Do Your Dailies

UVN4UFFHFPND

 

Epic Therapists do their dailies.  And if you’re not a therapist, but a gamer or someone else who wants to have a better life, this post may be useful to you also.

At a recent workshop, I began by showing a slide with our “Epic Agenda.”  And the first question I got from a therapist was a great one, one that staggered me:

“What does Epic mean?”

Gamers among you may be chuckling now, but try to answer that question, and try to remember back to a time when you didn’t know the difference between green and purple gear.  Back then you didn’t know what Epic meant either.  So let me offer us a working definition of Epic:

Epic means “the most super amazing over the top of all time.”  An Epic Win would be the most super amazing over the top win of all time.  An Epic Fail would be the most super amazing over the top fail of all time.  Epic is big, Epic is superlative, the most super dooper in history.

We don’t talk about ourselves in epic language much.  We tend to think of it as arrogant, unrealistic, and asking to be taken down a peg.  The idea of being Epic anything makes us self-conscious, with a lower-case s.  And yet, I think it is time we change that.

All over the world you people are being Epic. Right now in Japan, every one of those people is Epic.  The people surviving a disaster of multiple phases and historic proportions are Epic.  I doubt that any of my readers would argue that.  Every person helping those survivors is Epic.  Even as we speak the people of Japan are pulling off what will be seen in years to come as one of the biggest Epic Wins in their history.  (By the way, if you want to support their Epic Win, go to the Red Cross and take 5 mins to donate.  There’s also a great definition of psychosocial support there for you therapist types.)

But you don’t have to be at the epicenter of a disaster to be Epic.  Gamers know that there are several ways to get that Epic gear.  Sure, one of the ways to do that is to down that boss on heroic mode.  But there is another way to get that gear and become Epic:  Do your dailies.

Dailies, in WoW, are daily quests that you do to gain XP, gold, or points towards buying Epic gear.  And it takes a long time to earn those points.  But each day, the game server resets, and you get to run these daily quests again.  One of the first things an experienced gamer will tell a “noob” who wants to get better gear is, “Do your dailies.”

Back to you therapists:  Epic therapists do their dailies. The most successful therapists I know show up for those mundane tasks every day.  They return phone calls every day, respond to emails every day, step back to consider the state of their practice every day.  Epic therapists read about their craft regularly.  Epic therapists learn about what their patients are talking about regularly.  Epic therapists reach out and connect with their colleagues regularly, and Epic therapists take risks to make their business visible regularly.

Last Friday I met a dozen Epic therapists who came to my workshop.  They spent time and money to learn about online gaming and gamers.  I can’t tell you how moved I was to see these colleagues spend 3.5 hours with me learning how to better understand gamers.  They were willing to step beyond the model of addiction and see gaming as a culture they needed to become more competent with.  They decided not to dismiss video games as trivial or uninteresting and as a result will be able to meet their patients “where they’re at” more than ever.  Less than 50 therapists across the world have ever spent 3.5 hours on a workshop to understand gaming, so these folks are truly Epic!

Am I suggesting you all enroll in my workshop to become Epic?  Hardly.  But I am suggesting that you do your dailies and when you’re feeling down about your practice, keep doing them. I have noticed that the people who tend to be naysayers in our profession tend to be people who don’t want to take risks or invest extra time on a daily basis.  They are hoping for a quick fix or solution, one book or secret that will tell them how to succeed.  I think there are a lot of books out there that may help, but I think the secret to becoming an Epic Therapist may just be to do your dailies.

And if you’re one of my gamer readers, this applies to you too.  You can be Epic out of the game as well as in it.  That same stamina it takes to do your Baradin Hold dailies can be applied to your life outside of Azeroth.  Getting up a half hour earlier so that you can get to work without feeling anxious is doing your dailies.  Doing every bit of your homework is doing your dailies.  Listening to your parents and doing your chores are doing your dailies.  Telling your partner that you love them is doing your dailies.  Spending an hour in meditation, in therapy or at an AA meeting are examples of doing your dailies.  Sometimes these dailies will seem easy and quick.  Sometimes they will seem a grind.  No matter.

Do your dailies.

 

 

 

UVN4UFFHFPND

Don’t Be Afraid to Evolve

 

image courtesy of Pharyngula at scienceblogs.com

I was toying with a new browser today, Rockmelt.  It looks like it is going to be an important development in social media, in that it will begin to merge web browsing with social networking.  Rockmelt integrates all of your accounts in one place, and allows you to surf while being able to see what your networks are up to.  It also allows you to streamline how you post.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, it will make Web 2.0 even MORE interactive.

It scares me.

Not for the reasons you may think.  I think that it will make managing your online presence easier, and also require you to be more thoughtful about how you organize yourself.  But it isn’t the thinning of these boundaries that I am talking about.  What scared me when I downloaded RockMelt was that it’s newness overwhelmed me.  New graphics, new concept in user interface, I spent 10 minutes on before I had to switch it off.

I tell you this because I want you to know that I get how difficult change can be.  We talk that talk with our patients, but it is interesting how soon that concept goes out the window when we are dealing with technology.  We read folks like Pema Chodron about our desire to always find a refuge from change, yet we hesitate to apply that wisdom towards our relationship with technology.  We try to get solid, say things like, “I’m too old to learn,” or “I’ve found something that works for me, you can’t learn everything.”  We create these extremes that we use to justify not budging an inch.

