http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career.html

Now generally with what tends to be the gregarious lot that choose the helping professions this is not something that needs to be legislated–you just sort of want to hang out with your friends over beer or tea sharing the various experiences of your life–be they dragons or be they prince/princesses. 

HOWEVER,

a key point that I will be repeatedly emphasizing here is that who you choose to have your tea with matters mightyly.  My progress towards getting to this wonderful land of private practice has been marked by great delays, detours, and out and out side of the road waiting for AAA moments.  And while I really don’t want to blame those on others–always, always, always keep that locus of control tightly held to your chest the way I imagine carriers of balls on the last play of a tied Superbowl approach the endzone–I don’t want to underestimate the impact of the wrong type of tea mates.

I tell the story of my first sort of encounter which took place way back in high school where I had the courage and folly to tell a family friend that I planned to be a therapist.  Now a couple contextual issues:  Said family friend was a rancher from Montana who was straight out of a cowboy movie set–think the Marlboro Man.  Also, I don’t think I had voiced my interest in being a therapist to any adult up to that point in my life.  And why I chose that moment and that person to do so is grist for my own therapist’s mill, but I did.

He did not wildly applaud my decision.

“Ya want to spend your life holdin’ someone’s hand?” He drawled.

A drawl that still–decades and decades later–sends quivers into my stomach as I realize what an absurd idea I had and what an aburd person I was and what an absurd question I had just asked and left me hankering to bolt out and lassoo a steer or some other non-absurd activity in a frantic attempt to try to salvage the legitimacy of my existence.

Now you probably won’t be sitting over tea talking about your private practice with a gang of cowboys any time soon, but I would highly suggest that–especially at the beginning–you pick your support staff very, very carefully.

For example, I would not necessarily pick a boquet of the nearest colleagues who are struggling or–worse–have struggled to unsuccessfully open a private practice.  Please read up on studies in which it has been clearly demonstrated that those unknowingly injected with solutions that activate the fight and flight response are EXTREMELY contagious as far as infecting those around them with fear.

Which would be bad enough, but the worst part is that they well-meaning, smart, analytical beings may sneeze this deadly type of virus your way:

“I get your struggle, man.”  There eyes brimming over with well meaning, empathic viral load, “It’s the economy, not you.”

And whammo, you are off to herd cattle or some other legitimate activity.

Because if said person would just say, or rather, scream out “I”m sooooooooooo terrified of calling that physician’s office to get referrals!!!” while soiling themselves and running maddly around the room that would at least be genuine and probably wouldn’t infect you so much.

To wrap up here so you can get out there on the range tracking down your wily private practice herd:

1.  Get support.

2.  Vet your support staff.

Here is a great team that I would highly recommend for a whole plethora of ideas and resources:  www.uncommonpractices.com.  Mel and Joe are just veritable geyzers of all things private practice.  Check out all of their free resources and, if you get a chance, listen to any and all of their talks at conferences–e.g. the 2010 Psychotherapy Networker.

Happy ranching.

Yes, I am being overly simplistic.  Yes, I do believe that if one is going for a position such as CEO of General Motors that having an MBA would probably be useful.  Yes, in a sense I don’t really know what I am talking about.  Google “Do you need an MBA to be an entrepeneur?” to see a lively debate from people more in the know.

However, I do know this:  What you need to learn to create a delightfully thriving private practice can not only be learned by a course you create, but is probably best learned within the context of your particular situation and with the most committed, passionate teacher you know:  You.

So, prof, here is a possible textbook for you to use: 

Marketing for the Mental Health Professional: An Innovative Guide for Practitioners.  David Diana.  (2010).

This book is chock full of ideas that are-as the title suggests–innovative.  And once you start target marketing with innovative ideas you are well ahead of the pack.  Which brings to mind a teaching idea that is probably a rather crude perspective, but it does help alleviate the “I didn’t go to business school” fears. 

You and a friend are out camping amongst grizzly bears.  One day you are out camping and you come across a grizzly bear who looks rather hungry and gives you a look that suggests you and your friend look like tasty morsels. 

