Feature Article:

A Lesson Taught, A Lesson Learned

By Shelley Simon, RN, DC, MPH, EdD
Founder, Beyond Practice Management

We?ve all heard the phrase we teach what we need to learn, and I?m certain you?ve experienced this in your own practice. Halfway through telling a patient that they need to slow down and allow themselves time to heal, you hear your own voice and recognize that you?ve been pushing yourself too hard. Or you explain to your office manager how she?d have more time for critical tasks if she?d loosen her grip on the mundane ones and learn to delegate. Moments later you are hit with the realization that you still insist on opening and sorting your own mail every day. These mini-epiphanies are not accidents. They occur way too often for this to be the case.

I?m departing this month from the format and tone of previous newsletters to offer instead a reflective piece on my own learning from the field. I feel fortunate to be in learning mode almost continuously as I work with clients and keep up on developments in both healthcare and personal development. Writing Practice Your Way each month teaches me a great deal about my own process and how to best present both theoretical and practical ideas to my readers.

Some of my own mini-epiphanies and personal insights arise from holding myself accountable to what I teach, recommend, and write about. Being human, I have encountered the synchronicity of ?a lesson taught, a lesson learned.? In the case of publishing Practice Your Way, I?ve noticed that I receive exactly the lessons I need either while I?m in the process of writing (i.e., teaching) or immediately thereafter. What I?m sharing here is based largely on what I experienced publishing during the first quarter of this year. Those three issues made up a series called ?Three R?s for Successful, Sustainable Change: Resolution, Resistance, and Resilience.? If you missed the articles, you can read them in the archives.

When I?m searching for topics for an upcoming issue of the newsletter, I sort through the database that is my brain (and the rolodex that is my collection of clients and colleagues) and look for themes. What are people taking about, interested in, struggling with? These are the questions I ponder. I reflect on my own experiences, challenges, and learning. The content of each newsletter, thus, reflects what I?m observing in my coaching practice, what I?m learning personally, what I?ve studied and experienced professionally, and how I?m applying this knowledge and experience to help clients have successful and satisfying outcomes in their practices.

When I wrote in January about making resolutions and achieving sustainable change, I was considering a paradox that has intrigued and preoccupied me since the early 1970s. How do we change, and yet not remain — at the deepest level — fundamentally the same? We change our behaviors, procedures, relationships, and hairstyles — but at our core we stay the same. We hang onto belief systems long after we?ve outgrown them. We continue patterns of thinking and being even when we continue to get results that do not serve us. We say we want real change and we work in that direction, but we often end up with simply a variation of our same old selves. This is the paradox of first-order change: the more things change the more they remain the same.

In January I reflected on the year ahead and came up with my own resolutions for change. I noticed, just like every year, that the length and depth of my proposed self-improvement, learning, projects, and action plans were as long as that month?s newsletter (nearly 3,000 words). I have a healthy appetite for accomplishment, more than a slender streak of perfectionism, and have been known to drive myself a little too hard. My learning in January was that, even though I knew exactly what I was doing as I was doing it, well . . . the more things change the more they stay the same. I did not cut anything from my resolution list. That would have required second-order change (an interesting topic that I?ll get around to writing about soon). I consoled myself with the fact that, this year, I was at least paying attention to my behavior.

February rolled around and I?d committed to writing about resistance. If you read that issue you know that I bumped up against my own resistance — this time to writing — in a big way. It?s not unusual for me to procrastinate somewhat when it comes to sitting down to write, but it was as though the February issue had a mind of its own and was on a mission to teach me the lesson I was trying to teach my readers. And, as is almost always the case, resistance to writing is about much more than simply putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard.

In March the topic was resilience, something I pride myself on cultivating and maintaining. I?m not sure if pride and humility are opposites or complements to learning — I suppose it depends on the situation — but in this case feeling prideful about my own ability to be resilient resulted in a large dose of humility. No sooner had I put the March issue of he newsletter to bed than I found myself in the same spot — in bed. For three weeks I was mostly horizontal, rousing myself only long enough to speak with clients and go for the healthcare I needed. I?d been driving myself too hard and my body rebelled to teach me a lesson.

I?d planned to write about ?Looking Ahead? in April. Lying in bed those three weeks pondering what I must have done in a prior life to deserve this level of punishment, I realized that I could not write about looking ahead. How can you look ahead when your head is face down in a pillow? But I had a lot of time to think, read, and reflect on life and the future. What I came up with is what you are reading right now — this idea that we teach what we need to learn. I learned that I was not yet ready to write about looking ahead because I myself was not ready to look ahead. The outline was written, but my ideas were not yet clear enough and I had not recovered my resilience enough to do the topic justice. So I decided to make an uncharacteristic move — to slow down, acknowledge my own challenge, and not do something that wasn?t yet ready to be done.

Stepping away from the usual newsletter format and writing this article from a personal point of view is guided by the enormous value I place on learning as well as a desire and willingness to be authentic, even transparent. I once again reflect on Mary Catherine Bateson?s classic reminder: We are not what we know, but what we are willing to learn. One of the challenges of being a coach and consultant — with being viewed as ?the expert? — is that there is a lot of pressure to have the answers, to be at the top of my game all the time, and to hold myself to the highest possible standard. As I write, I realize this is true for all doctors.

So, I write today about what I am continuing to learn and hope that these reflections might in some way be helpful as you think about your own challenges and lessons. Now more than ever, it seems, healers need to look inward to see themselves in ways that will allow them to work and live planted firmly in their own core beliefs, practices, and philosophy. Myself included. Stay tuned.

Looking Ahead:

A Two Part Series on How We Approach the Future

You can look forward to reading the ? Looking Ahead? feature in both the May and June issues of Practice Your Way. One thing that came out of letting the topic simmer a little longer was that I realized it was bigger than I?d originally thought. So instead of just one article, it will be offered in two parts.

Part 1 will focus on how we look ahead as individuals and as healthcare professionals and delve into the ways we come to shape our way particular view of the future.

In Part 2 I?ll share what I see as being some of the important trends and emerging forces that will impact healthcare practitioners over the next few years and offer proactive ideas about effectively meeting these challenges and opportunities.

Your Feedback:

How Do You Look Ahead?

As I prepare to write the May and June issues on Looking Ahead, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on the subject. How do you look forward? What?s your process? When you peer into what you hope will be your future, what do you see? How far ahead do you typically project — five years out, one year, a week, until this time tomorrow? Send your thoughts, stories, or questions to info@beyondpracticemangement.com. Please indicate if you?re okay seeing your comments in print.

Upcoming Issues:

May: Looking Ahead Part 1

June: Looking Ahead Part 2