?" You: Of course not. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Patient: "I still have some pain." You: "I'm sorry to hear that. Why do you think that is?" Patient: "I won't be able to make it in on Friday." You: "I understand. Let's hope that won't interrupt the progress we're making."

Like trying to create a conversation with a skittish teenager, try to affirm and ask questions while avoiding the inclination to become defensive or impose your will.

Think of all the problems you've ever had. They have all been solved. Or are on their way to being solved.

When we're in the middle of some difficulty or feeling oppressed by circumstances, it's common to become so consumed by the situation that solutions appear impossible. But it's just not true. Every problem resolves itself.

The fact is, there are no problems right now. Problems are mostly future events--which of course we are powerless to do anything about. The only thing we can influence is the present. Right now.

Most problems are projections into the future. What might happen. What could happen. If that happens, then this might happen! When (or if) it happens, you'll deal with it. But right now it's just a possibility. There are other, wonderful possibilities too.

So stay here. In the now. The future will come soon enough. And then you'll deal with it. Then, it will be now.

Do you have clear boundaries?

The most effective chiropractors are those who show up with clearly defined boundaries between what is theirs and what is the patient's.

It's yours to tell the chiropractic story. It's theirs to accept or reject some or all of it.

It's yours to offer recommendations that you think will produce the best results. It's theirs to follow or ignore them.

It's yours to tell the truth, even if it's not what the patient wanted to hear. It's theirs to act on your suggestions (now or later) or to dismiss them.

It's yours to adjust their spine as artfully as you can. It's theirs to allow that energy to facilitate your shared intentions or to sabotage your efforts.

As Client Eastwood's Dirty Harry observed, "A man's got to know his limitations." When you steal a patient's responsibility, you're burdened with the same guilt as if you'd stolen their wallet.

Would someone want to buy stock in your practice after calling your office?

It's so rare to encounter people on the front lines of the service industry that you can tell actually care. All too often, you walk into a service establishment and the first impression is someone who really doesn't want to be there or who is "above" providing any service beyond adequate.

"I'm too cool to be here," says their body language.

"I'm only doing this to pay my tuition," says the tone of their voice.

"You're just an interruption to what I really love doing," says their facial expression.

You can't hide your disdain, disrespect or dissatisfaction with your life, your job or your customer. Callers can hear your smile (or frown) and they can sense your commitment (or lack of it) in your voice.

Fake it if you must. But better is to recognize that serving others is our highest calling.

From time to time I’m asked by those who recognize the importance of maintaining their present time consciousness, for suggestions on how to improve theirs. "Are there any books or other resources?"

I’m sure there are, but I’m not familiar with them. However, here are two ideas:

1. Enforce clear boundaries. Reserve certain times to return phone calls, check your email, do reports or read to your children. Keep these times sacred. More important: no interruptions during adjusting times except for fires or nuclear holocaust. Changing gears frequently is stimulating but takes you out of the “zone.”

2. Create reminders. Consider putting small stickers with an image of a clock face (without hour or minute hands) around your office as reminders to stay focused on the subject at hand. (Make your own, or purchase some from us.)

Staying present is the discipline of busy practitioners. Become present to its importance. And then practice, practice, practice.

Is competition actually a form of envy and jealousy?

I meet some chiropractors who, instead of reaching out to the new chiropractor in town or supportive of the chiropractor down the street who uses a vastly different technique, are inclined to see these as competitors. To be destroyed and eliminated!

Wrong.

This zero sum game of thinking comes from the misguided notion that there is a finite number of new patients to go around. Apparently, so the thinking goes, if those other chiropractors get new patients then you won’t get them.

This is absurd.

Turns out, if more people in your community understood chiropractic, there would be such a demand for what you do there wouldn’t be enough chiropractors to go around! A shortage of new patients simply means you haven’t been telling the chiropractic story to enough strangers. When you create new patients you no longer have to compete for new patients.

It takes a loose arm to throw a fastball.

Tension, whether physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual, is a defense mechanism; a form of self protection. When you show up tense, guarded or what seems to pass for "professional," patients often interpret your demeanor as cause for worry, a lack of confidence or uncertainty.
That's not permission to be casual, indifferent or flip. Instead, assume the body language of someone who has "been there, done that." You take on the posture of "Sure, we see this all the time." You project the confidence of someone who has total faith in the principles of chiropractic and the patient's self-healing capabilities. Simply put, you show up certain and doubt-free.

Projecting an overly serious, "don't-bother-me-I've-got-to-focus" attitude might lead patients to believe you're the one doing the healing. It's a great way to get admiration, but a lousy way to teach patient responsibility.

“Begin with the end in mind.” What “end” do you have in mind as you care for patients?

The cessation of the physical, chemical or emotional stress that created a patient’s subluxation pattern? The restoration of spinal curves and improved biomechanics? The reduction or elimination of the patient’s presenting complaint? The patient’s compliance? The patient’s admiration and respect?

Unfortunately, you have little or no control of these outcomes. Focusing on them is a recipe for disappointment. They are tempting forms of pride that produce a reliance on your self-efforts, leading to doubt and a lack of confidence.

Instead, trust the wisdom of their body to use the energy you add to its greatest advantage. Instead, make the patient the hero, not your intervention. Instead, show up as a humble servant, unconcerned about reputation or outcomes you can’t control. Allow your being to be more powerful than your doing.

Don’t compete, create!

If you feel threatened by the new chiropractors moving to town or the changing economic climate, you’ve been misled into thinking you’re living in a zero-sum world. Competition leads to winners and losers. Creativity leads to new possibilities and unlimited potential.

Create extraordinary patient experiences. Create deep and meaningful patient relationships. Create new ways of communicating chiropractic. Create a more efficient procedure. Create systematic ways of keeping in touch with inactives. Create a way to keep yourself more present with patients. Create a clear vision of the outcomes you desire. Create gratitude for those who show up. Create new, higher levels of health.

Create ease rather than battling symptoms.

Avoid the temptation of imagining that your particular challenges are due to what others do or have done. Instead, raise the bar, become more relevant and create a better mousetrap. And watch patients beat a path to your practice!

Are you playing a zone defense?

If there's an aspect of your practice you're uncomfortable facing, whether it is your checkbook, collections, new patients or even missed appointments, it's tempting to turn over its responsibility to someone else. This is often justified as a way of freeing you up for duties that are "more important." These more important aspects are usually areas where you feel more competent and confident.

Compartmentalizing your practice by delegating issues to others so you don't have to face them, is how many practices get into trouble. It turns out you're the only person on the planet who sees these "peripheral" issues as being separate! Since it's your practice. You're responsible for EVERY aspect. Not just the ones you like or are especially resourceful in handling.

By all means, delegate. Supervise. Expect accountability. But be unafraid to look at anything and everything. Because it's all your responsibility. Even the unpleasant parts.

The choices patients make are not your choices.

All too many chiropractors, especially those who have the habit of caring too much, are afraid that the poor choices that patients make reflect poorly on them. It's not true.

If you’ve withheld the truth then you may be culpable. But that's rarely the case. In fact, it's quite the reverse, often over explaining the implications of dropping out of care too soon and other self-sabotaging patient tendencies.

No, you're working with a fellow human fully equipped with free will and the freedom to accept or reject what you've told them. And while you may assume you're responsible because they've consulted your office and not the office down the street, their health is theirs, not yours. They made the decision to seek care in your office and they're equally free to change their mind or to follow all, or only some of your recommendations.

Lighten up. It's not about you.

How important to you is it to be liked by others?

For years, I led my life in the hopes of seeking approval. From everyone. If I could just arrange my life in such a way to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes or offending anyone, I assumed I would enhance my likeability. Believing this lie kept my influence to a minimum and made life an exhausting game of predicting others’ reactions.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that after all that effort there were still some who didn’t like me! This, after playing it small for so many years.