In order to survive this ordeal do you:

A.  Need to be the fastest runner on the planet.

B.  Have exceptional running form?

C.  Out run your friend.

Yes, this a crude way to make the point–but I think it makes the point. 

Yes, you did not go to business school.  We could debate the value of this fact ad infinitum.  However, at the end of the day neither did the vast majority of therapists.  Therefore, the playing field is leveled.  If you go beyond the average–read: applying ideas found in the aforementioned book–then the rest will take care of itself. 

Happy running.

I’m scared.

We are all scared.

And not just I’m scared that it will rain on the day I planned a party outside or even the I’m scared because I’m camping around grizzly bears scared.

But BIG HONKIN’ fear.

The kind of fear that should not be called fear but some other word that you are afraid to say outloud.

That which should not be named.

Because at least if we did it that way we would be far less likely to engage in the game hide the fear pea.

Now what do I mean by that?

Here’s what I mean by that.  You are here because you presumably want a dynamite private practice that will sing to the highest heavens; of which the gods will speak in hush tones and people will speak reverently about you long after you are dead and I REALLY want to help you get there because this world is crying out for you to find a way to make your dream of making this planet a better place.

We kind of need you.

Paulo Coelho—the author of The Alchemist and other wonderous heavenly books–said this:

“In order to dream you have to wake up.:

Here’s a secret:  You are asleep.

And you don’t know it.

And I have never met you and where do I get off telling you what you are and are not doing and you sure as hell aren’t going to stand or sit here and let me do that.

Good for you.

Make people treat you well, by all means, and, by all means, stop reading, send me a cranky email asking for a refund—I will give it to you no questions asked—but I would hope you would also ask yourself—in the dark of night in your privatest hour before you go to sleep– what it is that is keeping my dreams from happening?

For real.

And it’s not the economy.  Here’s a list of pretty alright companies that got started in a recession: Microsoft, Disney, Chipoltle, and Apple to name just a few.

And it’s not that there aren’t people needing you.  Go poll the next 10 people you meet about whether or not they have some problem in their life that needs to be solved.

And it’s not your age:  October 10, 2011, Toronto Canada: Fauja Singh became the oldest recorded person to finish a marthon–his age?  100 years old.  (and in case you are wondering he finished it in 8 hours, 11 minutes, and 5.9 seconds). On the other side of the age-as-obstacle continuum (because it has amazed me how, within the illogical, dreamy “realities” of our brain-world both too young and too old both serve as “solid” reasons why one can’t create a private practice) think of Leanna Archer Rakes who recently became the youngest person to ever ring the NASDAQ Stock Market opening bell. She has also started her own non-profit organization, Leanna Archer Education Foundation, dedicated to providing education and meals to underprivileged children in Haiti.

And it’s not the insurance companies: in 2011 the American public spent $34 billion dollars on alternative medicine: read “out of pocket.”  Would that amount of money be sufficient?

Not the fact that you haven’t been to business school.  Neither did my wife and I and we have had an exceedingly successful practice for over a decade (that is self-pay, no insurance) that continues to provide great bushels of clients each week despite not having marketed for the past 5 years or so. I am pretty convinced that most people could gain all of the foundational business no-how they would need to have to run a private practice in a weekend of solid reading.

Not the fact that you are scared to death of stepping out into the unknown.

Okay, actually I wanted to talk about that last one—and one more—remember the title of this post?—we will get to the loathing part in a minute but because I think that the loathing is a step-child of the fear let’s cover that first.

YOU ARE AFRAID.

That is what keeps you from having your dream.  And—ala author of the Alchemy guy—your sleep state keeps you from realizing it. Which is to say that your sleep is functional–it protects you from your fear.  Which is a good thing–you not feeling terrified and all–its just that it is the false comfort that the ostriche must feel when–plunging his head in the sand–she no longer sees that lion bounding hungily towards her.

On some level she knows.

On some level you know.

And, unfortunately, that fear drives you deeper into the artificial safety of your dreams.

I want you to feel real–wide awake–safety.  The true safety of knowing that you are living your one life of knowing that you are doing the one thing that you weren’t meant to do.

And that kind of safety makes your toes tingle.

So, wake up!

