How incisive questions can get your patient listening again

So apparently, despite me sharing a six minute video two weeks ago about why your patients aren't listening, some people's patients are still not listening to them. Now, I'm not going to rehash the whole thing. Obviously there are many different reasons for this. We dealt with one of the most important ones back then, which was your mindset as a practitioner, because you becoming less of an idealist and more of a realist practitioner is fundamental to actually getting better results with patients. Because the mindset you bring to the interaction, that plays a huge role in how your patient will respond. This is why it's one of the first things we deal within the patient centered tribe and the happy patient project. It's why I consistently get feedback from many people after live events and one to one coaching that the mindset stuff is what's most the biggest shift for them. So we have to start there. However, your patient has a mindset too. And what I'm going to share today is one approach to get past the mindset barriers that your patient may have in place. And this is really, really fundamental because if you don't understand that you, your patient has some beliefs that may be limiting them, some assumptions that are limiting them, and you don't know what those are, and more importantly, you don't know how to get around them strategically, then when you give advice to your patient, they won't listen. Now in reality, they are listening, but they're hearing you and going, that sounds sensible. But I have this assumption and because I have that assumption and this conflicts with that, I'm going to get rid of that. Now, they're not thinking this through, but if you say something that challenges their assumption and they don't know that they have this limiting assumption, they will just hear it and go, it won't make sense intuitively. They will disregard it. So let's say you have a patient whose limiting assumption is that their back is too weak for exercise to be safe, that if they do any kind of exercise they might damage their spine. And they may have quite understandably valid reasons for thinking this, even if it's not correct. So you can do all the great patient education that you want. In this case, you can do all the reassurance. You're all like, okay, so we found the problem. We're going to get that moving and get this relaxed down. And then to stop it coming back, we're going to get you exercising it. Because exercise is going to get the muscles stronger, that will help to protect it. We'll get everything moving, get it looser, that will get the nerves calming down, get rid of the inflammation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All those lovely benefits to exercise that we know. The problem is, as soon as they heard we're going to get you exercising, they stopped listening. Because that limiting assumption went, oh, we can't do that. And they don't want to be rude, so they will nod and smile and they may even go along with you and people please a bit, but in reality, the whole time they're sat there going, well, I can't do that. And then they won't do it and they'll come back and tell you, no, I didn't do it. And then you'll get fed up because they didn't listen, they didn't respect you or they don't want to get better. None of which is true. You just haven't done the work to actually dig into and uncover this limiting assumption and get them around it. And getting around it's really, really key because just knowing this isn't going to solve it. If you happen to find out that they think this about exercise, then you just trying to educate them about that belief is, is no different to trying to educate them about why they should do exercise. People are attached to their beliefs, it's part of their worldview. And we need what feels like a coherent worldview to feel safe in the world. So it's very difficult to get somebody to change their beliefs, change their worldview, you know, without them wanting you to do it, because it's essentially a little bit of a threat. It's damaging their opinion of the world. That puts them into a less safe place because now they don't know what's going on. So far more effective. What you need to do is you need to get them to challenge their own belief. You need to get them thinking outside the box. And there's a wonderful approach to this using insightful questions. I read this in Time to Think by Nancy Klein. Fantastic book. It's not about healthcare at all, but there's so much you can learn about how to really connect with patients and how really make, like a meaningful relationship that gets transformative results. I really recommend this book, but she talks about insightful questions. So the way you do this is you get them to consider, you know, a world where this assumption isn't true yet, to put it to the side and think, well, if that wasn't a problem, what might life be like? What could I do differently? So you could say to this patient, for example, if you knew your back was strong and Healthy, what would you do differently? Or if you knew your back wasn't fragile, what kind of exercise might you like to try? Or how would you feel about exercise? So you're getting to, like, get crystal clear on the assumption they're looking at it and go, okay, if this wasn't true, I'll put it aside for a second and, well, I'd love to do this. Maybe I'd love to go back to dance classes. You know, I'd love to get back into running again or whatever it might be. You get them thinking, and by them telling you, it feels more real to them because they're sharing it as they say it. Their brain is creating all this imagery. They're starting to see themselves doing it. It creates possibility, creates curiosity, creates excitement. And they're telling you, okay, I'm going to put this aside for a minute, and, and here's what that would look like. So now you know what life would look like without that assumption being there. You have an inspiring vision that you can start to help them guide towards. You can start to share your treatment plan, your advice, your expertise in a way that helps them get towards that. And you got their permission to put the assumption to the side. For the moment, yes, it's probably going to come back. You may need to do this more than once. It's not a simple do it once and everything's cured. But trust me, I've tried this with patients. It makes a big, big difference to get them thinking, well, I wonder, because if they're close to that possibility, your education not going to work. It's not going to do a thing. You've got to get them to open the door and go, wow, if I could get through there, that's all the wonderful stuff I could see, then they will be open to some specific strategic tactical information education at the right time, at the right place. So that's what I encourage you to do, is not only think about what is the potential limiting assumption my patient has, but when you have an idea of it, I ask an insightful question, ask a question that gets them to put it to the side and go, imagine that wasn't the case for a minute. What about xyz? How would you feel about this? What might that look like? And by doing that, you're getting to put it to the side. You're getting to start to see what it's like. They will then listen to your advice better. And most importantly, they will start to feel empowered. They will start to feel excited, enthusiastic about what that could do, because you've suddenly got them to consider what their life might look like from their. Their perspective. So give that a go with your patience. If you try it, let me know. I'd love to hear how it goes. And I'll see you soon for another video. Take care.