Private Practice Success Newsletter

February 2008, by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC (Master Certified Coach)
www.privatepracticesuccess.com

Small business ownership is an intense learning environment. If you started your own business thinking it would offer you autonomy, a degree of self-esteem, and financial freedom, you are right, it will. . .except when it doesn’t! Sometimes business is just plain hard.

In this newsletter, I offer you some suggestions for noticing how your business is both a challenge and a choice, and how to shift from feelings of anger to taking right action!

Letting Business Heal You

Sondra Ray, personal growth guru from the ‘70s and author of "Loving Relationships," noted a difficult paradox about love.

Although most people have an idealistic view of how love should be, the day-to-day process of love can be difficult. Love brings up everything unlike itself for the purpose of healing, she explains.

That same paradox occurs when you are in the day-to-day experience of owning and operating a small business.

Closely relating to your business will bring up everything -—irrational thoughts, deeply held negative beliefs, areas of your vulnerability -— everything and anything unlike the cool, rational, objective attitude you think you should have.

And it comes up for the purpose of your personal and professional healing!

"Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." (M. Scott Peck)

On a spiritual level, you might understand the emotional process that small business ownership provokes as one of purification: like a boiling pot of water, your business will stir up any aspects of your personality that are immature and unresolved, and bring them up to the surface of your conscious awareness, for you to deal with. You get a choice when this happens.

You can learn how to accept the difficult feelings and release them, like steam, for purification or renewal, or they can float on the surface, creating ambiguity inside you and clogging the daily workings of your business.

Being in business takes courage. It is not for the faint-hearted. Business will allow you to mature psychologically and move forward, or it can emotionally bankrupt you.

If you can accept and resolve the ways in which your difficult feelings, beliefs, or anxiety play out as you go about the process of building your small business, you can use this heightened capacity to become a better entrepreneur.

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain." (C. G. Jung)

For example, the daily stress of building a private practice in today's market can cause a calm and rational person to feel a bit crazed.

Some months, no matter how diligently you try to build your practice and do good work, no new clients come in. Referral sources don’t call back as promised. Someone else has taken the phenomenal website domain name you just dreamed up, before you could register it. The new client you scheduled cancels without notice. The office space you lease is going up in price. The proposal for a contract that you thought was a done deal is on hold. And you find yourself annoyed with your spouse, snapping at your children, and just generally steamed.

Anger in business can take many forms, including feelings of resentment (how come that other therapist/coach/healer/consultant has a waiting list and I don’t?); blame (that physician has never once given my card out to prospective patients), and even self-pity (Why can’t I get a lucky break?).

When business gets you down, you can blame others and feel secretly sorry for yourself, or you be a savvy entrepreneur and reduce anger by “right action,” a Buddhist term that means taking constructive action in a particular way, and is an antidote for anger.

Exercise:

Taking Right Action

Go through the steps of this process each week to shift from feelings of irritation, blame, or anger to action.

1) Notice how often you are feeling frustration, self-doubt, self-pity, grandiosity, entitlement, blame, rejection, or resentment. Are you complaining about your practice on a daily or weekly basis to others? Identify whatever is making you angry.

2) Write down the angry thoughts and feelings, and the source of your anger. Make a constructive action plan to take steps to improve each specific situation starting now.

3) Write a daily journal of the gratitude and appreciation you feel for yourself and others. The biggest antidote to anger is appreciation.

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way you cope with it, is what makes the difference." (Virginia Satir)

Upcoming Presentations

Friday & Saturday, March 14 & 15, 2008: Washington, DC

Friday, March 28, 2008: Albany, NY

Friday, April 18, 2008: Waterbury, Conn.

Upcoming Teleclasses

My signature “Strong Start” Teleclasses start in February. Please join me to get energized and achieve your goals for 2008. We use my Workbook as our text and the professional support on our classes weaves its own magic, helping people to shift, change, and grow as entrepreneurs.

Space still open in:

Advanced Strong Start Teleclass: Join now, we meet Tuesdays at 2:00 PM EST. See all of the class logistics, curriculum, and register online now at: www.strongstartclasses.com

LYNN'S NEW eBOOK is on sale now! Only $19.95! Order at the website or click on the book:

Private Practice SOS: Solutions and Strategies for an Up and Down Market. An eBook By Lynn Grodzki It's a tough market out there! You don't need to face the future of private practice alone. Here is a lifeline -- my solutions to the difficult economic challenges we all must respond to today. This eBook is my newest thinking and offers you specific tips and ideas to help you create demand for your services while you minimize your costs. Learn the strategies to higher profits in today's recessionary market. Click on the eBook, order it, and get an immediate download to read on your computer or print out.

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.