Live large. This is supposed to be an adventure. If you’re not making a few people angry or showing up in ways that confront or prick the conscience of others, you’re probably living too small. And the only payoff is “I should have” or “I could have” and the resentment of having squandered this incredible opportunity called life.

Drugs hijack the intelligence of the body, speeding bodily processes up or slowing bodily processes down.

Every chiropractor knows this. Yet, many who eschew the use of drugs because they treat symptoms and ignore the underlying cause, swing into symptom-treating mode when their practice numbers are down.

“Get more new patients!”

Like patients who think relieving pain is the solution, many chiropractors are misled into thinking getting more new patients is the solution. It isn’t. New patients are an effect; a symptom. What causes new patients? Here are just a few:

Being relevant to what patients want.
Adjusting while holding pure intentions.
Showing up as a humble servant.
Being completely present with patients.
Expressing certainty by being doubt-free.
Being thankful for those who show up.
Loving patients rather than merely caring.

If these are missing, intellectual, emotional and spiritual subluxations may be interfering with your patient volume. When corrected, symptoms resolve and practices blossom.

What do you stand for?

Many complain about the cultural domination of the drug industry. Many are actively against vaccination. Others loudly fight cancer. Still others get worked up over this and that and are ready to fight to slay some injustice or right a wrong.

But you can’t win by being against.

By attempting to overcome no shows, declaring war on sedentary lifestyles, confronting patients about their smoking or trying to talk patients out of quitting care, you actually create what you don’t want! Your attempts produce an equal and opposite reaction.

Instead, provide a more attractive solution. Stand for personal responsibility. Advance the truth. Encourage understanding. Trumpet the advantages of natural. Support a willingness to try. Incentivize follow through. Praise incremental improvements. Reward behaviors you want, rather than punishing those you’d like to eliminate.

Leadership is about creating a more promising future, not condemning what is.

“I couldn’t see myself doing that.”

Do you have some reluctance about doing the things that you’ve paid coaches to suggest you do? If your resistance isn’t based on a conflict of values or ethics, you have a growth opportunity.

Doing is the result of who you’re being.

If you’re being uncertain as you attempt to do, your doing will suffer. If you’re not fully committed as you attempt to do, your doing will suffer. If you’re seeking approval as you attempt to do, your doing will suffer. If you’re defensive as you attempt to do, your doing will suffer. If you’re already prepared with plan B, your doing will suffer. Your body (who you’re being) speaks louder than what you say or do.

Start with being fully, authentically you and the doing to be done will come naturally. In fact, when you know who you are, you won’t need anyone suggesting what to do!

Does your name become you, or do you become your name?

Naming a thing gives us dominion over it. Naming things creates the distinctions necessary to distinguish this from that. Horse. Zebra. Similar, but different. (Allopaths can’t even respond until the set of symptoms has a name!)

Is your practice name authentic to your purpose? Does your practice name limit your practice? Is your practice name congruent with your intention when delivering care?

Family Chiropractic. Is it? Or just wishful thinking?

So and So Wellness Center. Why do patients drop out when they feel better?

Cityname Pain Relief. Are you guaranteeing a cure?

Then there’s simply: Chiropractor. In other words, you already know what chiropractors do. Right?

Nothing destroys your creditability faster than assuming a name that doesn’t ring true with a patient’s experience. Patients may contemplate, “I wonder what else they fib about?”

How are your needs being met?

There are four types of needs. Physical needs. Intellectual needs. Emotional needs. Spiritual needs. Do you unwisely use your practice to get your needs met?

Physical needs. Food. Water. Clothing. Shelter. Companionship. Help enough patients and these needs are easily fulfilled.

Intellectual needs. Does practicing chiropractic nourish your left brain? Is the application of chiropractic principles intellectually stimulating?

Emotional needs. It's tempting to succumb to their admiration and appreciation, especially when at home you have to mow the lawn and take out the garbage. Careful!

Spiritual needs. Are patients more dedicated chiropractic believers than you? If so, your practice is on a downhill slide. You are responsible for hope management, one of the most important aspects of the healing process.

Key point: look outside your office to have your needs met. Depending upon patients crosses the boundary from ministry to manipulation. Every time.

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."

We are creatures of habit. Some habits edify. Others blunt our effectiveness. Break unhelpful patterns during the first hour of your day!

Get up at an earlier hour. Study scripture. Meditate. Pray. Journal. Contemplate the day ahead. Become conscious of your resources. Become present to your opportunities. Establish a higher purpose than merely enduring, surviving or reacting.

Break your fast (breakfast) differently. Drive a different, longer route to the office. Park in a different place. Say a prayer as you enter the practice. Change the routine. Change the order. Change the timing. Change the pattern. Change!

Our power comes from being 100% present. Habitual ways of being obscure the present as our mind wanders into the future or wherever we allow it to go. Hold your thoughts captive. Be the cause, not merely an effect.

(This is the Summer of Love as Bill explores some of the distinctions of loving patients rather than merely caring for them.)

Love is patient.

When you truly love patients you don't impose your time schedule. After all, the patient is the one doing the healing, not you! They have the capacity to consciously or unconsciously slow or accelerate their healing. That, combined with the limitations of matter, makes investing your self-esteem and value as a chiropractor in something out of your control, is risky business.

Being patient extends beyond the first weeks or months of care. Think eternally. What if it takes two, three, four or more episodes of starting care and stopping care, spanning a decade or longer, before patients "get" the idea that chiropractic care is a lifestyle decision and can be much more than a natural, short-term diet for pain relief?

What if they never get it?

To use love as an adjunctive procedure with the chiropractic adjustment, remove expectations and help patients become more… patient.

Love is kind.

I was raised to be considerate of others. Being considerate of others came with specific action steps:

Respect the property of others.
Say please when you want something.
Say thank you when you receive it.
Address anyone older with deference.

How does that apply to chiropractic practice?

It’s the patient’s health not yours. Careful about pressing too much to “help” more than they want. Otherwise, it will be taken as judgment.

“This side up, please.” It acknowledges them as person, not just a spine or the recipient of a procedure you’re administering to their body.

“Thank you for always being on time for your visits.” Right above acknowledgment is appreciation. It usually prompts others to do even more.

“Good afternoon! What’s the best thing that’s happened to Mrs. Smith today?” She may ask that you call her Maryann, put your deference has been communicated.

Respect. Acknowledgment. Appreciation. Deference. Love is kind.

Love does not envy

The newest patient drives up in a nicer car than yours. What's your reaction?

If it produces a twinge of jealousy or ignites a sense of insecurity, it can interfere with your ability to accompany your chiropractic care with love. Turns out, your wealth may not be in a depreciating automobile, but in your education, a richly rewarding family life or some other form. Envy suggests that you believe you have a void, lacking something necessary to be complete and whole.

You are already complete. You are fully equipped. You have exactly what you need. In fact, the only thing truly missing is acknowledging that nothing is missing!

Be careful about making judgments about the material world that is so easily detected with our five senses. What you see is merely temporal. It will pass. Instead, attend to matters of the heart where peace can take root and flourish.

Love does not boast.

We probably don’t think of ourselves as one to brag, show off, blow our own horn, talk big or “swagger.” We tend to think of that as being offensive.

“I don’t boast!”

Really? Do you exaggerate? Exaggeration is a more subtle and sinister form of boasting.

Exaggerating the elements of a story to enhance its meaning.
Exaggerating your statistics to falsify your success.
Exaggerating your importance to receive admiration.
Exaggerating the no shows to blame a staff member.
Exaggerating your value by seeing patients after hours.
Exaggerating circumstances so others will do your bidding.
Exaggerating the difficulty so it will produce praise.
Exaggerating the imposition of a request with a heavy sigh.

Next time you find yourself inclined to exaggerate, consider the motive behind it.

