Feed Your Belief Dog!

He replied: "Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is unhappy, insecure and full of doubt. The other dog is joyful and confident. The doubtful dog fights the confident dog all the time."

When you set out to grow a wellness practice, many insecure feelings will be triggered. That is always the case when you set out to make a change in the world and to grow in your abilities.

You may have doubts about your technical skills and helping experience, about your ability to win people's confidence, or even about whether you can really handle a "grown up" career and life.

Most of all, those of us in the wellness fields have doubts about our ability to manage the business side of our careers, including, and especially, how to market and promote our work.

But first, the good news: very few wellness practitioners have doubts about their WORK. In other words, we believe very strongly in our healing or helping art and it's capacity to transform peoples' lives and health.

This is HUGE, both from a personal/spiritual standpoint and a basic marketing standpoint.

From a basic marketing standpoint, believing in your wellness FIELD means you BELIEVE IN YOUR PRODUCT. Any traditional sales and marketing person will tell you this is the key success factor in promoting ANY product or service.

More importantly, your personal, often spiritual, faith and belief in your "product" (your helping art) is what will see you through the unfamiliar, sometimes scary process of learning how to promote your practice.

That's because we in wellness are often SOOOO unsure about our abilities on "the business side", that this deep and abiding belief in the value of our work is often the ONLY thing keeping us motivated enough to learn the business stuff as well.

Similarly, believing in your field keeps you in the game when you are just starting out and are unsure how good YOU are perssonally, as a healer. Belief in your field keeps you practicing your personal skills until - shazam - you start to believe in yourSELF (not just, say, in acupuncture or energy healing as a whole).

WHAT MAKES YOU KEEP PRACTICING?

Sure, we may devoutly believe in chiropractic work, coaching, therapy, acupuncture, bodywork, reiki, feng shui, etc... but there is a natural reticence and humility at the early stages of our practice where we're not exactly sure OUR feng shui or reiki work is super valuable.

Can you remember that time? When you LOVED your chosen field but wondered "can I REALLY be a skilled enough healer/helper?" Most of us can identify with that time in our learning. Perhaps you are in it right now.

Now, did that "doubt dog" stop you from continuing your training or practice? Of course not! Why? Because your belief dog was stronger. Which belief dog was that?

It was the belief dog that said, "Even though I have doubts about mySELF, I believe THIS ART is SO POWERFUL that even a foolish, beginner, bumbling, stumbling practitioner like myself can still provide value to a client."

That belief dog was so strong that it came up with more positive beliefs to support it. It fed itself, in a way.

"Even if I "suck" right now, I'm just so excited about this art that I can't help but DO it to anyone who'll let me. So maybe I'll just keep at it. Anyway, I have talented teachers who will guide me in the art. Everyone has to begin somewhere. I remember being new at ___ (fill in the blank) and now, it doesn't even phase me."

Over and over again, that strong (well-fed) belief dog overcame the doubt dog, and we kept at our training. We psyched ourselves into practicing our technical skills, because of our underlying faith and belief in the wellness art itself.

DOGS THAT GET ACTION HAVE PUPPIES

You know what else? That belief dog had puppies! As we all know, puppies only happen when a dog gets some "action" - and that's what happened here.

Because of the strong belief dog, we took consistent, persistent ACTION toward building our skills. We kept training, kept practicing our art despite the nervousness or insecurity. Lo and behold, after a while our mastery increased and client results started rolling in and pretty soon we're thinking, "dang, i am actually pretty GOOD at this!"

That old doubt dog about not being a good enough healer or helper just faded away for lack of nourishment. (Awwww.)

So here you see how one powerful belief (in your FIELD) can help you build your confidence and take action. That action generates another positive belief ( in your OWN SKILLS as a practitioner). That's how belief dogs have puppies! They get action!

FEEL THE FEAR AND...

