Building Your Confidence as an Alternative Health Practitioner
Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to coach and interact with many alternative health practitioners, particularly acupuncturists. It is striking to me how many practitioners feel like their confidence could use a major boost, either in their marketing abilities, patient interactions, clinical skills, or in their overall ability to grow and maintain a successful practice.
Given the widespread nature of this issue, I want to provide as much support around this as possible. In my personal experience as an acupuncturist and having coached so many pratitioners, I have come to view lack of confidence as being synonymous with a lack of purpose.
When we lack purpose, we are not clear about what our innate strengths are, how to access them, or how to express them. If you know what you are inherently best and and what comes effortlessly to you, then every facet of your practice will flow smoothly.
If you take the acupuncure profession, there are many different roles a practitioner can fulfill, such as technician, teacher, motivator/coach, and counselor. What archetype or role comes most naturally to you? This is an essential question to answer in order to practice with confidence. If you innately fit the archetype of teacher, then it would be wise to showcase the skills involved in patient education rather than trying to force yourself to be a great technician who can take back pain away in one treatment.
This is where I see a lot of practiitoners need help. They are not clear about what their true purpose is — what they are innately best at and what comes effortlessly to them. Instead, they try to conform to a certain expectation of who they should be or what the patient wants from them instead of just being who they are and taking a certain amount of pride in that.
Confidence is born out of pure authenticity. It is a byproduct of knowing yourself and what you have to offer.
During the next round of group coaching, I’ll be exploring this theme of practicing with purpose, identifying your archetypal role, and building confidence out of that. Time permitting, I’ll even do some work with a few of you on the call so you can move through any block around confidence in an instant. It is possible to release your obstacles to confidence in an instant. A lot of it is about how much awareness you’ve cultivated around your real purpose for doing the work you are doing.
If you haven’t signed up yet, go to http://www.buildyourdreampractice.net/coaching.htm
for the next round of group coaching starting on July 9th, 5pm Pacific time , 8pm Eastern time.
More to come!
Kevin Doherty, L.Ac.
Dominic Sembello, L.Ac.
http://www.buildyourdreampractice.net