Love does not boast. No coloring. No shading. No effort to look good or cover up the flaws. In other words, love is honest, unprocessed and authentic.

Love is not proud.

The scriptures make it clear that pride is an abomination. Pride is one of the qualities specifically identified as sinful. Perhaps because pride makes us feel like God.

It's tempting to overlook the fact that the patient is doing the healing, not you. Sure, you found the ignition, inserted the key and turned it (adjustment), but what happens next is outside your control. You can take credit (if you dare) but the credit actually belongs to their Maker who installed the capability to self-heal in the first place!

The marketplace quickly ferrets out arrogant, conceited and prideful chiropractors who are revealed by their response to grateful patients:

"Oh, it was nothing." (Really?)
"We got lucky this time." (Lucky?)
"Tell your friends." (So I can help them, too.)
"You're welcome." (I deserve the credit.)

Pride. It can cause you to forget that you're merely an instrument. It's sooooooo tempting to take the credit!

Love is not rude.

Do you impose your will on others so you can get your way?

Cutting in front of the line, or the reverse, not permitting the driver to merge onto the highway in front of you, is obviously rude. I’m sure you’re not rude in your office!

Depends how you define rude. However, examples of rudeness I’ve experienced, or patients in focus groups have mentioned, include:

Showing up late for the first patient of the day.
Allowing an emergency patient to prolong the wait of an established patient.
Making patients feel small because they just want to be pain free.
Any form or derivative of “I-told-you-so.”
Projecting the value you place on health onto patients.

Justified as the prerogative of “leadership” or the workings of a “health coach,” these overtures make you big and the patient small. This is a time-tested practice de-building strategy. Instead, make patients feel big. Anything else would be rude.

Love is not self-seeking.

Virtually every action, every word and every thought can be separated into one of two categories: manipulation or ministry. That is, does it serve you or is it of service to others?

Some in chiropractic teach that using any means possible to get patients to do the right thing (because it’s for their own good), is within the domain of good doctoring.

You might want to rethink that advice.

By crossing that boundary you have dishonored their understanding, judgment and free will. By overpowering them with persuasive speech or fear tactics you usurp their dignity and reduce them to mere spines; children who must be parented.

Oh sure, you can probably squeeze another visit or two out of them. But “do-gooder” overtures rarely last. Especially when the underlying motive is to make you look good. The appreciation you hope it will produce is dismissed as heavy-handed selfishness.

Love is not easily angered.

What does it take to get your hackles up?

Consider the patient who unexpectedly drops out of care (with six more visits on their plan). Or the patient who informs you that they’re still taking their medication and attributes their progress to it, not your care. Or, how about the patient who observes that they don’t believe in chiropractic? And don’t forget the patient you adjusted on the first visit who doesn’t return to hear your enlightening Harvey Lillard story!

Ironically, anger is a you thing. Not a they thing. You and your body create the anger. Not the patient!

Instead, love, from where all healing comes, looks past who gets the credit, looks beyond the politics, sees past the policy and rethinks the procedure. Love only sees the person. Not the shortcoming. Not the misunderstanding. Not the could-have-should-have.

What do you see?

Love keeps no records of wrongs.

What many overlook is that a true chiropractic practice is about two things: referrals and reactivations. Those consumed by how many new patients they see either miss the point or have been misled into thinking wide rather than deep.

A referral is a gift. Ask for them if you wish and you may get a guilt offering or the name of someone who could benefit from chiropractic care, but a true referral is volitional. A surprise. Unexpected.

A reactivation is proof you didn’t make the patient wrong. Or small. Or feel stupid because he or she didn’t embrace your vision of health on their first exposure to it.

Since most patients don’t “get” chiropractic their first time, keep no records of wrongs. Instead, you might observe in passing, “Looks like it’s been awhile since you’ve been in. Welcome back. Let’s get started!”

Love does not delight in evil.

You've probably seen the cartoon showing a chiropractor delighting in the first winter's snow or ice storm because it means more business.

You may not harbor such evil thoughts, but what are you doing to help make yourself obsolete?

Subluxations are a result or effect of physical, chemical or emotional stress that overload the body's ability to accommodate. Are you teaching patients ways to mitigate these stressors?

Physical instruction: How to sit. How to lift. How to get in and out of their car. Proper computer ergonomics.

Chemical instruction: The burden of artificial flavors, colorings and preservatives. The allergens of wheat and dairy. The stress of refined sugars.

Emotional instruction: The importance of prayer. The power of forgiveness. The ability to neutralize emotions through the process of EFT.

The highest calling of any doctor (of any ilk) is to help prevent what it is they treat.

Love rejoices in the truth.

If you define truth as a "highly likely explanation of what is" and combine it with the observation that "what is, is," you have a vantage point neutral enough to deeply serve patients.

Most suffering results from attempting to resist, ignore or deny what is so. Thankfully, the meaning we attach to what is, is within our control. In fact, one of your greatest responsibilities is helping patients attach appropriate meanings to the circumstances prompting them to seek care from you.

When you love patients you tell the truth. Compassionately. Understandably. It just is.

You don't minimize. ("You have a little bone spur here.") Minimization is a disservice.

You don't exploit. ("I hope your children aren't suffering from the same thing!") Using fear, even when justified as in their best interest, is manipulative.

Instead, be centered, gentle and considerate, knowing that ultimately the truth can set us… free.

Love always protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres.

You probably know some secrets about those you care for, that if widely known, would discredit or at least embarrass them.

Protect all secrets.

You tell the chiropractic story to all who will listen. Some overtly reject it. Others show polite interest. Others embrace it with passion.

Trust that the truth will eventually reign.

You help a patient with their admitting complaint and at the height of their progress, they discontinue their care without warning. Was it something you said? Was it something you forgot to say?

Hope that you made it easy to return should they suffer a relapse.

You feel like you're in a constant uphill battle to fight the allopathic, path-of-least-resistance mindset. It seems little progress is being made.

Persevere. You may not change the world, but you can change it for a few, maybe more! Press on.

Love never fails.

Some day the computer that you use to receive this message will fail and make repairs unjustifiably expensive. It will be placed in the trash bin, joined by the monitor and mouse.

Your office building, the adjusting table you use and the patient records you keep will fall into disrepair, become worthless and get discarded.

Those spines you straightened and the curves you restored will eventually become the dust from where they came.

In fact, as you look around at the material world that surrounds us, which can be detected with the five senses, it will all pass.

Everything will eventually fail. Except love. Love, because it is spiritual and not bound by the physics of this world, will persist. Eternally.

This week create more love. Instead of arguing, love. Instead of persuading, love. Instead of controlling, love. Instead of resisting what is, love. It never fails.

“Keep your eye on the ball!”

It’s tempting to look where we want the ball to go, rather than remaining present up to the moment we connect. Not being present is one of the hazards of being human. We’re easily distracted. Yesterday’s argument. Tomorrow’s rent.

When we surrender the present to the past or the future, we disempower ourselves. We can’t change the past. The future isn’t here yet. All we really have is the now.

This is especially true in the adjusting room. As much as there might be comfort in a linear, predictable, recipe-book approach to patient care, it’s only when you are fully “with” a patient that you have maximum influence. This is part of the art of chiropractic. It’s this “being” that makes whatever “doing” you do 10X more effective. Those who can keep their eye on the ball deliver legendary care: adjustments with “the extra special something.”

If you marvel at the performances of Cirque du Soleil or the recent achievements of Olympic-level athletes, you’re familiar with what the organizing properties of our nervous systems, combined with years of practice, can produce.

Same in your office: organization and practice.

Is your office organized? Let’s assume the areas of your office that patients see are orderly. But what about the other parts of your office?

The cancer in hallway closet.
The polyp in the bottom file cabinet.
The chaos of cables behind your computer.
The putrefaction of unread magazines.
The cyst of never-consulted seminar notes.
The tumor of misfiled records.
The ulcer of unfinished projects.

