Throughout my life Nelson Mandela has inspired me with his words of wisdom, his courageous acts and deeds. He led a life well lived and has left an indelible mark on the future of humanity. His legacy will be etched in people’s memories in the future. His wise words have implication to all situations of life and practice. From time to time I take a Mandela statement that resonates with me and will extrapolate it into the chiropractic context. Today’s…
With the recent organized attacks on chiropractic it appears that chiropractors are ‘pulling their heads in’ and laying low. Not willing to ‘rock the boat’ or state their position they are shrinking to an apologetic life of victimhood and settling for living below the line of accountability. This strategy results in chiropractors’ outreach to the public being negatively affected. Lower service rates obviously affect income and we are seeing many chiropractors (especially in Australia) taking a drop in income. This…
Last week I left you with the suggestion that you cannot NOT be in Integrity. I posed the question; “Is your current expression of your integrity what you want”? “Would you like it to be giving you something more or less, something different or something better”? I trust that you have considered this question over the week and have done an audit on what you are “Being”. You may have identified and decide on the additions and deletions that you…
In broad definition the word integrity means being complete and whole. This means having all parts and not just having them but having all the parts working all of the time producing the results that you desire. In this series of blogs I want to break this definition down into the specifics that relate to chiropractic and your roles as a chiropractor. Firstly, a quote from Socrates that is relevant in this discussion. He said, “Be as you wish to…
On the back of our discussion from last week we considered the direction people move – TOWARDS what they want and AWAY from what they don’t want. I contend that most chiropractors move towards what they want and assume that their practice members do the same. This assumption leads to frustration as people drop out of care prematurely and fail to follow through with long term care that optimises function. The average person is more motivated by the idea of…
Have you paid attention to the way in which you move? Now, I don’t don’t mean the way you move your hips or the graceful movement of your hand gestures when you are adjusting. I mean the DIRECTION that you move your thinking. There are two ways that you can move on any issue – TOWARDS what you want or AWAY from what you don’t want. In other words, do you move towards the carrot achieving something or the stick…
In an attempt to help people as much as possible as soon as possible many chiropractors ignore the power of scarcity. One thing that makes people want something more is to know that they can’t have it or that its availability is dwindling for them, or that it’s scarce or rare in some fashion. In health care those things that are difficult to possess are usually better. The hierachial structure of medicine and its control over numbers at the top…
As chiropractors, we have an intense desire to help people. We have a very effective array of tools to give relief and support and we are very eager to employ them. This desire often sees us diving in to ‘help’ a person at the first indicator they present with. We think that they have come to see us to get chiropractic care for their presenting complaints. This is the chiropractor’s assumption and it is in error. When people come to…
When people go into the weightless environment of space, stress is eliminated to a large degree from their bodies. In this environment, their body has nothing to push against and starts to weaken, muscles start to atrophy and bones start to demineralise. Innate intelligence needs forces, commonly known as tropisms, to grow to. Without opposing forces, we shrivel and die. The avoidance of stress is endemic in our society. We have developed a culture that is hell-bent on reducing risk…
Many chiropractic practices operate in an ad hoc manner. It is a “Do as I say not as I do” environment where everyone makes it up as they go. There is no overall purpose and no purpose broken down to every action. There are few if any written policies, procedures and scripts and the people who work there and worse still, the people who are serviced there just go with the flow and go by their own rules. Practice members…
We live in a moment-by-moment world. People just want their current issues fixed. They want instant results. They are driven in most areas of their life by a short-term perspective. They want to be fixed right now and they won’t worry about it until next time the issue occurs and at that time they will seek the same ‘band aid’ solution. Chiropractors aren’t too dissimilar. They just want to fix a problem with their practice. It may be a team…
As a child I was told not to walk on the wall in case I fell, not to play with knives unless I cut myself, not to eat too much in case I was sick. These and many more avoidance commands came out of love and concern but possibly set me up for risk avoidance. Our life is strengthened by hardship. The knocks, the falls, the mistakes and errors are what make us. It’s the picking ourselves up from ways…