I’ve been working on pricing some items.  I know I undervalue what I do.  It seems like that’s a common theme for those in the helping professions.

Consider that if you are self-employed, you need to be making a certain amount to survive with your overhead.  Certainly insurance companies have been slow to keep up with cost of living but that doesn’t mean that acupuncture rates don’t need to go up.  It doesn’t mean you can’t ask for what you are worth.  Ultimately each practitioner can figure out what they can agree on as far as the amount they need to make per patient.  Someone seeing several patients per hour can leverage their time such they can charge a lower rate per patient than the practitioner who sees only one person per hour.

The fact that the second practitioner sees fewer patients may be a selling point as to why they charge higher rates.

If you, as a practitioner, honestly feel you are worth the money people will come in and pay you no matter what you ask.  It helps to be clear about exactly how much you think you deserve. If you don’t think you can charge enough to live on, it might help to consider why you don’t value your time.  Sometimes that discomfort is about issues around personal value that may not even be realized.

I’m thinking about a number of things in my life.  In growing my business I had some resistance to doing some stuff suggested–adding products and the comment was that it sounds like you’re afraid this could get to big.  And yes, that is true. I have other things I want to spend time on too.

On the other hand, I realized as I was slow to find space in my new larger home that I have a lot of space and that creates its own indecision.  No longer to have to stuff what I can where I can in the closest to the most useful place, but I can plan where I want things to be organized. I can plan how I want to use the space.  It’s an unusual feeling.  This means that I have so many decisions to make about those small things, like extra light bulbs and batteries (which my husband purchases at Costco regularly) that my house still is not quite home.  But it’s getting there.

I don’t have to have things done perfectly.  There are places that will need to be re-arranged.  There are things that I might swap out at a later time when I re-organize and know where I’ll be using things most.  This is far easier to work with than the fear of something being too much.

Again there are decisions about where do I want to focus my energy.  What is it exactly that I want to do.  In an acupuncture practice it seems like we take on all of it without choice because there isn’t enough money to not do it all.  Some people find others who will work as contractors for percentages, like insurance billers.  Others hire employees.  It’s important to set up your business so that you are doing that which you love most of the time.  There will always be tasks that need to be done by you that aren’t as fun, aren’t as enjoyable.  However, really get in touch with those tasks that you dislike the most and get someone to help you with those.

I’ve often struggled with success in many areas of my life.  One idea that often comes up as I try and work with that issue is that are the conflicting commitments.  How many patients come in and want to lose weight but also want to eat the sugary carbohydrate rich diet that made them fat in the first place?  The foods taste good.  We’re committed to enjoying our food.  We may be more committed to that than to losing weight.  Recognizing the commitment inherent in overeating (it could be anything from enjoying food to emotional self soothing) and then working with that to see which is more important–the commitment to be at a healthy weight or the commitment that allows the overeating–can be the key to getting to where you want to be.

I was thinking about this again while reading the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.  When staring Apple, Jobs wanted to do a number of things.  He wanted to change the way people thought about computers.  He wanted to put computers on the desk of every person.   He wanted to make a computer that anyone could afford to have.  There were some other goals, but it was interesting to me that he wanted to be the computer of the masses.

I love Mac products.  I’m of an age to have been a geeky techy person when the Mac was new.  I remember being there when a friend got the first Mac and everyone gathered as he removed the cover around to look at the signatures embedded there.   The Mac is a good machine.  It is not a cheap machine.  I can get a PC with a bigger hard drive, more memory and an equally fast hardware loaded with software for about 60% of what I would pay for a new Mac.   Office software is typically $10 to $30 less on a PC than on a Mac.  Back when you purchased PC games for use on your computer, Mac games were often $20 higher and took an extra 6 months to come out.

The Mac is a good machine.  Jobs did that.  He made a great machine.  I’ve had Macs still run after 10 years of hard use.  One of the ancient Macs was at an office where I worked.

Macs, however, are not affordable for everyone.  This was one commitment that Jobs couldn’t keep.   His main commitment was in building new and innovative machines that worked and worked well.   The commitment to being a machine for every man fell by the wayside.

The question becomes, does this make him less of a success?  I doubt anyone would say it did.

As we step back from our conflicting commitments, perhaps it’s time to take a look at those we kept to ourselves and how we can make ourselves proud rather than focusing on where we failed.  I doubt Jobs ever looked twice at the fact that at one point in his life he wanted to make computers for “the masses” and instead turned out a high-end product that not everyone could afford.  He went with what was a priority to him and didn’t question when something was not aligned with what he really wanted.

I have a young cat who has not done well with the two moves in three months that we went through.  He mews constantly at night.   I’ve had him to the vet, the animal communicator and a friend of a friend is doing some shamanic work with him from a distance.   The general impression is that this cat is terrified.  He is afraid to the core of his being.  He doesn’t even know what it is to feel safe, although since I have had him he has always been a safe and loved indoor only cat.  One of my other cats is very easy-going and my Siamese was more into withdrawal from him than any aggression when she was upset by his presence.

Clearly, he’s a water type cat.  I have no idea how he will come into his wisdom but I am working with him to feel safer.  It’s hard to watch him, knowing that many of his problematic behaviors stem from fears.  I’ve leaned a few things to remember in working with him.  First, he might be fear based, which suggests kidneys, a good play time workout does wonders for him for the next evening.   My husband has been doing some clicker training with him and I think this builds some self-confidence and does wonders for him.  I’d tend to think of those as more liver related but it seems to help the kidney fearfulness. Perhaps because the liver is stronger and can feed back to the kidneys the needed energies to handle what is going on.

I think we all need to remember to treat the whole body in any patient.  It’s important to remember how even the smallest changes in organs that don’t seem part of a diagnosis may change the whole picture.   Very often in diagnosis, we try so hard to only treat what is really necessary without seeing that building up another organ that may need just a little attention can be the key to healing the whole body.

The issues this young cat have are great but I have hopes that something will work for him. I am incredibly grateful to the wonderful people who have just stepped in and offered their assistance to me.