You may be successful at hiding the disorganization from patients but you can’t hide it from yourself. It slows you down. It impairs the health of your practice. It blunts your effectiveness. It interferes with the function of your office—keeping you at amateur status. Get organized.

Repeat aloud:

"I'd love to, but I can't."
"It sounds wonderful, but I shouldn't."
"If I could, I would, but I can't."
"Thanks for the invitation, but I can't schedule it in."
"I appreciate you thinking of me, but I'm unable to."
"Maybe another time, can I take a rain check?"
"I'm flattered, but no."
"No, but thanks for asking."
"No thank you."

Many of us have an underdeveloped ability to say no. As a result we find ourselves drawn into countless off-purpose tasks, over-committed and eventually resentful.

What does "no" mean to you?

You won't like me.
You'll never ask me again.
I'd be hurting you.
You'll ask someone else.
I'll be letting you down.
I'd disappoint you.

These are nice stories, but most likely untrue. By allowing them to run your life, you tend to live outside-in, rather than inside-out. Be generous. Serve. But for most people a no just means no.

Are you doing the practice part of practice?

Undisciplined professional athletes just want to play the game. They don't want to do the drills. They don't want to practice the fundamentals. They don't want to be bothered with the free throws, the batting cage or the practice scrimmages. They just want to play the game.

But winning is all in the preparation. Are you prepared?

How often do you practice giving a report of findings?
How often do you rehearse the questions of your consultation?
How often do you mentally perform an adjustment?
How often do you visualize your intentions fulfilled?
How often do you get to the office early to "work out?"

The most effective chiropractors (and chiropractic assistants) show up warmed up and with their head in the game. This takes practice. If you don't practice, you don't get better. Patients deserve your best. Moreover, patients expect your best!

Garbage in. Garbage out.

You’ve probably heard this phrase before. Maybe even used it. If not, it simply means that faulty conclusions are based on faulty data.

When combined with the definition of creativity (rearranging the old to produce the new), it creates a more somber conclusion: without new input you’ll be stuck in your rut with the same old results!

That’s why it’s so important to read, especially outside of chiropractic. That’s why it’s so important to turn off the television so you’re not filled with the same fear-based herd mentality that patients bring in with them. That’s why it’s so important to try new foods, take new paths, take new risks and do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

To remain salty, spicy and be a change agent, it’s critical that you get some new, high-quality inputs. That way you can be a more influential input for patients.

"Begin with the end in mind."

It's a common refrain of productivity experts and a frequent element of the popular success literature. We're most likely to apply this helpful advice when embarking on a new project or instituting a new policy or procedure.

Have you applied it to your life?

When this life ends and you pass, what "end" do you have in mind?

As I've considered this prospect for myself, I've become increasingly aware that at the end I want to avoid regrets. The regret of not having fully loved. The regret of not having fully lived. The regret of having lived safe, small and being constrained by irrational fear. Of having held back and not fully embracing this opportunity called life.

It's not too late! Until the end, you can begin anew. Start this week. Start now. Start by jettisoning those time wasters and off-purpose tasks. Remember, no regrets!

Are you in growth mode or defense mode?

Your practice, like the cells of your body, is in one state or the other. If it is slowly fading, you've probably switched from offense to defense. Sure, the economy can be a contributing factor, but it's deeper than that. Once your mindset becomes about protecting what you have, rather than leveraging it to create new possibilities, you've switched sides.

You can never "win" by playing defense. Don't fall for the lie that waiting for clarity is the wise thing to do. Wait for the "herd" and you'll likely be trampled. Instead, consult your heart and be decisive.

Now is the time to be bolder and tell the truth more passionately. Now is the time to plant your flag, take a stand and ruffle some feathers. Worry less and be more certain. Kick ass and take names. You know the truth. Declare it!

Get back to basics.

During uncertain times it's tempting to freeze, waiting for clarity. Instead, now's the time to act by returning to the fundamentals.

It's about patients, not you. Only when you help others get what they want will you get what you want. Never confuse cause with effect.

Remain 100% present. Stay with patients. Avoid the temptation to worry about your problems or get distracted by the news, the weather or the economy.

Educate, educate, educate. As patients are tempted by other priorities, it's time to redouble your efforts to communicate the importance of a subluxation-free nervous system.

Say please and thank you. Be polite and thankful for who shows up, not distraught over who didn't.

Step up. Leadership is the ability to help others see a better tomorrow. Since you know the truth about health and healing, you have an obligation to be a source of hope and confidence.

“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.”
Strawberry Fields Forever
The Beatles

Have you gone unconscious? Numb?

Many of the coping strategies we use, whether addiction to food, alcohol, sex, television, chocolate or (enter yours here) is an attempt to shut down our consciousness. This avoidance strategy allows us to relish in the delights of our five senses rather than face the uncomfortable circumstances we’ve created.

Notice the feeling in your body when you’re tempted to turn on the boob tube. Next time you reach for the bottle, notice what you’re feeling. When you look for your favorite numbing agent, take an inventory. What are you avoiding? What would you prefer not to face? What won’t you look at? Or confront? Or accept?

This is where your next breakthrough can be found. Want to grow your practice? Start here. Grow yourself. Your practice will have no choice but to follow.

How easily do you get offended? Or insulted? Slighted?

Common or rare?

As Eleanor Franklin observed, "No one can insult you unless you agree with them."

Many, especially those who are emotionally "thin skinned," seem especially on the lookout for circumstances in which they can feel some sort of justifiable rage, anger or at least irritation, based on the behaviors, beliefs or opinions of others.

It's a convenient source of angst.

This is one of those common social subluxations that you have complete control over. Being "offended" is merely a choice. What someone else believes has little meaning other than what you give it. Choosing to make it an attack on your beliefs is just that, a choice.

Hold fast. Know what you know. Believe what you believe. Assume they will come around. As you did. They're just not ready yet. Smile. Their time will come. Bite your tongue.

Love.

During your new patient consultations listen for words representing absolutes, such as never, ever, always, forever and every. As in “I’ve had this forever” and “I never sleep through the night.”

Forever is a long time. Never means not even once. Always means there are no exceptions. Absolutes rarely describe health issues accurately.

Absolutes are convenient, but they’re rarely true. They often serve to hide or cover up something important. Linguistically, they can be used to separate us from self-responsibility or dismiss situations that conflict with such sweeping generalities. Declarations using absolutes are like road signs: “Do Not Enter” or “Detour.”

But don’t fall for it. Instead, when you hear patients describing circumstances with absolutes, dig deeper. “What do you mean never?” “When you say always, do you mean there are absolutely no exceptions?” “Ever? Tell me more.”

Listen carefully. Dig deeper. Follow up. It is often a clue or access for healing.

Are you a fixer?

Many chiropractors define themselves by what they do. But you don't fix patients. They aren't even broken!

Their body has positioned spinal bones in a specific pattern for a reason. (We live in a cause and effect world, remember?) Before you rush in to create your notion of better biomechanics, stop!

Is the stressor (physical, chemical or emotional) that produced the defensive mechanism we call subluxation still present?

Remember, the patient does the reorganization (if there's going to be any), not your thrusting. It's merely energy you make available for their body to help "right" itself.

Showing up as the "fixer" obscures the truth, tempting you to take credit or blame for an outcome you can't control. This is how chiropractors get pushed off their pedestal—whether they or patients place them there.

You can fix a cat. You can fix a car. But you can't fix patients!

New patient statistics are a helpful barometer of your own health. Like symptoms, they are the last to appear and the first to disappear.

When you do a screening, run a promotion or conduct some other self-effort for the purpose of manifesting new patients, these are often the superficial variety. Oh, they have spinal problems, appreciate your care and usually get better, but they rarely embrace chiropractic as a healthy habit.

