The Hidden Game of Practice Success
‘Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical’ – Yogi Berra
Hello Sports Fans!
For my 13-year grandson’s birthday, I bought him a book on sports: Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball by Bob Tewsksbury.
I haven’t finished reading the book, but I know the subject – how the mind affects performance. I figure any tips I can give to my grandkids, the better chance they will have.
And I figure this also applies to myself, and perhaps to you.
In my book, The Goal Driven Business, I cover the 5 Engines to practice success. These are:
Clinical outcomes and service
Leadership
Management
Marketing
Personal Power
No matter how competent you are as a chiropractic doctor, healthcare provider, or business owner, how inspiring you are as a leader, how consistent and enterprising you are as a manager, or intelligent as a marketer… if you don’t have the positive energy to make things happen, your practice will falter.
Personal Power is the “Hidden Game” of practice success.
The first chiropractor Dave and I worked with had multiple doctors and together saw over 2,000 visits per week. (I still have the stats!) A recurring theme he would tell his associates was that practice success was an “inside job.” This meant success was dependent upon their mental attitude.
But one’s mental attitude is dependent upon something much deeper. You can always “fake it till you make it,” which might sometimes be necessary. But it is not authentic.
What is authentic is your happiness. Happiness underlies your mental attitude. Your Personal Power comes out when you are happier.
So, how do you become happier?
Using Your Signature Strengths In Your Chiropractic and Healthcare Practice
One method that has been proven to improve a person’s happiness is to focus on your strengths – what you are good at – and less on what you are not so good at.
Martin Seligman, Ph.D., is a strong proponent of Positive Psychology. In his book Authentic Happiness, he discusses common virtues that all people in all cultures have agreed upon over time. These virtues can be translated into specific Character Strengths. Each of these strengths has 3-5 subcategories for a total of 24-Character Strengths.
We all have a different set of more dominant strengths, which Seligman calls our Signature Strengths. For example, one person may be strong in humor, gratitude, and fairness, while another person’s Signature Strengths could be creativity, curiosity, and gratitude.
“I do not believe that you should devote overly much effort to correct your weaknesses. Rather, I believe that the highest success in living and the deepest emotional satisfaction comes from building and using your signature strengths.”
I cover this in practical detail in my book, The Goal Driven Business, and it is part of our upcoming Management and Leadership Training course, our 11-week intensive training especially for practice managers beginning on Sept. 18.
We all have our confusions and apprehensions -- our mental monkeys that get in the way of our happiness and limit our Personal Power. You see this in your patients and staff, and I am sure you notice it now and then in yourself.
But a legitimate goal is to be happy, and in so doing, you can unleash your power and win at the “Hidden Game” of practice success.
By focusing on what you do best, and allowing your team to pick up all the rest, you can go a long way at winning the “Hidden Game” of practice development.
Having your team pick up “all the rest” requires good management. So I recommend you consider our Management and Leadership training for your manager this Sept.
Stay strong in your strengths,
Ed
You can take a survey and discover your Signature Strengths at www.viacharacter.org
For more information about our Management and Leadership Training. www.GoalDriven.com/mba
Image: Wikipedia
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If your practice building efforts aren’t taking you to your goals,
there are reasons -- many of which are hidden from you.
Find out what they are and how to sail to your next level by getting and implementing my new book, The Goal Driven Business.
The Goal Driven Business By Edward Petty