It’s a good thing that when we were in the primordial ooze we didn’t have that option so much.  We couldn’t rationalize, “I am too fishy to be an amphibian,” some of us just jumped.  Later we didn’t say, “I can climb trees and gather fruit, who needs tools, you can’t learn everything;” some of us looked around.  At least that’s how I imagine it, there probably were some Luddites even then.

Don’t be afraid to evolve, or at least if you’re like me, don’t let that fear immobilize you.  If you start to feel too solid, too old or too dumb, move through it.  If you start to feel too comfortable, pepper that comfort with a little curiosity.

Rockmelt makes me uneasy, but it makes me feel excited too, because when it starts getting widespread I think people are going to be amazed.  And when I figure out how to unlock its potential I am pretty sure I’ll be amazed.  And when my one of you consults with me about building a more cutting edge Web 2.0 practice, I want to know what I am talking about.  So it’s “lean into the fear and discomfort” for me!

What are you being too solid about in your private practice?  What will you lean into this week?

The Truth? You Can Handle The Truth.

photo courtesy of informedvote.ca

One of my favorite quotes from Pema Chodron is when she explains the first Noble Truth of Buddhism:  “Existence is Suffering.”  In her book When Things Fall Apart she writes:

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel
suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What
a relief. Finally someone told the truth. Suffering is part of
life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we
personally made the wrong move.

Patients often come to me to hoping therapy will make them feel good.  I tell them that that is not what psychotherapy is for.  Psychotherapy is not aimed at making you feel good:  Psychotherapy helps you learn how to not feel good, at least the way I practice it.  Because the truth is out, there is suffering in the world, and in our lives.  Can we learn how to not feel good?  How to sit with what feelings arise without eating, starving, cutting, drinking, smoking, sexing our way out of it?  Although I didn’t coin the phrase “Don’t just do something, sit there,” my patients often hear it for the first time in our work together.

When I consult with therapists on how to build their practice, or how to use technology, you’d be surprised how much shame, anger and sadness can come up for them.  A lot of times they have been avoiding looking at how they do the business part of their work, as if it were completely divorced from their fears of failure, grandiose defenses, and ethical quandries.  It takes courage to get to the tender spot that is hurting their business.  We have to weave our way past the following bugbears:

“I don’t do this for the money, I do it for the patients.”

“I don’t care if what I tell the insurance company I’m charging is what I’m actually charging, insurance companies are evil.”

“Whatever I have to do to play the game is fine, as long as I can do good work with my patients.”

“I don’t want to know how this billing, marketing, business stuff works, my practice is doing just fine.”

“I don’t know anything about Skype, and I don’t really care.”

One of the great things about working with therapists, though, is that sooner rather than later they hear the defensiveness in their words, and we settle down to not feel good together so we can clear away the shame cluttering their practice.  Generally what I find is that their shame comes down to this, see if this internal monologue sounds familiar:

“I have suffered long and hard to get where I am today.  I have worked long hours for free, spent money I didn’t have, to get an education that is often undervalued in the world.  Even before that, I was always helping people in my life, even when they were supposed to be taking care of me.  I waited for someone to notice that I was trying so hard, and finally I gave up.  I’m going to have to take care of myself, no one else will.  But even though I’ve built my life and work up around that structure, part of me waits with fear for someone to take my work and livelihood away from me.  Sooner or later they are going to figure out that I have been faking this adult thing, this independent therapist thing, and then it will be all over, and I won’t have even that.”

If any of this sounds familiar to you, if it is what lies underneath the fears and the avoidance that are gumming up your practice, please read on.

Things were difficult for you, and you didn’t do anything personally wrong to bring this upon yourself.  Things will be difficult again, and that won’t be because somebody discovers and punishes you.  Suffering is part of life, and we need to pay attention to it, but not personalize it.  The clearer you get with this the more clearly you’ll be able to look at your work and business.  And the more you do this, the more you’ll face your fears and start to practice in an integrated way, and make money.

On the other hand, if you insist on living your life and practicing your work in accordance with the narrative of fear and entitlement above, all bets are off.  Paradoxical perhaps, but maybe you have already noticed how we can manifest irrational fears into real life.  Because these fears are the ones that have you stuttering on the phone to UBH during peer reviews, or getting nervous whenever a patient or their insurance company has a billing question.  These feelings of anger and entitlement are what make you envious of your colleagues when they try something new in their practice, or promote a book, or launch an online practice.  Leave these fears unchecked and your practice will get more rigid, the walls of your office more close, and even if you never get caught for some of the business practices you do you’ll tire yourself out justifying yourself.

I love it when colleagues come to work with me and trust me to tell them the way I see it.  I love it when we get honest and the fear starts to go away.  I love the relief and the organization that comes in its place.  I see priorities shift, new models of working open up, and people rediscover why they like being a therapist.  And I see them make more money with less guilt.

You may not agree with everything I write here, and you may not see psychotherapy or business practices the same way I do.  No one, least of all me, thinks you should.  But my blog is much like working with me in person, I promise I’ll call it as I see it.  I think anything less is  a waste of your time and money and disrespectful to you.  And I won’t collude with you in your disrespecting yourself.