That's partly because your intention for manifesting those new patients was for your benefit ("I need more new patients!"), not necessarily theirs ("Who needs my help?"). This self-centeredness means you must constantly concern yourself with their replacement. It's burdensome work.

A lack of referrals from all those patients you supposedly helped is a telltale sign that something is amiss. Get your heart right. Dedicate your practice to serving, and you will be served. Meet their deepest needs and yours will be met.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Many have fallen for the illusion that “seeing is believing.” But they have it backwards. First you must believe, then you will you see.

That’s because things exist on the spiritual level first before they manifest on the physical plane where the five senses can experience them. Closer to home, new patients exist spiritually before they can show up physically in your practice. So, while many search for the perfect script, the ideal screening tool or the sure-fire new patient offer, this attention is largely misplaced. It’s more efficient to create new patients on the spiritual level.

“How do you create new patients spiritually?”

Begin by getting your heart right. Seek to serve, rather than be served. That is, focus on how you can meet the needs of new patients, rather than how new patients will solve your ego-cash-flow needs.

Start there. Then you’ll see what I mean.

There's a popular notion that if you conceal your beliefs in favor of appealing to what patients want, you'll be seen as more attractive and enjoy greater success.

Not true.

At first glance, taking the populist's angle in your patient communications, pandering, chameleon-like to the lowest common denominator makes sense. But the cost is high: A disrespect for patients. A cynical, healthier-than-thou attitude. Which turns into anger. And eventually burnout.

By the time patients resort to consulting a doctor (of any ilk), they have lost their bearings, are uncertain and looking for someone more certain than they are. Wetting your finger and putting it to the wind makes you appear opportunistic and uncertain. Instead, boldly tell your chiropractic story, whether the Pain Story, the Bone Story, the Nerve Story or the Lifestyle Story. Whichever one(s) hold the greatest certainty for you.

Then can you offer what patients really want: Hope.

How patients pay for their care dramatically affects their results.

A patient can generally pay four ways: in advance, as they go, later or never. The best results are achieved by those who pay in advance and the poorest by those who don't pay at all.

Paying for one's care is part of the recovery process.

That's why the impending move to socialize what is called "health care" can't and won't produce true health. Self responsibility does. Just as the government can steal responsibility from patients, so too can chiropractors. Many do. And it often begins by believing that unenforced financial policies are doing the patient a favor. Allowing patients to run up large uncollectable balances not only interferes with your business, it can compromise their care.

Ultimately, how patients pay often reflects their confidence in your care, their emotional investment in the process and the priority they place on their health.

No one is going to rescue you.

If the circumstances in your life or your practice aren't what you wish, you may be inclined to look outside for resolution.

Insurance companies do not hold the answer. The golden days of the past will not be returning.

The government is not going to bail you out. Nor should it.

Your staff will not save you. In fact, they're looking to you for leadership and direction.

Patients will not solve your problem. Depending upon them is an unsustainable role reversal.

Looking for Santa, the Tooth Fairy, a genie or mere luck to save you, simply delays the action you must take to face what you've neglected, don't want to look at or have artfully avoided. That thing you're afraid of; that you've resisted; that difficult conversation you've put off? Your answer lies there. Your solution, like healing, always comes from the inside out.

Success is not drawn to clutter.

The piles on your desk and the disorder in your closet and drawers are symptoms of far more serious issues:

Uncertainty. If you hedge your bets, creating a backup plan to your back up plan, you tend to horde what you see as potential resources. The resulting clutter is a sign of indecisiveness. Decide! (Which comes from the Latin word meaning to “cut off from.”)

Lack of clarity. Without a clear vision of the future you want, it’s easy to allow stuff to accumulate because you’re not sure whether you’ll need it or not. Remove the fog of the future!

Purposelessness. Have you identified your purpose? (It’s not adjusting patients or merely surviving!) Without one, it’s difficult to say “no” to off-purpose temptations. Identify the top priorities that would advance your purpose and remain unyielding.

What can you throw out, simplify and organize for next year?

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.

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!

An airplane is drawn up into the sky. It is the shape of the wing, not the powerful engines that actually do the lifting. Without the specially shaped wings, an airplane would be just merely a fast bus.

It is the shape of your practice, that draws new patients and produces an uplift in your patient volume and practice income. Not self-effort, cleaver gimmicks or a shortage of new patient specials.

What shape is your practice in?

Do you have distinct edges (clear boundaries) defining what is your responsibility and what is the patients? Do you have the internal strength (staff training) to withstand the pressures of more new patients? Do you have a checklist (patient education system) to insure each patient attaches an appropriate meaning to what you’re doing? Do you have the momentum (driving purpose) to create the necessary lift?

Practice growth is more about a shortage of you, rather than a shortage of new patients!

Do you play full out?

Holding back, even a little, reveals a fundamental distrust of your circumstances, which actually permits your deepest fears to manifest.

Why do you distrust your circumstances? Could it be you see yourself as a victim? Or an unwilling partner in the creation of your life? Or you lack faith, having doubt about the future? When you “hedge your bet,” you're actually betting against yourself.

Not being fully invested in your own practice gives you a convenient “out” and an excuse for any shortcoming that arises. It’s a convenient face-saving strategy that actually sows the seeds for the very disappointment you fear.

Instead, this week, commit! Put on a pair of rose-colored glasses. Instead of the downside, concentrate on the upside. Assume everything is going to work out perfectly. Because it always does. It may not be what you expected, but remember, every effect has a cause.

Among all the possible problems in a chiropractic practice, patients are rarely the problem. Yet, in some practices, certain patients are the target of derision, judgment and even contempt, as in “problem patients.” Whether comments about their priorities, appearance or hygiene, these unservant-like attitudes are often the subject of staff meetings or post-visit hallway gossip.

Patients are hardly ever the problem. But your reaction can be.

If you speak ill of a patient it means you think ill of the patient. If you think ill of the patient, you can be sure that it’s obscuring the fullness of your healing intent. In other words, you’re shortchanging the patient. It becomes a form of stealing.

Think ill of no one. Speak ill of no one. Especially patients. Doing so is not only unbecoming, it actually serves to promote ill health -- the opposite of why patients seek you in the first place.

One of the greatest presents you can give patients is being fully 100% present.

The present is when your intention is the most powerful.

The present is when patients manifest in your practice.

The present is when you deliver your intervention.

The present is the only moment that is real--the past is merely a memory and the future resides in our imagination.

What diminishes your impact by distracting you from being present with patients? Eavesdropping in on a front desk conversation? Worrying about your bills? Computing your income from the day’s patient volume? Regrets about something you should have said or done?

Legendary healers are keenly aware of the importance of being present. More presence gives your listening and your adjusting more horsepower. It’s a self-discipline that the busiest practitioners consciously practice. It’s a characteristic that patients interpret as confidence, certainty and a loyality-producing hopefulness. It’s the technique of techniques.

Since problems are rarely solved with the same level of thinking that created them, it’s vital that you show up healthier, more resourceful and with more clarity than patients who seek your help. This is difficult to do if you’re being seduced by the same cultural hypnosis that they suffer from.

It used to be simply being a chiropractor was enough. As chiropractic has become more mainstream, to remain spicy, salty, influential and a “free thinker,” you’ll want to disengage from the media.

Those who watch television don’t watch. They stare. Very impolite to stare. The fixated eyes and zombie expression are signs of a drug being administered through the eyes. Hijack the mind and the body follows. You see it in the symptom-treating, germ-fearing, disembodied patients who show up in your practice.

Disengage. There’s nothing on. It’s designed to create fear, breed uncertainty and induce a herd mentality that steals your uniqueness.

The confusion, lack of clarity and disorientation pale in comparison to the feelings of “stuckness” that are often experienced by those scrambling to right themselves after being struck by waves of change or the undertow of being no longer relevant to the marketplace.

Pulling out of this death spiral requires a new way of being.