Because it is my guess that if you can do that you have won about 98% of the game.  You have the brains—you think it was a sympathy vote that got you into grad school?  You have the perseverance—reread the last sentence with the ending—that got you to graduate from grad school?  You have the vision—or you would not be reading this.  You can do all of the things necessary to make this thing happen–because it is my experience in working with people to help them wake up and make their private practice dreams a reality that one’s list tends to be far too long.

So wake up and smell the roses—or the clients of your dreams.

Which, it turns out, is much harder than one would have you believe–the waking up not the private practice thing.  Especially because it is very likely that you are surrounded by fellow sleep walkers who are co-creating the dream of there not being enough—e.g. your friends, relatives, your grandmother who just knows that you would be foolish to leave the “safety” of that agency life–”What about benefits” she says with heartfelt concern, all of the loving, well meaning people who entrance you with the talk of poor economic conditions and all.

How does one wake up when one does not know one is asleep?  I have long been fascinated by the idea of lucid dreaming in which one wakes up in a dream.  This is different than simply waking up—and that is not an academic distinction here because the truth is—and I say this respectfully from a fellow sleep walker who spent far too much time asleep at the private practice wheel as it were—because it would be my guess, again, that it is highly likely that you go from your asleep dream state to your waking dream state in which it is just as probable that you will create a private practice in your “waking” life as it is that you will get a check from your clients sleeping in your bed.

What we gotta do here is to get you awake in your dream—not your nocturnal dream that is presented to you each night by your subconscious—but rather to awaken—and oh the glory—into the living dream of the reason you are here on the planet—all that warm gooey stuff that you put into your grad school admissions essay.

Don’t you long for that?

Let’s get you there, no?

Here’s how you do it.  I don’t know if you have seen the movie Inception—a wonder of a movie about Lucid Dreaming, but here’s how they did it.  If you want to wake up from your dreaming do this simple thing:

Fall.

Because it is when you fall that you become real aware of what is real and what is not it is when you fall that there is no more room for the absurdity of things that don’t matter.

Leo Tolstoy tells this story:  Once there was a Russian priest who was walking in the monastery in the hazy dream like substance of an early dawn light.  He walked through a grove a bushes, came upon a surprised guard who, thrusting his rifle into the priests face demanded:

WHY ARE YOU HERE?

Now it is not good job security for guards to thrust guns into priests faces—and probably infinitely more so in the days of Tolstoy—so you can imagine the priests horror in realizing what he was done and so imagine his surprise it probably woke him up a bit when the priest, after catching his breath, adjusting his tunic, asked him a very strange question:

How much do they pay you?

The guard bumbled out the fact that he was paid 50 rubles a month to guard the monastery.

Taking another long breath the priest said these very surprising and very wise words:

“I will pay you 100 rubles a month if you will do this to me each morning.”

Indeed.

I don’t know if this is registering with you or not and I know I speak abrumptly (and mispell things) and not as elegant as I would like, but what I’m most wanting to do is to wake you up and I’ve found that most people do not wake so well when given soothing cooing noises. And I’ve spent no small part of my precious life reading words and doing things that have kind of lulled me back to sleep.

I don’t want that to happen to you.

I want you to wake up.

Your shining bold dream is waiting just a few steps out of bed.

And remember the world is waiting.

So what I would suggest, propose, or possibly demand is that you find a way to wake up.

How?

I have no idea.

But you do.

Feel free to take a chair and lean back in it until you slam into the floor.

Or become a priest and hire a guard at a monastery.

But possibly a way that is more to the point is for you to jar yourself out of your slumber by making a phone call to that referral source, by putting down that deposit at that office, by initiating that loan conversation with your dad.

Whatever it is that will wake you up.

And you will know when you wake up, trust me.

However, I’m also aware that the above steps may lead to actually the opposite direction—that you may end up in a worse dream.

Here’s how you are going to solve that one via the brilliance of Hunter S. Thompson.  One way to turn pursuits of dreams into nightmares is to truly and fundamentally doubt yourself.  Most adventure movies—think Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter—have dark dark moments in which the main character doubts him or herself.  At that point the waking dream becomes a much deeper sleep of a nightmare.

