Private Practice Success Newsletter

December 2006, by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC (Master Certified Coach)
www.privatepracticesuccess.com

Inspiration for the New Year

I want to wish all my readers, colleagues, and friends on this newsletter list a very wonderful and inspired New Year. Poetry has always been a source of inspiration for me, and so when I give live presentations, I always weave in poems. Here are two poems that are among my favorites.

The first one, by poet Michael Blumenthal, celebrates the drive we all have for change and reinvention. It uses the ancient story of the Odyssey as a metaphor for our own life’s journey.

The second one is a few stanzas from a long poem by W. S. Merwin. It speaks to the way many of us feel, faced with an ongoing war and many difficult global challenges, but also having a need to continue to live life with gratitude and love and happiness.

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"A New Story of Your Life"
by Michael Blumenthal

Say you finally invented a new story
of your life. It is not the story of your defeat
or of your impotence and powerlessness
before the large forces of wind and accident.

It is not the sad story of your mother's death
or of your abandoned childhood. It is not,
even, a story that will win you the deep
initial sympathies of the benevolent goddesses
or the care of the generous, but it is a story
that requires of you a large thrust
into the difficult life, a sense of plenitude
entirely your own. Whatever the story is,
it goes as it goes, and there are vicissitudes
in it, gardens that need to be planted,
skills sown, the long hard labors
of prose and enduring love. Deep down
in some long-encumbered self,
it is the story you have been writing
all of your life, where no Calypso holds you
against your own willfulness,
where you can rise
from the bleak island of your old story
and tread your way home.

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"Listen"
by W.S. Merwin

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

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I want to say thank you to everyone this year. I appreciate your support, feedback, hard work, and your good hearts. I hope it has been a year filled with both challenges as well as great joys, and that next year all difficulties evolve into opportunities so that you get even closer to achieving your heart's desire.

I plan to be doing much more writing, coaching, and presenting in 2007 and am so glad to have you as a part of my community!

Next "Strong Start" Teleclasses Begin Soon, in January 2007!

We are starting the next round of teleclasses, which are a wonderful way to jump-start your year. Starting a private practice or renovating a stalled one can be daunting. It takes time and energy to turn a small practice that is just surviving into one that is profitable thriving. Going it alone can be tough, especially when you have a full and demanding life.

It helps to have the right kind of support when you are building your practice. The right kind of support is a professional group of your peers who will celebrate with you when you succeed, commiserate (but not indulge you) when you have a tough time, help you stay consistently motivated, encourage you, and hold you accountable for your goals.

If you don't have time or the inclination to create a support group, why not let us help by joining our Strong Start Teleclass Program? We meet by “bridgeline” — an easy to access conference line, that you dial just like a long-distance phone number at the given time, to be connected to everyone on the call.

The Strong Start Teleclass Program is a twelve-hour, four-month-long progressive practice-building program that follows the first several months outlined in Lynn’s best-selling workbook text: "12 Months to Your Ideal Private Practice: A Workbook," to help therapists and healing professionals take the right steps to build their ideal private practices. Lynn and Wendy Allen co-lead the classes, and the groups are a wonderful mix of therapists and healers from across the country.

Using a combination of lecture, discussion, exercises, and fieldwork, you will be guided through a curriculum-based program. Each month the teleclass meets for a total of three hours by phone (one hour every week, three weeks per month, for a total of twelve hours) to complement the workbook objectives and assignments. The teleclass will help you to take the learning and preparation further than you might do on your own. Need to miss a class? No worry, we tape them so you can listen in later, at your convenience.

To see prices and register for the January Strong Start Teleclass, see the website

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Books by Lynn Grodzki, published by WW Norton. To order, click on each book.

	The Business and Practice of Coaching By Lynn Grodzki and Wendy Allen (2005) Reviewed by author Richard Leider as "Nothing less than a radical rethinking of the essentials of building a coaching practice. A must read for all coaches, master and novice alike."
	Building Your Ideal Private Practice By Lynn Grodzki (2000) The best-selling guide to what you need to do and who you need to be in order to have a highly profitable, personally satisfying private practice. Often called the "private practice bible" this book has become a resource for tens of thousands of your colleagues.
	The New Private Practice:Therapist-Coaches Share Stories, Strategies and Advice Edited by Lynn Grodzki (2002) A groundbreaking look at the profession of coaching through the eyes of 16 successful therapist-coaches who tell you how to become a coach, what to charge, and show you how they coach their clients.
	12 Months to Your Ideal Private Practice: A Workbook By Lynn Grodzki (2003) This planned, motivational workbook will help you build the practice you desire. The workbook incorporates fresh ideas, new exercises, further skill sets and much more to give you a direct experience of being carefully coached by Lynn, month-by-month, for a full year.

More next time,

lynn@privatepracticesuccess.com
See the website for additional articles, information about individual coaching, and upcoming classes.