Notice: you didn't wait for the doubt and insecurity about your SELF to magically disappear, till you were "ready" to be a kick-ass healer. No! You felt the fear and "did it anyway"... because you believed in your field so very much.

In other words, the belief dog didn't just curl up and wait until the doubt dog gave up and went away. No, the belief dog ate and ate and wrestled with the doubt dog and ate some more and wrestled some more and in the meantime got in a lot of "action" on the side and POOF! There were puppies - belief puppies.

That's what I tell clients who are holding back on marketing their practice. You can't wait till the insecurity about promoting your practice magically disappears.

Here's the unvarnished truth: if you put off taking action until your doubts disappear, THEY NEVER WILL.

That's because waiting to feel more confident feeds the doubt dog and starves the belief dog. Plus it prevents the belief dog from getting in any action. Without action, no puppies... no positive results that build confidence and belief and start this virtuous cycle of more belief, more action, more confidence, more action and so on.

I'll say it again: Taking action, consistently and persistently, DESPITE the doubts, is THE best way to feed the belief dog. Confidence inspires action, it's true, but the reverse is even more true: Action creates confidence.

Knowledge is like this special vitamin supplement you add to the belief dogs kibble so it's actions are more powerful and produce swift results.

Knowledge not only boosts action, it is itself a result of action. You took action to grow your knowledge by signing up for this newsletter and reading this article. You took action to BUILD YOUR SKILLS and learn how to grow your practice.

This is the essential FIRST step in building belief and taking action. Your first step is to learn "HOW TO". This is called gaining technical knowledge.

Just like with your technical helping skills, you don't just jump on a client and adjust or counsel or needle them just to build your confidence. Of course not. You built your skills first. You trained long and hard. You consciously took time to practice your skillsets on study buddies, in internships and with friends and family.

You'll need the same preparation with marketing. If you want to grow your practice, you'll need a knowledge base and a skillset about what works and what doesn't.

You'll need to learn, and practice, the "how-to's" of promoting your work. Things like how to talk about your practice so it creates a "buzz" about your work. What strategies to use at a speaking engagement to get more clients out of it. How to respond to "curious" inquiries so they actively lead the prospective client into a commitment to working with you.

So some of your hesitance and reticence to "get into action" in marketing is actually very wise. Part of you knows that an essential skillset is missing from your training. How can you get into action if you don't know what action to take?

All the confusing and various marketing tactics thrown at you in business courses and articles just make it worse. Do you start a newsletter or give talks? Do you go door to door in your neighborhood or put an ad in the phone book? Exactly HOW do you do each of these? Do you combine them? Do you do them in a certain order? It's enough to make you want to pull your hair out. And it feeds your marketing doubt dog, BIG time.

In my private practice and our Helping The Helper practicebuilding program, we spend a lot of time helping clients learn the "how-to's" (and "when-to's"!) We have created a simple, proven, step-by-step roadmap on growing a private practice in any wellness modality. It's great. It works. It's necessary, for all the reasons I shared just now.

Just because our system works, just because you now have the skillset, the knowledge base, and the step-by-step program for growing a private practice doesn't mean you're going to get clients. You still have to GET OUT THERE. And, you're going to have to overcome doubt and insecurity to do it.

Remember, having the technical training and skillsets in your chosen field didn't automatically mean you felt personally secure as a healer. Knowledge alone didn't overcome the doubt dog. You had to put in long hours healing and helping before you started to feel confident about yourSELF as a healer or helper.

Your belief dog had to get big and strong (through Vitamin K - gaining knowledge) and then have puppies (through taking ACTION). You still had to GET OUT THERE.

And you did! You practiced on anyone who would let you, and you devoured every book on the subject, and you believed, in your heart, that at some point you would get results.

Most healers have had this experience. It's part of your natural development as a helper.

But somehow, this same natural process of belief-feeding and puppy-making through "action" doesn't work in the marketing part of your work... or does it?

