Ideal Practice
Ideal Practice
#71. How to Tell The Universe What You Want for Your Practice
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Your business has its own kind of living, breathing energy, and you must be in relationship with that energy.
But relationships take work - right?
So how do you keep things healthy and strong?
Turns out, you just have to use a little magic.
Yeah. Let’s go there. :)
In this episode, you’ll learn about a fun, creative technique you can use to smooth out any rough spots, communicate your desires, and step way more fully into a healthy relationship with - you guessed it - your private practice.
And what I’m going to suggest today might sound a little crazy. But as you’ll hear in this episode, my own experience with this technique has been kind of amazing.
So, why not give it a try?
~Wendy
xoxo
P.S. “Okay Wendy - so that was interesting....“ I know, right? This DEFINITELY is not what you’ll hear on most private practice podcasts. And it might not be for everyone - but what the heck. It’s how I think. And if it’s how you think too, would you please share a little love with a 5 star review and a few words over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? I’ll be forever grateful. Promise!
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Wendy Pitts Reeves, LCSW
Host, Ideal Practice
Private Practice Coach and Mentor
www.WendyPittsReeves.com
Wendy@WendyPittsReeves.com
You're listening to Ideal Practice, episode number 71. What if you could tell the universe exactly what you needed, what you wanted, what your dream was for your practice, and you got it? Well, I've got an idea for you today that you're going to think is kind of crazy, but it's not. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and, with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six-figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit-centered but people forward. This is the Ideal Practice Podcast. Hey guys, and welcome back to Ideal Practice.
Speaker 1:This is Wendy Wendy Pitts Reeves, your host, and I am so excited to be hanging out with you guys today. How are you doing? How's your week going? I hope that life is good really good and rich and kind to you right now, and I hope you've had some special moments lately. I had a special moment this week that I got to tell you about because it was so much fun. Even as it was happening, I was thinking I got to tell everybody about this on the podcast.
Speaker 1:So, as I'm recording this last weekend my other half and I went to Charlotte, north Carolina, and we got to see live and in-person Pentatonix. Have you heard or seen Pentatonix? You guys know them. A lot of people know them from their Christmas albums, which are freaking phenomenal. But they are a super popular acapella group that is on a world tour that I sort of stumbled into a few years ago. I mean, I still listen to classic rock and roll y'all, so I'm not necessarily up to date on the cool new music, but I love them. And if you have any kind of formal music training at all which I have and you know something about rhythm and pitch and composition, just watching what those five people are able to do together musically is kind of mind blowing. It really is something. So I've wanted to see them for a long time and this summer, as a birthday present, we got tickets and got to see them and we actually had really great seats up pretty close. It was phenomenal. It was every bit as good as I hoped it would be and even better. Golly, what a treat, what a treat.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you have had a treat or two recently as well, and what I want to talk about today is how to get yourself into the place energetically where your business feels more like that, where your business feels like a place where everything just comes together in a kind of magical way, which is totally what it's like when I, when I listen to those amazing people in that group. When things are working well in your practice, in your business, it just flows, doesn't it? All the parts work together and you have moments, you have days when you're like I can't believe this is working as well as it is. It's kind of kind of mind blowing. And then there are days when everything feels clunky, like nothing's quite working. You run into dead ends, one after the other. All of that y'all to me is about energy more than anything else, and I want to talk about that energy today and I want to give you a fun way to tap into and guide that energy.
Speaker 1:Many of you have heard the story about a few years ago, when I was in a rough patch in my practice and I was talking to my bookkeeper, who is a really connected, wise woman, who said to me something to the effect of you know, wendy, you can't, you can't just set an intention about your business or your practice and just turn it aside and never think about it again. You can't just ignore the financial side of your practice and pretend like it doesn't exist. You can't treat it like a bad boyfriend and put it aside and bring it out when you want to play with it and put it back again. You have to be in relationship with your money and with your business. Well, she was right about that, and it is something that that's a point that I have come to really appreciate over the years since then.
Speaker 1:See, guys, here's how I think about this Passage, for Business is its own living entity. It has its own energy, you might even say it has its own kind of a soul, and you have to be in partnership and in relationship with it. And what do you know about relationships? They take work right. So how's your relationship going with your business, with your practice? You guys getting along okay? Everything hunky-dory? You feeling, feeling all the love? Or are things a little bit tense? If that's the case, I don't want you to have any worries, because y'all know how this is. As with any couple, there are good days, there are rough days, but things can always get better if everybody's willing to do their part. So I'm going to suggest some ideas about how to put a little spark back in the heart of your business. It's going to sound kind of funny, but that's what I want to do today.