And we don’t want that to happen to you.

So, instead of that let’s do something else, shall we?

There is a moment in the second Harry Potter movie in which Harry is watching himself—his soul—be sucked out by the dementors—the dark dark attibutors of sleep.  He sees himself across the lake and sees himself losing all consciousness and does a very, very hard thing.

That is what you need to do.

Patrimonus is what he called it, I believe.  He focused on the thing that would bring light—brilliant, blinding wakeful light—to the darkeness that the dementors inhabit.  Now, again, not an easy task, but when he did it the ancient foundational law held: the light dispelled the darkeness.

That is what you must do.

Now.

Because, as a teacher of ethics I very much do not want to cause harm here.  I want you to have informed consent and to not sue me and to make sure, most of all, that your brilliance is not sucked out by the darkness of fear when you find it within you to have the courage to wake up.

And that self-loathing does not attempt, in it’s poor misguided manner, to protect you from the fear by whispering lulling lies into your ears.

To bring this down to earth, the makers of the wonderful company “Heartmath” have done tons of research on the wonderous things—think on the level of Harry Potter—when we get good at being able to call up the infinite power of our positive emotions.

Feel free to spend hours at their website—www.heartmath.org–reading research to substantiate this endeavor if you need to or you could start now.

Get in a position in which you feel comfortable, put a hand on your chest and stomach, take deep diaphramtic breaths—you know the stuff you tell your clients to do—and then invoke, conjour, or otherwise call into being your own patrimonus.  It could be the delicious feeling you get when you can sense someone really believing in you.  It could be a extraordinary accomplishment you, somehow, made happen.  It could be the—you are amazing!—sense you get when your dog looks up at you.

The key is that you not only think it but feel it.

Do this now.

And when the self-doubts come up–and they will—another loathesome flavor of loathing—or the fear—what if I actually—gulp—did step into the dream of my private practice?—pull the power out of another deep breath and bring your focus back to the awe of the best in you.

And ground yourself in the substantial forces inside of you.

And do it again.

And again.

And again.

And again (it will take many agains before what I am suggesting moves from the hokey, simplistic bin into the WOW! category.  Took me about 10 years to actually give these sort of practices a fair try–hope you don’t wait that long).

And again.

Until you find that blissful day when the realities of the haunting fictional dreams dissolves before the brilliant light of your true dreams.

And  that will be a very, very good day.

Happy waking,

Mike

p.s. After you’ve been doing this for some time try this advance Lucid Dreaming technique.  If you want to realize you are dreaming–find an absurdity that doesn’t make sense–e.g. I did this once when I was driving down a mountain road in a car without brakes.  Realizing that I would never do such a thing I was instantly awake in the dream.  The next time your brain presents you with a wonderfully logical argument against your practice–e.g. obviously you are too young/old–use that as a sort of alarm clock to recognize that you have fallen back asleep.

p.s.s. WARNING: SIDE EFFECTS.  If it is not apparent to you, what we are working on is what the good old Buddhists have dedicated thousands of years of practice to obtaining the benefit of being enlightened.  Much more on that later…

This moment cannot be happening.  I am writing from an impossibility: aka my successful private practice.  There fore, since I am writing from an impossibility than it makes sense that I must not be writing these words that you are reading and that you are not here.

Right?

Many, many people—smart, well meaning people—have confirmed the FACT that this moment is not happening.   Here’s why:

“There are too many therapists along the front range.”

“One needs a business degree to open a private practice.”

“The only way that you could possibly succeed in private practice is by selling your soul to the insurance companies.”

“I tried it and failed so, clearly, you can’t do it.”

Okay, I never actually heard that one, but it was implied—a lot.  And it was implied in the same rock solid, “Face the facts you poor naïve kid.”

Except I wasn’t a kid and I had, long ago, come to recognize that “facts” are often not quite as rock solid as we might believe.

Thank god.