Many times at HTH, we'll work with someone for a couple of months. We go over the HTH PracticeBuilders system. They rave about finally knowing "what to do and how and when to do it." They say it's natural, non-salesy, intuitive. Every single client says "now I finally get it!" or "it all makes sense now" or "wow it's all so easy!"

Beautiful, we think. Here we go. This person's practice is going to take off. Often it does. Often they take this knowledge and start getting into action right away. Results come swiftly. Clients start rolling in.

We can usually tell who's going to be in this category early on. It's because we see the following behavior (in roughly this order:)

- they repackage their usual way of helping clients into a 4 or 5 step program (their "How")

- they start giving talks or approaching doctors in their community (and are disciplined about offering prospective clients the Intro Session, the structured new client process we teach.)

Without fail, when a client diligently TAKES ACTION in this way, the results start rolling in. First, their confidence soars. That means they are inspired to take even more action. Before you know it, belief dogs are having puppies all over the place.

Pretty soon their doubt about marketing turns into something like "hey, this is kinda fun! I've actually gotten good at this marketing stuff!" Their belief dog has triumphed - and the doubt dog has been starved out. (don't feel too sad!)

I wish it always happened that way. It doesn't. Sometimes (too often) a client gets stuck.

The doubt dog is growling loud and hard, and these wonderful healers and helpers, who spent all this time in training, who often left another career to become a helper, who even took action to sign up for HTH and get the know-how they needed to market their wonderful work, they just.... DO NOTHING.

And wait. And wait. Wait to "get more information." Wait for the doubt dog to stop growling. Wait for the belief dog to get stronger. Wait to feel confident enough to take action (instead of taking action to build confidence).

What does waiting look like? It doesn't usually LOOK like doing nothing. It usually comes in disguise:

Confusion: "I need to read that module on Speaking again so I get it better. That's my action plan for the week."
Information: "I just saw this great course on direct marketing I want to take first."
Distraction: "It's been so crazy this week with my mother in town, I just didn't have time to call those nurses about speaking to their chapter."
Disillusion: "I tried to get in with the nurses but they didn't return my call."
Vacillation: "I think I need a new Who/What. And I'm not sure about Speaking - maybe I'll do Strategic Alliances instead."
Overinclusion: "I looked for magazines to inquire about article writing, I wrote to a local chapter about speaking and am going to a business networking event tonight. My Who/What? - I'm going to focus on serving children. And teens. And their parents."
Forgetting: "Oops. Um, I'll do that next week." or "Oops, I missed our coaching session, just plain forgot I guess!"

These are all signs that your doubt dog is barking too loud! Wake up and see it for what it is. Stop feeding the doubt dog with these stories and the inaction they generate.

All this means is that you are at the "Belief Crossroads." Everyone faces it at some point. The successful ones grit their teeth and (armed with knowledge) jump across. That's the only TRUE difference between those practitioners you meet who are swimming in clients, and the ones who are five years out and still have a day job, or still struggle to make ends meet.

When push comes to shove, only one thing separates successful wellness practitioners from unsuccessful ones. That one thing is ACTION. Action to get the clinical training you need. Action to get the marketing training you need. Action to get out there and DO the marketing you need to do.

There are ways you can pump yourself up, to build your belief and confidence so action comes easier. Remember how the belief in your ART eventually became a belief in yourSELF as a practitioner of that art? You pumped yourself up there. You fed the belief dog.

You can do it with marketing too. Our Marketing Manual "Decide, Believe, Dream" has loads of belief-building tips and exercises. Use them.

But realize that at a certain point, you will be at that crossroads where your belief dog still feels smaller and weaker than your doubt dog. That's when you have to "feel the fear and do it anyway." There is no avoiding that crossroads.

Every successful private practitioner has had to face that fear, and decided to ignore the fear in favor of listening to and following his or her dreams.

When you get to that point, take a deep breath, wake up your belief dog, feed it plenty, and get it out there into some action. The confidence WILL follow. That belief dog WILL have puppies.