Speaker 1:The thing is, we have to be really aware of how we think about and treat our practice. If we treat it as a burden to be born, something to get through, something to handle, rather than a joy to be celebrated, that brings a kind of heavy energy to the relationship. That isn't exactly complimentary, if you know what I mean. So how do you approach that relationship? Is it like this is so heavy, this is hard, this is burdensome, and what happens when? Or is it something that's light and playful and fun and free-flowing? If you're like me, if you're like a lot of folks, you probably go back and forth between those two. So how about this? What about when things go wrong in that relationship? What happens? What happens to your perspective? How do you think about it? How do you talk to the other party in this relationship, which would be your money, your revenue, your income, your business, your practice? How do you talk to yourself?
Speaker 1:A lot of us, when there's any kind of tension in a relationship, we tend to do one of two things. We either take all the blame. I'm just a big loser. I'm never going to figure this out. I'm not cut out for this, I'm not smart enough for this. I just don't do numbers. I don't know how to run a business. We take all the blame. It's all me, or none of the blame. I'm fine, I'm doing everything right. It's these dagum insurance companies, or it's the economy, or it's my clients, or it's the market. It's something outside of me, but it's certainly not me. Either one of those is never really true. It's always somewhere in the middle. There are always factors outside of you that you don't have any control over, but there are always factors inside of you that you do. That's where I want to focus, because that's where your energy matters. Think about it this way. I've got a metaphor for you.
Speaker 1:My folks have lived on a lake for a long time down in South Alabama. I spent a lot of time sitting on that lake watching boats go by and skiers go by and all kinds of funny things happen, and some really cool things happen One of the things I love about sitting on a lake early in the morning, when the sun is fresh and it's early in the day it's not hot yet and it's still kind of quiet. Sometimes the lake is as still as glass and sometimes there's even a mist on it early in the morning. You know that kind of time I'm talking about. We're talking really early, 6.30, 7.30 in the morning. The lake is like glass and then often that early there will be one boat that goes by. It's usually a fishing boat. It's usually one person by themselves, very quiet in the hushed early morning light. The motor is small, they're not going fast, they're just moving across the lake looking for the hollows where the best fishing spots are going to be.
Speaker 1:It's the coolest thing in the quiet of an early morning to watch a boat go across the lake. Like a long way away from me, like you know, hundreds of yards away from me, maybe even all the way on the other side of the water where I don't even really hear it that much. It's not, it's very quiet. And then several minutes later, all of a sudden I will have this like awareness that tiny little waves are lapping at the shore right in front of me. That boat that went so far across the water in its own quiet, little, slow way creates a ripple that slowly but surely works its way all the way over to me. And have you ever watched what happens when waves come up on the beach, whether you're at the ocean, whether you're at the lake? What do they do? They go up to the top of the sand, to the top of the incline, and then they flow back down again, right, creating a whole new level of ripples of waves going the other way.
Speaker 1:Well, it doesn't take much imagination to realize that energy is like that. A wave is energy, right, whether we're talking about water or light or sound, and whatever kind of wave you put out there, like that little lonely fishing boat so early in the morning, creates a wave that moves across space, bumps into something and then comes back, which is a very literal example of what I mean when I say that what we put out, we get back. What we put out, literally, the energy you put out into the world, the energy you put out into your practice, you get back. So if what you put out into the practice is heavy, hard struggle, that's most often what you're going to get back. If what you put out is resentment or fear, most often that's what you're going to get back. That's kind of how it goes, okay. On the other hand, if what you put out is joy, eagerness, anticipation, appreciation, that too is what you're going to get back, because the waves go both ways. Literally, in the 3D world, that happens, and I believe it happens spiritually, energetically, with what we put out from our hearts and our minds into our practice. So, in just a moment, I'm going to share with you a really fun, simple and strangely magical exercise that I think can help you channel that energy and make sure that the waves you're putting out there are what you really want to get back. All right, I'm going to tell you that in just a moment.
