Why most practitioners are chasing the wrong goal

So follow up to my last video. I was talking then about, you know, making sure you fall in love with the process and not the outcome for things. If you want to stick with some long term changes and make this year your best, make sure that you're not just thinking about the outcome long term. But like I said, process is important, but the outcome matters too, because the outcome sets the direction. So what I wanted to follow up with is a process for making sure that you actually pick the right direction. Because a lot of us tend to make the mistake of we're focused so much on trying to get the things we want. We don't sit back and stop what should I want in the first place? And often, although we don't realize it at the time, the things we think we want are often things that other people have told us we should want. And when we get those, sometimes we find that. I thought I wanted this, but now I have it. It's not that great, it's not that making that big a difference. And you know, I learned this myself when I started out in practice. So I graduated, I took over a patient base, but it was only about 30 a week by the time I joined the practice. Chiropractors going on maternity leave, they've been winding down. And so I take over, like, right, I'm seeing about 30 patients a week. I want to have more patients a week. So I thought, right, okay, what I want to do, I want to have more. So I'm going to stay a bit later, I'm going to work a bit longer. I'll see them. Yep. Book them on the end. Yep. Take that break out there. Yep. I'll go and do a home visit over there. I'll work four evenings a week, I work the Saturdays, I'll do the whole lot. And month by month my numbers are going up like, oh, 40 a week, 50 a week, 60 a week. I had this arbitrary goal of 140 patients a week because the chiropractor I looked up to the most, her busiest week had been 140 a week. And I thought, I want to do that. So I had this kind of goal. And it was working pretty long hours to do that. But I had this in my head. And over the next couple of years I was doing it, I was working, I was building, I was growing. And eventually I hit this number. Probably took me about two years, I think, to get there. And then I hit this number. And all along the way, my colleagues who've been in practice longer than I had were going like maybe you want to slow down a bit. Maybe you don't want to like push yourself too hard squeezing people in here and there. Like maybe, maybe you want to take a break. You don't want to burn out. And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. Thinking in my head, ah, burnout. That's not for me. I'm a go getter. I'm in my twenties, I'm invincible. Right? You guys are just old and tired. Didn't consciously think all of that, but it was that kind of attitude. And then I hit this number and I realized two things. First of all is, okay, I've hit that. Oh, now what? Cuz like I don't get a hit of dopamine every time I hit that. Now I'm there. I don't want to do more because that would involve even longer hours. I don't want to do that. And also, why am I tired all the time? I don't recover after a weekend. I said this to Cass and she was like, cuz you're working too much. If only someone have been telling you not to do that, Chris. So okay, right. So first of all, we need a holiday. Unfortunately, I'm like the diary's book. This patient's booked in for the next three, four months. So it takes about three months until we can find time without messing patients around. So I have to then keep working at this pace that suddenly is no longer fulfilling. And I'm aware of how tired I am and how this was a mistake, so I got to drag myself through that. And then afterwards realizing, okay, maybe, maybe I need to approach this a little bit differently. And the approach I found that really worked for me partly is a bit like falling in love with the process, but also it's what's known as be do have. So be do have is a way to think about making sure you're pursuing and focusing on the right things, the things that will genuinely give you what you want long term and make you happier long term and not stuck chasing arbitrary things. So you know, the way most of us go about what I was doing as well is I flip this all around and so many of us think about have then do then be. We want to have something because that was allow us to do something that will allow us to be what we want to be. So I want to have 140 patients a week because that would allow me to do well. I'd be able to like feel like a successful chiropractor and it will allow me a good income so I could go and have nice holidays and enjoy time with my friends and family and do this kind of thing. And that would allow me to be happy, successful, fulfilled, helpful, generous, all those kind of things. The problem was that focusing on that have that arbitrary number there meant that I didn't have a lot of time to see friends and family and made it hard to take holidays and actually left me feeling quite tired and not the best version of myself that I could have been. So focusing on the have made it harder to get the do certainly gave me the free time that for some reason I thought seeing that many patients would. And it made it harder to really be the person I wanted to be. Flipping that around, that's how you make sure that you're focused on things that matter most. So, first of all, I think, who do I want to be? I want to be somebody who is helpful to others, who can be generous with their time and their attention, who, you know, get success, but get success in a way that helps other people that doesn't take from anybody there. You know, I want to be a leader. I want to be somebody who helps others along, who helps my patients, who helps my team. I want to be somebody helps other people in the profession as well. If I think about that and I go, right, that's what I want to be, then based on that, what do I need to do? And then at the end of that, once I go, if I do this, that'll allow me to have that. Okay, great. Now I make sure that they're all in alignment. Because you can't get misled to a have you don't want by being who you want to be and doing what you want to do. If that gives you something along the way, great. But that's why one of the things I find so fulfilling isn't that, oh, seeing patience and having a practice and being a coach, it allows me a good income. It does, and I'm grateful for that. But it's more that it allows me to make a positive difference for people and share the things that I've learned that can help others to avoid the mistakes that I've made, that can help them to leave happy and successful lives as well. The fact that happens to be rewarding is great, but I would do this even if it wasn't. This isn't something that, you know, I don't know many chiropractors who are doing it for the money. Yeah, there's some, but not that many. But we get so fixated on the things that we want to have, sometimes we lose sight that that might be leading us to be a second rate version of what we want to be. So if you're thinking about what you want to focus on this year again make sure you flip that around. Think about who do I want to be at the end of 2026 and then okay if I want to be that what do I need to do and okay that might allow me to have some stuff along the way. It'll make you more fulfilled. It'll make sure that you're on the right track and you're not getting stuck doing things like I was which is chasing the wrong goal because you know, really stop to think about is this a goal that's going to allow me to be the person I want to be. So have a think, make sure you're doing that when you're looking ahead at the year and you want to work out what you're going to focus on and as always any questions just let me know.