Because it turned out that all of those facts that were paraded before me—like guards barring the way out of prison—tended to crumble upon inspection and, as best as I can tell, I am writing this from a very solid old oak desk which is standing firmly upon a very solid wood floor and the very real sun is shining through the balcony windows of my very real private practice that for over a decade has provided me with more joy, fulfillment, and, yes, very real solid financial floor and I find myself, once again, thanking myself for not listening to those very real factual people who told me that I can’t have all of this.

And I get very excited about sharing this with you.

The purpose of this page is to make your impossibility happen.  What that impossibility—also known as a dream—might be I don’t really know, but I am so excited to help you make it happen. And standing here with you, peering over the edge of your impossibility. 

I always love when I get to the edge of impossibility—because that is where great things happen.  It is like standing at the end of continents where great seas come together and there is incredible energy and possibility and, yes, danger.

Can you feel it here?

Because I would hazard to guess that you are here because you have had the courage to peer into the impossible.  You have broken through the mental bars, have successfully eluded your own well meaning advice givers. 

Good for you.

Gaze out there at the horizon—your horizon—take a moment and picture it there in all of the glory and detail it deserves—really see your desk, your windows, all of those people you are helping.

Isn’t it amazing?

It is my job to help you make that impossible possible.

And to do that I want to ask you to do one very possible, very impossible thing: Take a step to move your private practice closer to making your dream a reality.

Right now.

I mean it.

I know, I know you don’t know me.  I have no right to tell you what to do.

You’re right.

Still, just go do it.

Now.

Okay, let me introduce myself, if that will help.

My name is Mike Monroe.  I’m a psychologist in Denver Colorado.  For over a decade my wife and I—who is also a psychologist—have been very blessed to have more clients than we could possibly see each week.  This is a very real problem because again and again I get people on the phone who are the kind of ideal client that I long for doing the work I long to do—i.e. that old question of what would you do if you didn’t need to get paid.  Oh, we are excessively happy about our lives—as it our two daughters and dog Scout.  We have great vacations and can help people who are unable to afford therapy.

Enough about me—now back to you:   Now will you do that one small thing?

How about this:  Another way to say the preceding paragraph is that—given that I did not inherit a trust fund of clients—that  it is very likely that I have been in the same sort of state that you are currently in: Wondering whether your dream of creating your own private practice is as bad as your dad, mom, agency working friend from grad school, grandfather, supervisor, neighbor, ___________ (please insert person who is currently questioning the idea that you could pull off creating a successful private practice) thinks it is.

It’s not.

You are right.

They are wrong.

Sort of.

One thing I want to put on the table here—think of it as informed consent if you will—is that I tend to be called a half-full kind of guy—I’ve even heard the term “pathological optimist” thrown my way.  Which is to say that I tend to see the bright shiny side of things.  Now you want to take advice from such a person cautiously.  Basically, are they speaking those words from a successful, reality-based solid ground or from a delusional state under the bright shiny lights of a psych ward.

I’m happy to say I fall more in the former category—mostly.

Having said that I will now go on to say that those “advisors” who are shooting arrows—albeit compassionate “for your own good” arrows– at your private practice balloon are absolutely wrong. It is exceptionally possible to create a private practice that not only meets your hopes and dreams, but exceeds them.  I say that from the decade plus years of experience of my wife and I but also having seen that success achieved by the many people I have coached.

Have you done that thing yet?

I’m being silly here, but I’m not (I try to specialize in the silly/serious approach) because the other, uglier side of the coin, I am examining—the one that is not all bright and shiny is that many people I have talked with and coached have not made their dreams come true.

I am continually, almost obsessively trying to find a way to distinguish between the two.  Because, quite frankly, I don’t need new clients or, for that matter, people to help build their private practice.  I have heard people say that kind of thing before and have always been pretty suspect—now I get it.  I do need clients—both to feed my kids and my spirit as I love that stuff—but I really want are clients who—when we work together—creates incredible synergistic fireworks.

We both leave the interaction larger, happier, and closer to  our dreams.

Here’s my dream:  That I help people unleash the incredible force of therapy upon the planet in a way that leads to much happier people—on both sides of the consulting room.  In order to achieve that dream I need to help you achieve your dream.

Of taking that next step before you.

It is cliché—and an idea you have most likely been inoculated against—that the thousand mile journey begins with a single step and it is my experience that people who understand this quote/idea are often no closer to taking that step.

