Written by By: Mike Allison
Long-term success in your private practice is NOT just an unattainable dream. It will become reality if you know what to focus your resources on.
Whether you’re a coach, mental health professional, chiropractor, dentist, dietician, nutritionist or any other type of private practice owner, this article is going to show you which vital few activities to focus on for long-term success in your private practice.
Think of achieving long-term success like planting seeds in the spring season, watering and weeding during the growing season, and then reaping during the harvest season.
By actively planting the seeds for long-term success now, then watering and weeding on a regular basis, you’ll be create the fertile ground for reaping long-term success.
And this entire process begins with YOU! 🙂
Self-Mastery
If I asked you where your success is going to come from, how would you answer?
Is success something that magically appears out of thin air? Is it bottled or canned so that you can purchase it somewhere? Is it just a matter of being in the right place at the right time?
The fact is, just as plants grow from seeds planted in nutritious soil, your long-term success is going to grow from the seeds that you plant and care for inside of yourself.
And based on what I’ve personally experienced and what I’ve found from working with hundreds of successful people, there are certain common rituals they all follow daily. And those rituals revolve around mastering themselves first, that is mastering their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual states.
For the purposes of this post, I’m want to focus on one area where mastering your state will drive you towards long-term success.
Overcoming Fear
What are you afraid of? Interestingly, many people sabotage their own long-term success because of their own fears and beliefs.
Such as,
- What if this doesn’t work?
- What if I can’t get any customers?
- What if people aren’t willing to pay me what I believe I’m worth?
- What if I don’t have the skills to get this done?
- What if I don’t get paid by the insurance companies?
- What if, what if, what if?
Does that sound familiar to you? Unwarranted or unhealthy fear is harmful because in that state we’ll make bad decisions that will sabotage our opportunity to enjoy long-term success.
It’s imperative that you face your fears and remove them. Is that really possible to do? Yes it is, and following is a technique you can use right now to do so.
Reframing
This simple technique is so powerful that it will literally change your mental & emotional states from those of a “fearful doubter” to a “creative problem solver,” and if you use it regularly I can guarantee you that you’ll never look back.
In it’s most basic form, reframing is the act of taking beliefs or unspoken assumptions you may have about something and looking at them from a new perspective.
Within the question “what if this doesn’t work?” we find the unspoken assumption that “this won’t work.” The individual hasn’t directly said “this won’t work,” but by asking that question has raised that doubt and/or belief.
By taking this question and reframing it, we get a completely different perspective on the matter and this completely changes both our mental and emotional states.
So we reframe the question “what if this doesn’t work?” so that it becomes:
- “What is going to make this work?” or….
- “What did Jane do to make her private practice work? I’m going to call her and find out. If she was able to make her private practice work, then I can do it too!”
Reframing the original question like this is literally creating a neurological change inside your brain. Your thinking patterns, whether positive or negative, have been wired into your brain through learning, just as your mother tongue has been wired into your brain through learning it from infancy.
If you tend to think on the negative side of things or are the “fearful doubter,” it’s because you’ve learned to be that way. The good news is that you can permanently and fairly quickly change your way of thinking and looking at things, and the reframing technique is one tool you can use to do so.
“What if I can’t get any customers?” becomes…
- “Where can I find and connect with the people who need my services?” or…
- “Who do I know who’ll be willing to help me to find customers for my services?” or…
- “How will I communicate the benefits of my services so the people who need them will be lining up to receive them?”
“What if people aren’t willing to pay me what I believe I’m worth?” becomes…
- “I know what my services are worth. I simply need to focus on the market where the people who have the means and the will to purchase my services are,” or…
- “I choose to only work with people who understand the value and benefits of my services. I don’t want or need to work with people who aren’t serious about …..”
“What if I don’t have the skills to get this done?” becomes…
- “I’m fully capable of learning the skills I need to get this done,” or…
- “This is a fantastic opportunity for me to discover, learn and develop the skills I need to get this done,” or “I’m going to ask so-and-so to help me with this particular problem because I know that she faced it before and solved it.”
“What if I don’t get paid by the insurance companies?” becomes…
- “I refuse to let anyone else dictate my success. The road to success lies in my hands, not in the hands of anyone else or any insurance company.”
- “There are thousands of private practice owners in the U.S. who’ve created long-term success. I’m going to begin networking with them, find out what they’ve done and then model their success.”
I believe you can see how reframing the original questions has now opened up a huge door of opportunities to move through towards success. Exciting, isn’t it? The key is to start using the reframing technique regularly and you’ll begin to completely change the way you think and act. And that’s a vital step on the road to long-term success.
I wish you all the success you can handle!
Mike Allison is a CMOE (Center for Management and Organisation Effectiveness) Certified Professional Coach as well as a Licensed Business Practitioner of NLP.
He has helped thousands of teams and individuals in more than 15 countries to change the way they think so they can achieve the goals and level of success they desire and need for themselves and their organisations.
If you’d like to find out more about how Mike can help you or your team, visit his website at: www.mikeallisoncoaching.com or connect with Mike though email at:
mike@mikeallisoncoaching.com