As I work on my art business I am finding that I struggle with the acupuncture side of things more.   There seem to be fewer opportunities for me and those that are there seem like so much more work.  I believe in my art as a vehicle for expanding the reach of acupuncturists.  I believe that what I have to say has value but it is a struggle.

I have other artwork that just seems so much easier to work on and I have more reach.  However, there are more people doing that sort of work so although I have more reach, I also have more competition.  It also doesn’t seem quite as important.

So it is something I have to ask myself.  How important is the ease of work? Is it easy because I love it more? Maybe.  I don’t have all the answers.  As I reflect on this internal struggle and uncertainty, it feels rather universal.  How often to do we think we are led to something because it feels so easy?  Is that really the sign that we are led? Is it really easy or does it feel that way?  Are there always questions along a path.  How do we know what we need to focus on?  What I do know is that this isn’t an either or proposition.  It’s merely the question of what gets focused on today. There will be other things to focus on later.   There may be some of the same choices or there will be new ones.  It’s just a matter of what is happening in the universe.

I’m working with Mark Silver’s Heart of Business year long course this year.  Last week our coaching call was with Jason Stein, who works as a coach with Mark as well as working with Oregon College of Oriental Medicine’s alumni.   Jason started the call with a full minute of laughter.  As I giggled quietly in the background I kept thinking that I really needed to improve my heart qi because I was quite jealous of those could laugh loudly throughout the full minute.  When I tired of my quiet giggle they made me laugh more because of the sheer joy that came from the sound of laughter.

Something else came up for me in that call.  I work on artwork for acupuncturists and I started the class thinking I wanted to focus on that. After that call I realized that this blog and this work is harder for me than the writing I do on my cat blog.  A big part of the reason was because this isn’t as fun.  I feel like I have to be serious when I talk about acupuncture.  I don’t know why.  I feel like in writing something valuable for acupuncturists I have to have some thought provoking and useful post.  I can’t just post the latest Frank and Ernest cartoon that shows them looking at a picture of someone lying face down with needles in their back saying how much back stabbing when on in that school.

Part of that is the fear that such jokes offend people.  The other part is that it feels like it’s not appropriate as a way of offering information.   On the other hand, I am a huge believer that if you can’t laugh at something there’s a problem.  Yes I do laugh at acupuncture but not often among acupuncturists.  When I have patients who were really worried and nervous and it seems appropriate my approach would be to say if it hurt was to “Scream loudly so everyone will know.”  It was such an unexpected response to the fears that they were usually too busy laughing to feel the first insertion, at which point I’d chide them for not screaming loudly.  Most patients were surprised that I had done anything.

Fact it, acupuncture is an energetic medicine that current science can’t quantify in the way the people of the US likes things quantified.  So it’s this strange medicine where people who are already in pain have a bunch of needles poked into them (doesn’t that hurt more?) to get out of pain.  And no one really knows how it works. Acupuncturists do but they can’t put it into terms that Westerners get, usually.  That lack of understanding and that fear of being thought foolish is another reason there is so little humor around acupuncture.   Acupuncturists aren’t out making jokes about their profession.  They want to be taken seriously.

Oddly, the most serious place I worked, an animal hospital, where we were helping people make life and death decisions had more joking around than any place else I’ve ever worked. There was no humor too black or too ironic for the veterinary clinic.  In fact, we had a staff holiday party in a restaurant once.  We were asked not to do it again as everyone seated around us left and many complained about our inappropriate dinner conversation.    We even thought that was funny, if a bit embarrassing.

Why did that staff laugh at things that shouldn’t be laughed at?  Because what else do you do?  As Kurt Vonnegut famously said, if you don’t laugh at it, you’ll cry.  Maybe I need to start realizing that the best way to be taken seriously is to let my hair down long enough to laugh at what I do as an acupuncture practitioner.  How can I be “heart centered” if I don’t laugh? The challenge, of course, is how to lighten the tone of an acupuncture blog like this one.

I guess that’s something we’ll all find out, won’t we?

I tend to think of delight as joy.  How often do we allow ourselves to just do something we really love and take delight in that moment?  How much do we really delight ourselves?

I tend to get caught up in work and in worrying that it is easy to forget to find something that is just delightful and fun.  It exists and it is there.   Remember that the more delight you have in your life, the more that will carry over into your business.  Customers will see that and take their own delight in the small things you do.

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.

Sometimes it’s good to put your resolutions in writing so you can go back and find them again at the end of the year.  Sharing online means you have a reason to stick with them as well.  It creates accountability.

My resolutions and goals for 2012 are:

• To settle in and make my new house a home (hopefully this will be a fun and easy goal to keep!)
• To finish up at least three books and get at least two of them self published.  My long-term goal is to write four a year but this is my first year, so I’ll start there.
• To finish up a picture book I’ve been working on.
• To grow my Art of Acupuncture Business and make it a presence online with acupuncturists.

My resolutions are in no particular order.   I’ll have to remember to go back and see how I did in December of next year.  What are your resolutions?