Limiting Mind Set #1: Toleration
In this week’s piece, we kick off a short blog series touching on a number of ways doctors and other wellness professionals tend to have pattern or limited thinking. If you have not read last week’s blog or watched the short video that went along with it about doctors’ “9 DOT” … in the box … or LIMITED thinking when it comes to business growth and expansion please check it out.
What we tried to touch on in that piece is that many doctors’ biggest challenge to building and managing their practice lies right between their ears! One of the most powerful, limiting and downright destructive mindsets we see is that of toleration.
Now, just to clarify, we are NOT talking about “tolerance” as it relates to things like political positions, etc. Here’s that definition found on Google from Oxford languages:
“The ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with”.
Nor, are we talking about building up tolerance to something like alcohol and drugs! Here’s that definition from the same source.
“The capacity to endure continued subjection to something, especially a drug, transplant, antigen, or environmental conditions, without adverse reaction”.
No! In this piece we are focusing on Webster’s Dictionary definition for toleration:
To endure or put up with.
So, here’s how WE view this key word in our training and coaching:
“Tolerations” are things we allow to exist at less than the desired level; un-wanted habits and results we allow to persist without properly addressing and/or resolving them.
“Tolerations” are the things we put up with day in and day out that do not enable us to BE the person we desire to be.
“Tolerations” tend to slowly accumulate a little bit at a time … like grease in the kitchen … taking the shine off what we trained to do, off our business and off our life.
This toleration mindset is present in many doctors and wellness providers. They put up with doing things differently in practice than they ever imagined as they were in school or launching their business.
They fight daily battles trying to get paid that they seriously hate. They are not able to serve their patients as well as they’d like.
They are burned out. And they earn way less money than they ever thought they would … less than they need or want to. Maybe this is you too?
Many doctors and practice owners realize they really SHOULD do something to serve more people in more ways. They wish they could do more to generate more income, or free up more personal time, or become non-dependent on the insurance game.
They may even outline “steps” that need taken to do those things. In fact, although there are a variety of strategies to achieve all those objectives (several covered in our previous blogs) many, many doctors know exactly WHAT they should do … but, for one reason or another … they don’t.
If you fail to take those steps you know you should or could take for one day, or a week, or heck even a few months because something big, urgent or more important is going on in life or in practice, that is not too big of a deal.
However, when you ALLOW things to fester, to go undone and ultimately steer you off course day after day … week after week … month after month … and ultimately year after year … THEN you end up with results that are not what you want AT ALL! These are TOLERATIONS!
Maybe you are tolerating a staff that does not work at the level or commitment you want? Maybe they are not producing or contributing to income generation? Toleration.
Maybe you remain focused only on insurance-based services? And, as a result, you do battle day in and day out with insurance companies, Medicare and other big payers? Toleration.
Maybe you see patients’ day after day who you truly care about and who deserve more. Actually, they need more. They could benefit from help in certain areas of life and wellness, and YOU are the one to help them … if you only had the time and bandwidth. Toleration.
You feel so busy ALL the time and feel like you cannot get out of a rut to do more, serve more and earn more. Yet, despite the busy-ness, nothing new or different is ever done. Toleration.
Do you try to set goals over and over to finally break this cycle? THIS month … THIS year … THIS fall … THIS winter … Next Year? You write it down, but it never quite happens … and you allow that to be the case over and over.
As said before, in and of themselves … when this happens a time or two here and there the effect is typically not huge. But it’s the RIPPLE EFFECT that comes into play. The cumulative effect of multiple tolerations … over time that really weighs us down.
And over time, TOLERATIONS LEAD TO FRUSTRATION. This quote summarizes this perfectly …
Whoa! That small print at the bottom says, “You can only EXPECT what you ACCEPT”. I guess a key question is: What do you expect from what you are accepting?
A few other questions to close out with are these:
- When will you STOP tolerating?
- When will you draw a line in the sand and say, “NO MORE!”?
- When will you DECIDE to expand your model of wellness, expand your practice, expand your team’s role, and expand your income?
That is the mindset we see our most successful Activate DNA-Based Weight Loss doctors and wellness providers click into. Here’s the GOOD NEWS: YOU can do that too! Just DECIDE … and let us help you!
Let’s Tackle Those Tolerations Together Today!