We don’t want that to happen to you.

Because you are here because you are not wanting to just settle for some quietly desperate life but really want  to have an impact in your one life on this planet.  And while I want to hear about your dreams and talk with you about them and stand back and ooo and ah I am painfully aware that by doing so we may take you further away from your dreams.

And miss that one next step.

One of my favorite exercises when I give workshops begins by placing a $20 bill on the front table.  I ask what the audience members would have to do to get the twenty bucks.  A raft of hands quickly shoot up and there are many answers—some serious some funny—and we all have a good time until someone—I often catch the glint ignite in their eye—bolts from their seat and rushes to the front.

They get the $20.

Words—even words about actions—can serve to prevent action.  Think that whacky Buddhist idea that all this talk is just fingers pointing at the moon—not the moon itself.

Go for your twenty (you’re going to get A LOT more than that).

Now.

I know, I know, too much too quick—right?  We need to spend more time getting to know each other—for me to build credibility and, besides, you don’t want me telling you what to do regardless, right?

Good—because I don’t work that way.

The wacky, famously successful Milton Erickson—another guy who had too many clients—was once asked what he thought he was doing in private practice.  Here is what he said:

I was returning from high school one day and a runaway horse with a bridle on sped past a group of us into a farmer’s yard looking for a drink of water. The horse was perspiring heavily. And the farmer didn’t recognize it so we cornered it. I hopped on the horse’s back. Since it had a bridle on, I took hold of the tick rein and said, “Giddy-up.” Headed for the highway, I knew the horse would turn in the right direction. I didn’t know what the right direction was. And the horse trotted and galloped along. Now and then he would forget he was on the highway and start into a field. So I would pull on him a bit and call his attention to the fact the highway was where he was supposed to be. And finally, about four miles from where I had boarded him, he turned into a farm yard and the farmer said, “So that’s how that critter came back. Where did you find him?” I said, “About four miles from here.” “How did you know you should come here?” I said, “I didn’t know. The horse knew. All I did was keep his attention on the road.”

I don’t want to tell you what to do—I just want to keep you on the road toward home.  And having done this for some time I would hazard a guess that you may be spending time eating grass and looking for water at the expense of going home.

I want to help you like this.

Because home, from Mary’s and I’ s perspective, is pretty nifty.  Here’s what it looks like:

• Working the hours you choose.
• With the people you want.
• Who happily play you handsomely because they feel you are helping them tremendously.
• You get all goose bumpy when you step back and look at what you have created.

Sound good?

Can we now dispense with the niceties?

Because I would guess you are far from home and, as they say, you only get this one life. So…

Take that one step!

Now.

No, really.

Right now.

Go do something that will make your impossible possible.

As in this moment  (again, stop reading, and do it.)

 You do not need more information you need an experience! 

Please water the fragile sapling of your dream by doing one small thing.  It could be anything.  A phone call, an email, looking at chairs on Craigslist.  At this point it is not so important what you do, but that you do something.  That you teach yourself that you can trust yourself).

I could go on, but that would be more finger pointing and all and I sense that what you really want is not to listen to me go on and on but rather to have the solid sense that you have done that thing you know you must do.

Which is just stole from good old “Eleanor Roosevelt” –another impossibility person”

“You must do that one thing you know you cannot do.”

Which can get pretty grandiose real quick—but that is okay, imagine that right now you are watching the movie of you leaping bravely out into the endeavor of your own dream.

Imagine the background music.

Here’s another impossible person’s guidance:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back– Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

I wish you well with your bold act in which you feel in your bones that you have made your dream a reality.

Write me an email and tell me how it went.

Sorry for the long post, I get sort of excited about all of this, but to wrap up I just want to reiterate that the point of this site is to make sure that Bob, bars, guards, or your mom doesn’t get in the way of you helping all of those people.

I want you to have the ideas and tools to help you get to where you most want to be and where, quite frankly, the world is screaming out in pain to have you do.

And when you do that–it will be good.

Excessively good.

So, welcome to an impossibility.

To practice possibilities.

I’m glad you are here,

Mike