Deceived into believing that success is something you do, rather than something you are, those who are going through a rough patch needlessly exhaust their limited resources by pursuing procedures, equipment or scripting that makes them increasingly inauthentic, uncentered and unattractive.

Real success is about being fully you, not becoming a cheap imitator of someone else. Beware of those who suggest “do it like I do it.” Modeling others only seems like a convenient shortcut. And anointing a mentor practically invites exploitation.

If you’re afraid that being fully you would chase patients away, change you.

Healthy doctor/patient conversations are like a tennis game between two evenly matched, fully engaged players.

Instead, many chiropractors have a brutal serve. So imposing are the assertions or convicting observations that follow the usual pleasantries that many patients are unable (or unwilling) to attempt a return. Interactions degenerate into monologues, force-feeding some well-intentioned chiropractic trivia into the earlobes of defenseless, facedown patients.

Inaccurately called patient education, these one-sided affairs rarely produce the wanted result. Instead they distance you, making you appear self-absorbed, irrelevant or infatuated by things that matter to you, not the patient.

Show up curious. Ask more questions. Not as a set up for your treatise on nociception, but as someone genuinely interested in their life, not just their health. As you get more serves returned, intimacy deepens, influence grows and your sense of fulfillment expands. Oh, and your practice grows. A nice side effect, as side effects go.

You speak a foreign language. It's called "Healthcare" and more specifically, a dialect known as "chiropractic."

You're much more aware of the distinctions between chiropractic and medicine (or should be!) than patients. And while it's tempting to ignore these differences, be sure to translate if you want patients to grasp the full significance and meaning of chiropractic.

One of the key distinctions is the heretical notion that it's not the doctor or drug doing the healing, but the patient and God. Start there.

Granted, it takes some courage to plant that flag. And it may assign more responsibility than patients want when they decide to consult your practice. But ignore this one and you'll have confused patients who see you as a "fixer" and your practice will never get out of second gear. More troubling, you'll be seen as merely a spinal therapist, hamstrung by the inability to prescribe pain medication.

The moment you deliver a patient's first adjustment, your influence either increases or plummets.

"Will adjustments actually "fix" my problem? How many should it take?" "How many will it take?" patients ask themselves.

While it's true that what you say may not override what they feel, it reveals the vital importance of at least some type of rudimentary patient education to give your adjustments context, while assigning appropriate responsibility for who is doing the healing. Without this essential "meaning making," you force patients to make judgments solely on how they feel.

This is the danger of first-visit adjusting. After the paperwork, consultation and examination, what passes for patient education can be woefully superficial and inadequate. The result? You're seen as merely a "bone cracker" and the neurological and potential whole-body health effects of chiropractic care are obscured. And while your purposeful mechanistic intervention may please an insurance company, you'll have traded vitalism for mechanism.

Nobody gets away with anything. Ever.

We live in a universe of dependable laws that operate under the immutable force of cause and effect. Thinking we can cheat or exploit a weakness or steal when no one is looking, is much like thinking that our garbage actually disappears when the garbage collector comes each week. It doesn’t. It’s simply moved to a new location.

Do you divert massive amounts of energy to cover up, hide or suppress who you really are?

Compartmentalizing our lives, showing up one way when we think no one is watching, and another when we might get caught or found out, is a surefire way to sabotage success.

Come clean. You’re not fooling anyone. Frankly, you’re not that good of an actor. Once you give yourself permission to show up authentically, flaws and all, you grant patients the same freedom. Then true healing can occur. For them and you.

As you attract your tribe of those who resonate with your vision of health, you're expected to show up as a leader. Careful! Leadership isn't about imposing your point of view or expecting patients to toe the line. That's management.

Leadership is about reminding patients of a vision that they cannot see. It's about suggesting possibilities for a better future and creating hope. Leadership is about reassuring others that tomorrow will be better than today.

Help patients see the future and dream bigger dreams. Their lack of physical health is often a sign that some other aspect of their life needs healing. A job they hate. A marriage that needs renewed intimacy. A future that lacks opportunity.

Weave the dream and remind them of the real purpose of better health--to be more fully alive. As you do, your influence assumes proportions far greater than that of a manager.

Motivation is much like medicine. It's an outside in process and it suggests that the subject is lacking something.

Like a drug, attempting to motivate someone else, whether a pet, a teenager, an employee or a patient, requires that you overpower their current state. Worse, if you're able to move them to action, your efforts rarely last and you have to "motivate" them again. Attempting to motivate others is exhausting.

Instead, you and they would be better served by attempting to inspire them.

Inspiring patients is like chiropractic. It recognizes that what they need, they already have. But something is in the way. Uncover the interference (subluxation) and reduce it.

This requires sufficient curiosity to uncover that wee little "pilot light" of a dream, which when properly fueled and encouraged, can explode into a passionate fire. Do that each day and your practice will have no other choice but to grow.

Do you address the subluxation, or the person with the subluxation?

The mechanistic, allopathic approach is to largely ignore the person or circumstances that created the "it" in favor of addressing the "it." But most "its," whether subluxations, tumors, infections or indigestion are merely symptoms of something else. If DC is to stand for Doctor of Cause, you'll want to lose your infatuation with the spine and expand your attention to the overall person.

Messy business, this commitment to cause.

Don't be misled into thinking you have to fix the cause. It's likely that you'll be unable to fix most causes. Are you okay with that?

Instead, have the courage to ask questions (and listen to their answers!) in such a way as to help patients connect the dots between their life and their health. It could be a significantly more powerful adjustment than anything you do to their spine.

When things are in flux as they are today (change is good, remember?) it's tempting to do nothing. The tendency is to freeze. But waiting for a clear sign, while understandable, is a form of hiding. It's the least courageous choice.

Remember the parable of the talents? The servant who buried his so he could return it intact to his master was castigated and had it taken from him and given to the wiser servant.

Same here. This is the time for bold action. Commit to a direction and then make it the right one by what you do to support it afterwards. Decisive action, especially now, will be handsomely rewarded.

Times like these are designed to discourage those who aren't fully committed; to weed out the dabblers, the tentatives and the uncertains. Nothing tests your commitment like the winds of change.

Act! Doing so creates the very direction and guidance you've been waiting for.

One classroom has 32 students. The other 16. Who gets the better education?

The one with the better student/teacher ratio, right? Not necessarily. The classroom of 16 students is resigned, unwilling and disengaged. The 32 had to apply, were hand selected and grateful for the opportunity. Still convinced that the smaller class size gets a better education?

How badly do patients in your “classroom” want your explanations, meaning making and educational message? Patient education isn’t just about your intention, the methods or the tools you use to share the truth about chiropractic. Each patient’s attitude is important too.

What a patient wants affects how accessible they are to your educational overtures. Patients who want more (more health, more vitality and greater well-being) tend to be more available than those who want less (less pain, less disability or less responsibility).

Which type of patient are you attracting? Those who want more or those who want less?

Are you a thermometer or thermostat?

A thermometer simply responds to the environment. A thermostat changes the environment by directing resources to heat things up or cool things down. A thermometer is reactive; a thermostat is proactive.

If you've allowed your practice to be hijacked by fear or scarcity (reacting), leaning towards the thermometer side of things (down when the numbers are down, up when the numbers are up), consider these suggestions:

Manage your state. You may not be able to change the world, but you can change how you choose to react to it.

Focus on others. Worry less about yourself. Only as you enthusiastically serve the needs of others will your needs be met.

Ask for help. Everything you need is available. Everything. But you have to ask. Ask!

You're supported. You practice in a world governed by the Law of Cause and Effect. If you don't like the output, change the input!

In the same way that many blur spirit, faith and religion, many confuse the principles of chiropractic with the practice of chiropractic. Many intraprofessional arguments and the polarization that produces competing chiropractic organizations, stem from attaching different meanings to the same words.

