I had the privilege of closing for Dr. Denis Waitley at a Parker Seminar in San Francisco recently. It was an evening session with a lot of very excited chiropractors in the room. Dr. Waitley is a world-renowned lecturer and author. His tapes set, “The Psychology of Winning” (POW), is the highest selling tape set of all time. He has worked with Apollo astronauts, Olympians, and champion pro football teams. He gave an incredible presentation.
I was excited to share a platform with him because I remember many years ago, early in my chiropractic practice career, I had gotten the POW tape set and it had a powerfully positive impact on my growth and success. One of the things Dr. Waitley spoke of was the issue of things you can control and things you can’t. In essence, my summary of the issue he presented is that bad things can happen to good people. The question is, how do you respond to it? What can you influence and use to your advantage? Are you of a mindset to look for opportunity in a crisis? Anyone who has done any investigation into self-help and human performance has come across such concepts. They are true, but not new.
However, he hit on an associated concept that is an issue that holds back many chiropractors from changing, growing, and succeeding. He said that you can’t change the past. [quote_left]What successful people do is accept the past, and then act in the present to create the future[/quote_left]
I find many chiropractors cling to the past, wishing it were different, as if that would change it and then there present experience would be better. Being stuck in the past will only inhibit ones future. A stuck pattern, like a subluxation, inhibits the expression of life and well-being.
Are you still thinking about the patient that quit two years ago and told you and several others that
you ripped them off because they didn’t get a result? Do you still walk around with a lot of anger about your chiropractic school professor that made you look bad in front of the class or created confusion in your mind about the power of the chiropractic adjustment? And as your practice is struggling now, rather than proactively growing it with great enthusiasm, do you sit with anger and regret? Have you done things in the past that you believe to be unethical and as a result, due of your guilt, you seek to secure your failure because of low self-esteem from something you did years ago? As Dr. Nathaniel Branden stated to a group of CLA members at Total Solution; [quote_center]“The only unforgivable mistakes are the ones from which we don’t learn.”[/quote_center]
I find that too many people are trying to change their past when it is impossible. What leaders do is accept the past and change what needs to be changed in an effort to create the future they want to create. Leaders learn from their mistakes, not beat themselves up about them for the rest of their lives. As long as there is a purpose that you are clearly committed to, anything that happens that is bad along the way just becomes incidental. One shouldn’t cling to bad or negative things in an effort to excuse current failure. This goes for individuals or organizations. Additionally, it is critical for individuals and groups to learn from bad experiences and mistakes lest they be relived. How often our chiropractic organizations have done this. How often individual chiropractors have sold practices and started new ones just to make the same mistakes that they pile onto a clean slate. It is ironic that change seems to be the hardest thing for most to embrace when it is the only thing that can bring you to a place better than you are at today.
Universal intelligence is. The laws of this universe are not changeable, however we should grow in our understanding and application of these laws. That’s what we can control. Mistakes and errors are opportunities to get a step closer to perfection if we are willing to change. Being that we can never be perfect, this is a life long assent.
So, what will you change today? What risk will you take? What is at stake if you do? What is at stake if you don’t? Fall in love with the concept of change that drives you toward a purpose that satisfies your ethical needs and you will learn the experience of human progress and fulfillment. Change.
-Patrick Gentempo
