Rob played such a vital role in supporting my growth as a person. The same Universal Principles that applied to my practice, applied to my life. The discipline to create the time and present-time focus and consciousness on my family life was critical.
The ability to create flow in life and practice for many women in Chiropractic presents challenges distinct to females. There are physical differences between men and women in practice, yet I feel those pale in comparison to the psychological and relationship differences. It’s not like one path is easier than another, just different and unique. I found myself in territory that was different from even the women around me. Some of the women Chiropractors I knew, and women in various business models, were focusing more on family while their children were younger. Practicing part time or staying home with my sons just simply didn’t fit my personality style.
I had my middle and youngest sons while I was practicing full time in a large and vital practice. At this point in my career, I had not yet addressed an associate based practice model. The buck stopped with me. There were some interesting times and challenges in making decisions on how to manage the practice while pregnant, and more importantly manage my time out of the office once the babies were born.
As anyone reading this might realize, not everyone in our profession focuses on vitalism. When creating a vital, and on some days crazy, style of practice, not many people can simply cover that type of office. Many people that visited or heard about my office would profess to want this type of model. Yet in reality there were very few people willing to do the things that it takes to create it, on both the physical and mental level.
Fortunate for me, trust and faith in a bigger picture allowed me to attract great-fitting cover doctors for my practice. And no coincidence, one doctor who covered my practice is a contributing author to this book! Having coverage for my maternity leaves was obviously critical. Yet it took the right people to be able to keep my crazy practice alive and well.
On a deep level I find women doctors have the capacity to touch and connect with the vitalistic life force within others. The women doctors that covered for me, as well as the many female students I have work with, mentored or coached have all shown me their intuitive and creative ability to grasp the essence of vitalism. No coincidence that one online dictionary site describes an example of vitalism as “a dynamic full of life woman." Within each woman, there is a unique blend of empathy, intuition, love and caring.
Going from one child to three over a short period of time can only be described as a team on a sports field going from man-to-man coverage to zone coverage. My husband Dave and I were quickly out-numbered. Welcome to a new level of life and craziness at our household. My personal winning strategy during my pregnancy with my middle son Jackson was to hire a professional coach. Coaching Principles, along with the systems of education I learned through Dr. Riekeman and his mentoring were instrumental in shifting my practice into a stronger business model.
After my youngest son, Kobi, was born, my coach helped me to streamline my office hours and systems, and assisted me in becoming open to the help and support I needed for success in the office and at home. Becoming a stronger leader in my office, versus just doing all of the work, was imperative. Planning and organizing at home was even more essential. Coaching enabled me to pull out of myself the model and systems that felt authentic to me, and that created an even deeper expression of vitalism in my life and practice.
What Next?
Facilitated by coaches in my life asking me deeper and more inner driven questions, the time came for me to open up to my dreams and aspirations for the future. In some ways I was already living my purpose, based on the purpose and vision statements I created within the first year of my practice. “What is next?” The question kept running through my mind.
When we begin to ask questions, it is really a signal for a transitional phase in our life and career. Luckily for me, with great coaching and mentorship, I didn’t just jump or run into the next pursuit and/or project. Hastiness can be a trap. I had great guidance with building-in personal time and dreamtime. I began tapping into the ‘what is next.’
While our younger two boys were little, I made the decision not to travel as much to seminars, or to remain as heavily involved with politics. Instead, I didn’t want to be doing things that were not high on my list of values. In learning to prioritize, I realized some elements within the roles I took-on had become tolerations. It was necessary for me to recognize it was of my own doing. My longing to be involved and have a voice had filled my plate entirely. It was okay to learn to give myself permission to step back, and focus completely on the top priorities in my life.
Prioritizing served as valuable instruction for me to listen to my inner voice, and act in accordance with my own inner values. My destiny wasn’t about what other people said or thought. I’d created these roles, and it would have been easier to keep doing them (particularly at the level I had begun to be involved in the politics and some other aspects of my career) than to step down. Yet it was time to learn to find the language to explain, and switch my focus and direct my energy to the areas that truly mattered the most to me. Then muster the courage to do it!
The more I learned about powerful decision making tools and living one’s best life, the more I wanted to learn and grow in ways to help my patients or others utilize these same tools. Because of the flexibility of training available to become a personal and professional coach, it was an avenue that could continue to fuel my thirst for knowledge, learning and growing. This is inherent in a lot of us, and can become the trap of why we keep thinking we need to be on the seminar circuit, or always learning new things. Seminars are powerful when we indeed tap into the pure growth aspect of them, but I realized I didn’t have to tie it directly to my current profession. Here was another lesson for me in crossing disciplines.
Again, hindsight is 20-20. I realize my training as a coach was enabling me to put language and tools into place to work with people at a deep level of thoughts and beliefs. I began to apply my newly learned language and tools to asking my patients strong and powerful questions. I asked them questions about what was blocking their vital flow or creating physical/health challenge within their lives. Designing workshops and seminars for my patients and local community, all around coaching principles, helped me step into my next role of coaching and guiding people.
Each step of the way I was fortunate to be continually guided by skilled and talented coaches and mentors. Several of these mentors began to ask me to speak and teach more within the Chiropractic profession. The more this happened, the more my ‘next step’ in the journey was revealed. I developed the vitality and love of speaking to accompany my new role. The more I embraced the journey, and continued to do things that brought love and joy into my life, the more the other details and pieces fell into place to allow me to follow my purposeful path. Within the practice, my associate, Dr. Shaelyn Osborn, was ready, willing and able to step-up to take on a role of leadership and ownership of the clinic. I had the support of my family, as well as my family of patients.
The most difficult phase of my journey was departing from hands-on healing. Adjusting and connecting with others at their core level came natural and was innate to me. Once I was able to connect with a very deep level of myself, coaching and leading others in our profession truly enabled me to touch everyone and everything in their lives, including their patients! Becoming a coach enabled me to focus my intention and skills towards seeing greatness in other Chiropractors. There are many days where I see more in others than they are able to see in themselves. Revealing their inner wisdom for them to embrace creates passion and enthusiasm within me, and keeps fueling my vital flame.
Skills For Moving Into My Next Act
Another aspect of vitalism in my life (and probably the most significant) was becoming a charismatic leader. The process first started with me focusing on leading myself – my internal world and my life. Then, I