When you hear a colleague use the term philosophy, ask, "What do you mean when you say 'philosophy?'"

Or when a colleague uses the word manipulation ask, "What do you mean by 'manipulation?'"

Same with patients.

"…Driving me nuts." "…sick and tired." "…can't afford." "…get better." "…results."

When you profoundly listen, patients use words or phrases that are loaded with meaning and significance. Catch these terms, especially at the consultation, and ask for clarification. When you do, a new level of understanding and influence emerge.

With thousands of words at their disposal, their choices are powerful clues about their fears, concerns and expectations. True healing begins here (hear).

Law of Cause and Effect

Thankfully, we live in a world in which every effect has a cause. Thus, there are no accidents. Most accidents are merely effects to which we have not acknowledged the actual cause.

Naturally, most of us attempt to uncover the cause when things don't go our way or as we expect. But remember, the fact that new patients manifest (or don't) is an effect. As are referrals, reactivations, low staff turnover, as is a profitable and emotionally fulfilling practice. All effects. Symptoms, actually.

If there are practitioners enjoying the effects you want (there are!), then you can have those effects too. Just be careful that you look in the right place. It's rarely what they do, but who they are. Because even a "doing" is an effect. The cause? Who you're being.

What kind of chiropractor are you being these days? Is it producing the effects you want?

Law of Sowing and Reaping

Plant seeds of doubt and you'll reap a harvest of uncertainty. Plant seeds of fear and you'll pick the fruit of scarcity and lack. Conversely, plant seeds of abundance, certainty and trust and you'll yield a crop of hope and healing. Plant love and your harvest will be bumper crop of still more love.

In other words, what goes around, comes around.

If you plant seeds of control and management in the soil of your patient relationships, expect a harvest of high maintenance patients who require emotionally draining supervision and who set you up for disappointment. And if you plant seeds of trust and personal responsibility, you will just as certainly manifest patients with high self-esteem who value accountability and wellness care.

The seeds you plant are up to you. It's your garden. Naturally, if you're unhappy with your harvest, plant different seeds!

Law of Identity

Horse. Zebra. Similar, but different. The Law of Identity is based on the ability to make distinctions with our language—something difficult to do if we're hamstrung by underdeveloped observational skills or crippled by a limited vocabulary.

For example. If you have the desire to have a practice of nonsymptomatic families availing themselves of care designed to maintain their health or promote wellness, calling them "patients," which comes from the Latin meaning "to suffer," blurs the distinction. Oh, they may begin care as patients, but at some point (if all goes according to plan) they're no longer suffering. If you want more these non-suffering regulars, you'll want to call them something other than patients. (i.e. clients, practice members, participants, etc.)

This is this and that is that. Success does not flow toward ambiguity, vagueness or those who are lazy with language. Rigor displayed here pays off later, but it's a distinction lost on many.

Law of Reciprocity

You must first give to get. Giving creates a debt; an imbalance. The debt is paid by returning the favor.

A new patient referral can be gift or a get.

If you want more referrals, give more referrals. When appropriate, refer to the MD down the street or the pediatrician who "gets it." Refer patients to a good plumber, roofer or restaurant. Assume the role of a concierge, solving more problems than just their admitting complaint. Become the "go to" person for anything and anyone and watch your influence (and reciprocal referrals) grow.

The Law of Reciprocity takes time. The error that many make is they superimpose their own sense of time when invoking the Law. Trust it will come back to you, next month, next year or some time in eternity. But it always comes back. What you give away (good or bad) always returns.

Law of the Lid

Patients rarely get healthier than their doctor.

If you want to help those with work injuries or suffering the aftermath of a car accident, you don't have to be very healthy. These victims rarely want health, they simply want to be made whole.

On the other hand, if you desire a practice full of cash-paying, lifetime wellness individuals who value true health, you'll need to be healthy. Not so you can project a "healthier than thou" attitude! Instead, from walking your talk and out of your abundance, you can be an authentic guide, a desirable example and an understanding steward.

Remember, true health is optimum physical, mental and social well-being. Sure, most of us could afford to lose some weight, however it's often the mental and social well-being that holds the greatest opportunity for improvement.

As Mahatma Gandhi so eloquently admonished, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

Law of Fair Exchange

In every transaction, there must be an equal exchange between both parties. If not, expect a short-term relationship and an unsustainable business.

Countless chiropractors break this law when establishing or administering their patient financial policy.

At one extreme is the practice that allows patients to run up high, outstanding balances in which the debt, or a large portion of it, becomes uncollectible. They think by not insisting on payment that they are somehow doing the patient a favor.

At the other end of the spectrum are practices that force annual care plans, seducing patients with low, amortized visit fees which (in the fine print) are withdrawn should the patient discontinue care early.

Fair exchange is part of the healing process. And referrals! You'll rarely get referrals from patients who leave owing large outstanding balances. And if you do, those they refer know that you don't respect yourself enough to expect payment.

Law of Opposites

We live in a universe of duality. Day and night. Winter and summer. Birth and death. Good and evil. Boom and bust. One cannot exist without the other. In fact, it can only exist because of the other!

Imagining that you can have the crest of the wave without the bottom of the trough ignores this simple reality. Expecting that your practice can grow and grow and grow and expand forever, while the focus of many chiropractors' dreams, is impossible. Expansion without contraction is actually unhealthy. When this happens in the body we call it cancer.

Whether success or failure, realize that this shall pass. It may not seem that way at the time, but it's true.

If you're in a trough now, first be grateful. Then, faithfully prepare for the upcoming crest. Because it's coming. Clean. Organize. Repair. Reinvent. And if you have enough faith, use this time to rest.

Law of Attraction

Much has been written about attracting what we want into our lives. But consider an aspect that may have been overlooked, even with all the buzz surrounding The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know?

Ever see a magnet with just a north pole?

A magnet is powerful because one pole completes the other. Just like your spouse completes you, your staff completes you and even your patients complete you. Without this completion, we have the equivalent of a free radical.

If you show up in your life or your practice with the need to control, then you'll largely attract emotionally-draining patients who must be managed. In fact, it's the primary type of patient you attract since self-responsible individuals find you overbearing and well, unattractive.

If you don’t care for the people or circumstances showing up for you, show up different before you can expect to attract completions that are more pleasing.

Law of Conservation of Energy

We are energy. The chair you’re sitting on is energy too. Granted, in a different form, but energy all the same. Based on the First Law of Thermodynamics we know that energy is never created or destroyed, it merely changes form, taking the path of least resistance.

When you adjust a patient, you’re adding energy to the patient’s body. What the patient’s body does with that energy is out of your control. Perhaps their body is still in defense mode; the stressor still being present in their life. Imagining that you can control or regulate how someone else’s body uses energy is as foolish as thinking you can lose weight for someone else.

Energy always moves from high concentration to low concentration; from high vibration to low. This process of dissipation can make your reaction to certain patients a drain. But remember, it’s not them. It’s your reaction that’s draining!

Law of Supply and Demand

The Law of Supply and Demand suggests that the supply is created by the demand. Not the other way around. What do you supply? But a better question is, what do patients demand?

Careful that you aren't supplying something that patients don't want or value enough to pay for. Many chiropractors attempt to sell wellness to patients who simply want to feel better. Others sell spinal curve restoration to patients who merely want their symptoms to stop impairing their golf game or ability to earn a living.

Answering a question that isn't being asked, scratching where it doesn't itch and wanting true health for patients who have considerably lower dreams is a recipe for frustration, disappointment and misunderstanding.

Finding an existing need and filling it is more pragmatic than attempting to create a new need and filling it. Do you know what patients want? Find out. How? Ask!

Law of Forgiveness

If it's true, as I believe, that the cause of many diseases is unresolved emotional issues, then certainly a common culprit is unreleased anger and resentment. What is so ironic is that these emotions are self-created; they are choices we make based on our own emotional reality.