Speaker 1:Before I do that, though, let me just stop for a real quick second and ask you in your practice as a whole, do you feel like you've got a handle on the big picture? Are you clear about your pricing and how you want to, the kind of offers you want to make to your clients? Are you clear about the people you want to serve? Are you clear about how you want to promote your work? Are you clear about the processes, the systems, the habits that are in your practice that support you?
Speaker 1:If you have been following me, you know that I have developed a framework I call the seven pillars of an ideal practice, and they are all the things. All the things that, when they are healthy and solid and strong, they are guaranteed to support your success as a practice owner, and they all need attention in different ways. And to help you understand where you are with each of those seven pillars, I have put together a little quiz. It's sort of a self-assessment tool that you can use to help you measure where you're solid, where you're healthy, where you're strong, where the foundation is in place and where you can get a little work to do. What I've created is a little quiz called the IP360 Scorecard. It's like a self-assessment process and you can do it in like 10 minutes. But it's very easy to do. But it's also quite revealing. It really does show you I'm good here, I'm good here, I'm a little fuzzy there. That really needs some work and it can help you decide where to focus as you are building momentum in your practice.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to get a copy of that for yourself, totally free, you can go to my website windypitsreevescom forward slash 360, the numbers 360, windypitsreevescom forward slash 360. You'll read a description of it there. There's lots of information that will tell you a little bit more about it and you can just follow the prompts to get your own copy right away. And when you do, I'll follow that up and I'll send you some extra information that will tell you how to understand your score, what it means about where you are in the practice and the development of your own practice, and what you might want to work on next. I think you'll really like this. If you've already done this, shoot me an email. Tell me what you thought about it. If you haven't done it yet, or it's been a while, it might be time to try this for yourself. So check that out. Wendypetsreevescom. Forward slash three, six, zero.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's get back to the energy of your practice, and here's what I want to suggest, and I want you to hear me out. Okay, hear me out. What I want you to do is I want you to think of your business as another person, as this entity, this, this energy that I've been talking about, and I want you to write a love letter to your business. Ah, don't you roll your eyes. Don't you roll your eyes? I saw that. Hear me out. I want you to think about it this way. There is, if any of you all have ever done.
Speaker 1:Have you ever done a role play? When I was in graduate school, we used role plays a lot as we were learning clinical skills, and I remember one day I hadn't planned to share this, but I remember one day that in a particular class that the professor asked me to be the therapist in a role play for a full family counseling session with something like three kids, two parents, maybe a grandmother in there. It was a complicated case and what I remember most about that experience other than the terror, I felt that she asked me to be the one managing it all. What I remember most about that was how real that role play felt once we got into it and I actually learned a lesson from that. Just as a facilitator of experiential work that role plays are. They really do take on a life of their own because we become what we say. We become what we embody, which is the whole point of a role play and why they work. It also means you have to be careful with that. Well, the same thing applies here.
Speaker 1:Think of this almost like kind of a little role play. There's lots of science behind why it works when we play with different versions of this kind of process, whether it is a guided imagery, visualization process, whether it's a vision board, something like that, whether it's just mapping out something in your journal, or whether, in this case, it's writing a love letter, and I'm going to take something in a minute that will tell you why this works. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to write a love letter to your business, as if you were speaking to another person whom you absolutely adored. You could write one every day. Actually, it could be like a little love note every day for a period of time. That would be fun. Or it could be one heartfelt missive. It could be long and lush, it could be short and sweet. Then matter to me whatever feels right to you. I want you to speak from your heart and let's talk about what that letter could include.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, just as you would do in any real relationship, you might want to start off by letting this other quote person, unquote your business. Know what you love and appreciate about them, what you love about all the things that you've already done together. You might want to start down, start by saying that you've been really heads down and focused on the work that you've never even really taken the time to celebrate the difference that this business has already made in your life. You might want to start there. If you have been a little harsh in this relationship and you need to apologize for something, you might want to do that. If you've been giving your business a hard time and not been giving it the grace that it deserves, you might want to apologize for that. That's fine. If you need to do a little bit of that, that's fine. If you have needs of your own that you really have never asked for, you might want to do that. But these are.
