There are many obstacles that stand in your way of being able to provide your chiropractic service at an optimal level to your community. Sometimes that task seems so huge that it even seems fruitless to start. The medical machine is so pervasive and it has spread its tentacles into every corner of people’s minds. It is in the battle for people’s minds that success or failure is determined.
It’s a big job and yet it can be done and won. In terms of a strategy for success I am reminded of the question on how do you eat an elephant? The answer, of course is “one bite at a time”. One little piece after the other is the way you address the paradigm shift required in moving a person from the medical mindset to the chiropractic viewpoint.
The health care consumer has, for a long time now, been living in a land of blood based thinking. Just ask your non-chiropractically educated friends, “what keeps your body healthy?”. The majority of the time you will get “the blood”. The logical source of “fixing” the body for these people is something that affects the blood. Logic then states that when we determine the chemicals that are missing we just need to replace them with more chemicals and all is sweet. When the chemicals in the blood change so does the body. In this model the only logical option is to rely on the outside/in driven factors, vaccines, drugs and surgery etc. The only place for chiropractic in this model is in the niche of acute back pain.
Chiropractic on the other hand is neurologically based and has as its common denominator, all things natural. We subscribe to an inside/out approach and we do this by removing impediments to the full expression of those forces of Innate.
To shift societies’ thinking and health care utilization patterns is one HUGE elephant.
People want certain things based on their experience of health care so far (freedom from the symptoms of back ache, colic, heart disease, asthma etc). They have been taught that symptoms are undesirable, bad and usually something to be feared, in fact for many; life itself is a scary proposition.
Take the time this week to take a little ‘bite’ at this big elephant and get people to look a their symptoms in a different way. A little bite in this context needs to be around letting people understand their symptoms are their ‘gift’ and that they have a special message for them. Symptoms are not something to be eradicated; they are phenomena to be learned from.
Seek to create doubt, disbelief or questions in the people’s mind around their “sacred cows”. This challenges their beliefs and causes them to go into a state known as perturbation (or confusion). Be gentle with people and don’t use negatives or fear to make a point. Remember, sacred cows like vaccination, antibiotics and Panadol make the best hamburgers but they must be cooked slowly.
Enjoy eating your elephant.