Since they are self-created, it makes sense they can be self-destroyed, which is the purpose of forgiveness. Forgiving someone who you believe has wronged you is for your benefit not theirs!

Even the scriptures are clear about this self-righteous indignation: forgive those who have wronged you before expecting the blessings of God. Don't allow the sun to set on your anger.

If you desire to be a healer, rather than merely a spine mechanic, educate patients about the Law of Forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn't condone or approve of the behavior. It merely releases the emotional charge that's been given it.

Whom do you need to forgive?

Law of Reality

Remember the lyric from the 1980s song, "I fought the law, but the law won." Same thing with reality. What is, is. It won't be argued with and it always wins.

Most suffering comes from attempting to deny, ignore, dispute or resist reality. Reality always comes out on top. What is real for you?

Take an inventory of your resources, whether it's your time, talent and experience or your health, perseverance or sense of humor.

Take an inventory of your debts, whether they're financial, psychological, relational, poor health or poor character judgment.

Take an inventory of your assumptions, whether it's your beliefs about patients, your support team, the economy or the future.

Take an inventory of your habits, both the constructive and the destructive ones.

That's your reality. Since past performance is the best predictor of the future, if you want a different future, change the only thing you can: you.

Law of Hierarchy of Values

Actions rarely lie. They are symptoms of beliefs. Beliefs reveal our values. Ultimately, what we value prompts us to action, whether it's the value we place on our appearance, our family or in the case of patients, the value they place on their health.

Patients who place a high value on their health are more open to patient education opportunities, nonsymptomatic care and more likely to pursue opportunities to maximize their well-being.

Patients who place a low value on their health are inclined to spend minimal amounts of time and money on themselves. They have other things that they value more. Perhaps it's their career, grandchildren, travel or the latest gadget.

It's their free will choice you know. (Law of Reality).

There is little you can do to change their values. You can talk until you blue in the face or light your hair on fire. No change.

Love them anyway.

Law of Gratitude

Are you facing a challenge? Be thankful. Are you still paying for a past decision? Be thankful. Are circumstances less than desirable? Be thankful.

The natural tendency is to resist or condemn situations that are less than ideal. Be grateful instead!

"But if I'm thankful, it's as if I'm inviting still more problems," we lie to ourselves.

Not true. Virtually every circumstance has a lesson for us if we're willing to look deeply enough and learn. Especially our so-called "failures." Begin by first giving thanks for them.

You can't leave somewhere you've never been. Gratitude is the discipline that provides the access for something better. Accept what is (the Law of Reality) and be thankful for it, good or bad. Not only does life get instantly better, but what you thought were challenges, difficulties or trying circumstances are reduced to helpful reminders of what doesn't work. How great is that?

As a small business owner, an important question to ask yourself is, "What business am I in?"

It may seem like you're in the chiropractic business, the health care business or even the chiropractic-adjustment-delivery-business.

Careful!

These might constitute an adequate "first right answer," but dig deeper. Because while you obviously examine, report, inspire, adjust and lead patients, it may not be the business you're in. Because the ability to help patients is only possible by building trust, supplying education, producing hope, changing beliefs, creating new meaning, enlarging possibilities and sharing the truth. In fact, without these, your significance is limited, short lived and rarely blossoms into influential, long-term relationships.

Your purpose is not to adjust patients. My guess is that adjusting patients helps advance or fulfill your purpose. So, what is it? You'd want to know. By not knowing, you're reduced to a human doing from a human being.

Do you curse patients?

I'm not talking about using profanity. I'm referring to a form of condemnation. It can sound like, "He'll never 'get' chiropractic." Or, "She's always late for her appointments." Or, "I don't see how he will ever come around to accepting what we do here."

A common telltale sign of cursing others is when you use terms like always, never, ever and other blanket assertions that are rarely true. Worse, labeling these perceptions and then speaking them aloud is a criticism and judgment that is out of character for someone who claims to advance hope and promote healing.

This week, become more mindful of the declarations you make about others as well as yourself. Make sure your words reflect what is true about possibilities, change, growth and opportunity. Speak that into the world. That's when you'll notice breakthroughs, miracles and serendipitous moments that you would have formerly labeled as mere coincidence.

Everyone has goals. The question is, are they your goals or someone else's?

If you don't have the discipline, vision or presence of mind to create specific goals for yourself, don't worry. Someone else will gladly assume that responsibility for you. And probably has. Much of the burnout and frustration we experience is the result of trying to live out someone else's notion of what we should be or do.

Still trying to be enough to obtain the approval of a parent? Or maybe you've submitted to a consultant who is prescribing inauthentic procedures or ways of being. Or maybe you've surrendered your future to an addiction or the undisciplined spending habits of your partner. The possibilities for having your goals hijacked by others are endless.

This week, claim what is yours. Live consciously. Bring intention to your life. Set your own goals and be a thermostat, not merely a thermometer.

It's not about you.

As a child, we arrived on the scene attempting to make meaning of the world and the actions of others. We often made incorrect assumptions, attaching me-centered meanings to events and situations. ("I caused my parents' divorce." "Others can't be trusted." "There's not enough." "I'm not smart enough." "The world is a dangerous place." "Be afraid of strangers." Etc.)

It's no surprise that the habit of making these short, life-limiting pronouncements, that put us in the center of the universe, continue as we age. This handicaps our ability to show up as a servant. It cripples us by seeking to be liked. It creates a selfishness that prevents us from prospering.

What patients do or don't do is not about you. You can make it about you; in fact, many chiropractors are inclined to do so. However, the price of this luxurious self-absorption is a small, easy-to-manage practice.

Are some of your adjustments better than others?

In far too many practices, the first patient or two of the day receive inferior care. Like an undisciplined basketball player who resents having to do the drills, the wind sprints and the free-throw practice, many chiropractors just want to play. They arrive at the practice mere minutes before their first patient. They're not warmed up. They haven't visualized the day. And they're little more than human pneumatic devices.

This can be costly. Besides reducing the adjustment to a soulless mechanical thrust, the accompanying lack of presence obscures opportunities for more profound listening and the insights that have are the trademark of legendary healers.

This week, get to the practice earlier. Prepare for every patient. Rehearse conversations. Show up alert, intuitive and ready to serve. Then you'll know what they need besides an adjustment, whether it's information, encouragement, hope or merely a willing ear.

Is your objective to treat the patient's pain, restore motion or eradicate subluxations? If so, that's the practice of medicine. This is a distinction lost on patients, ignored by insurance companies, missed by licensing bodies and overlooked by many chiropractors.

So, it's no surprise that those chiropractors who haven't made this distinction often have a constant need for new patients.

If you've found yourself in the business of "fixing" spines or relieving aches and pains (what patients want) rather than helping invoke their inborn ability to self-heal (and explaining the difference), it's only natural to expect patients to leave when their symptoms are gone. After all, they think you're a back doctor.

Thus, the notion of regularly seeing a chiropractor to be their best for the rest of their lives to maximize their well-being or enhance their ability to accommodate the stresses of daily living seem like a needless and expensive self-indulgent luxury!

The scriptures are replete with examples of the severe penalties faced by Israel for indulging in idolatry. Today, we tend to scoff at the notion of idolatry, even celebrating it in popular television programming (American Idol)!

Have you constructed idols in your practice? Some chiropractors have turned their technique, their health, their reputation and even their hands into idols.

This is dangerous territory. Besides the obvious hubris, it suggests that you're somehow responsible for the healing and the often dramatic results produced by reducing tension to the nervous system along the spinal column.

However, like your car's ignition key that activates the intelligence built into it by the engineers who designed and manufactured it, your adjustment merely invokes the intelligence built into each patient by their Maker. Claiming credit (or taking blame) is actually a form of stealing.

Give credit to the manufacturer, not the key; the Maker, not the adjustment.<