Speaker 1:There are different ways to think about this letter idea, but it can be that as well. Dear business, I love you so much and I so appreciate all the things that you and I have already done together. I need to let you know there's a couple of things I still need from you, and I know you can't give that to me if you don't know it. So I want to do my part and communicate clearly to you what I really would like to have from you, like you could do it like that, right? Those are the ideas that you could play with if you are trying to strengthen a relationship that's got some tension in it. Trying to communicate more clearly, trying to kind of clear the table a little bit, like that's one thing you could do. But you can also write a love letter about the business or to the business. You dream of having the business of the future, your business of your future, as if you had it now. That's the other way to think about this, so I'm really kind of giving you two ways to think about it.
Speaker 1:In this idea, what I really love best is a letter where you speak as if it were already true and you just celebrate, acknowledge and thank this business for all the amazing ways it has contributed to you. So something like oh, sweet business, I love you so much. I didn't know that something like this was even possible. I had no idea that what you and I could do together and, it blows my mind, what we have created here I had no idea that you and I working together could make such a difference in the world. Every day I see the people that you and I are helping in really tangible ways and I know that you are as touched as I am when we get those thank you notes in the mail or emails or just when a client walking out the door tells us that they feel like we've saved their lives. It seems a little dramatic, but it's. I think it's kind of true and it's so humbling when they say that isn't it. And I love, dear business, that you get that and that it means as much to you as it does to me.
Speaker 1:I love, dear business, that you're so good with numbers I had no idea how good you are with numbers and that you've been able to teach me and to show me how to understand numbers too, and that you and I together have learned how to track those numbers, improve those numbers, and how the income just keeps growing, the bank account just keeps growing, the number of people we help and the number, the sheer amount of money that you and I together are making. It's kind of making me. It kind of blows my mind a little bit, to be honest, but I love it so much and I really love, dear business, the fact that you and I have fun together. I didn't know that was possible. I've tried this in the past. You know I've tried this with other things in my life other businesses, other work and it's never felt this way before With you. It just seems so possible and actually fun. I didn't even know that that was. I didn't even know I could do that. I didn't know we could do that, and I love that you and I, together, have made that possible. You're the best thing ever and I'm so great.
Speaker 1:Do you see where I'm going with this Like? Even as I'm talking about this, I can totally get into it. All that matters is that you speak from your heart, because anything less it won't work. Remember, relationships thrive on mutual respect, authenticity and connection, and that's what this idea is about. So you can think of it two ways. If you and your business are having a little problem, you could think of it as a, like a therapeutic conversation where you need to iron out a few problems. But I really love it when you think about it, as I just want to acknowledge what you and I have created together and celebrate it as if it were already true.
Speaker 1:Let yourself play with this Like. Give yourself 15, 20 minutes with a journal, a notepad, with no one around, something delicious to drink. You might want to do a minute or two of meditation before you get into it. You might want to play some fun music, maybe even dance a little whatever. Whatever gets your vibrations up. Do something that makes you feel good and grounded, and then don't overthink this, please. That will kill it.
Speaker 1:The whole point here is to just have fun. Think of it like a role-play. Just pretend but pretend good. The point here is that money is energy, your business is energy, love is energy. Your ability to recognize and appreciate the good things that you are in relationship with is energy, and one of the fastest ways to tap into the stream of abundance that is flowing towards your door is to step into that energy in a focused and intentional way and have a little fun.
Speaker 1:Write this, read it out loud. If it makes you kind of giggle, you're on the right path. Okay, if it's just kind of fun, you're on the right path, and all I want you to do is write it, read it out loud and put it away. That's it. I don't want you to do anything else and then just see what happens.
Speaker 1:And if you think I'm crazy in suggesting this, I want to tell you I used this exact same process a few years ago, and everything I'm telling you here wrote a letter as if something was true that I couldn't imagine would ever be true. But just let myself have fun with it. Gosh, I didn't know this was possible. I didn't know that there was something like this out there. This, this, this, this, this totally played with the whole concept and put it away. And almost a year to the day later, after I wrote that letter, I connected with the person who has become the love of my life and has changed my life.
Speaker 1:So magic really does happen and if it can happen in that kind of relationship, it can certainly happen in this kind of relationship too. So you know, some days you just never know where we're gonna go here on ideal practice. But I hope that this is a fun one. I know it's a powerful one and I hope you will humor me and just try it. Get out of your own way, play with possibility and write a love letter to your practice. All right, everybody, that's what I got for you today. Have a great week, have an awesome week, have a lovely week and I will see you next week right here on the ideal practice podcast. Bye now. Romantic hour of cry. Why, what? Let the rain?
