"Your “gut-feeling” can be trusted and used
effectively to intensify your ability to diagnose
and treat your medical patients with supernatural
perfection and enable a persistently
profitable practice."
Like so many other traditional facets of medical treatment that are not taught during our medical training and education, physicians minds have a tendency to disregard the validity and effectiveness of many natural components of medical therapy that are not scientifically proven, we are held to the standards of classic medical school education.
Over many years, however, such forms of scientifically unproven methods of medical treatment have been accepted by many physicians as legitimate methods of treatment. Examples of such medical therapy that have crept into our traditional medical culture are the effectiveness of herbal medicine, hypnosis, acupuncture, radiation therapy, physical therapy, and even
Osteopathic methods.
The rigidity of the older medical beliefs about effectiveness are slowly being modified and have been added to our medical treatment regimens primarily because of the experiential results of using those therapies and seeing the actual therapeutic results of them--many of which have never been scientifically proven to be effective.
My patient, an RN, chose to have her stage 1 cervical cancer cured by an herbal doctor--it didn't work and she died two years later. So I remain leary of many of those therapies, at least until we have the technology and ability to scientifically prove their value.
Your "gut-feeling" is actually your subconscious mind working overtime to entice you to follow your instincts--and instinct is the result of a pile of pertinent info or data that the subconscious mind instantly decided to extract from our brain warehouses and bring up close to your consciousness from your memory banks that are related to and supportive of the decision you are trying to make. Yes, the ultimate power of the brain cannot be estimated.
Hypnosis is one tool used to access the depth of our minds to reveal the subconscious memory banks we are talking about here. I used hypnosis in obstetrical deliveries and saw great results.
Your intuition in this digital age could be described as a “pop-up” window message from your subconscious mind. This view seems to fit nicely into the dictionary definition of intuition, “Direct perception of truth, fact, reality, existence, etc. independent of any reasoning process or prior experience.” Some experts believe it is our Soul guiding us to the right decisions.
What is intuition? What’s the meaning of intuition?
We all experience intuition working for us to some degree almost every day. Medical doctors just need to polish it up before trusting it. The most common intuition most people notice is that of a sudden feeling or sense that you’re forgetting something that’s important for some reason or other. Did I forget to lock-up the house before we left? Now where did that warning thought
come from?
Just because you have a sudden spontaneous conscious idea that came out of nowhere about how to solve a pending problem, should not be discarded simply for lack of years of research. Intense rational thinking may not provide the answers you need by itself. Your subconscious mind becomes insistent on helping you without being asked to participate.
Since your subconscious mind has been receiving, categorizing, and filing away about five billions bits of sensory information every day since you were born, you do have a magnificent library of knowledge waiting to be used. Bits and pieces of it spill over into the conscious mind at appropriate times more often than you think. That’s where imagination and creativeness are born.
On a conscious level we may not be able to find answers and make decisions based on incomplete conscious information. Jack Welch, the well-known prior CEO of Ford, wrote a best seller book published in 2001 titled, "Straight From the Gut," explaining his mental processing for learning how to use his intuition. It must have worked because Ford’s market valuation increased 4,000%. Boom, there was the "Mustang automobile."
It became a good example for what Charles Martin, among others, called “learned intuition.” Lee Iacocca was another of those masters of business who brought Ford Motor Company to the top with the production of the Mustang automobile. Did he know that automobile design would be a winner…no. He had a gut feeling about it.
A well known practitioner of learned intuition was the late Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, who had a desire to make a dent in the universe... and did! His remarkable gift of taking what was already available, adding components, integrating the whole system into powerful technology, and creating something of high value that no one had thought of, was extraordinary. It came about by learned intuitive thinking.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Don’t be trapped by dogma... which is living with the results of
other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions
drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have
the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” ----Steve Jobs
In my mind, "trapped by dogma" (tradition/creed/manifesto) is an outrageous indignation and source of the myth, "Physicians do not need a business education to practice medicine," that has continued to seriously compromise every individual physician's ultimate ability to reach their highest level of potential in their careers over the last seven or more decades of the
medical profession.
Insight compared to intuition...
Insight is defined as, “a penetrating mental vision or discernment... an understanding of relationships that sheds light on or helps solve a problem... an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing through intuitive understanding.” Insight is an entirely conscious mental process using primarily the conscious stored memory we have direct access to any time.
Imagination is a sister to insight and has the same origin and manifestations. Both your imagination and insight are fed by your intuitive guidance. Beliefs by the researchers who spend a lifetime studying intuition indicate that intuition comes from a higher level of intelligence within the brain.
It’s like a mentor that can see the broad view and whole picture of what will result from something you think, decide about, or get involved in. Is it our Soul or even the Holy Spirit mentoring us? Intuition isn’t derived from our thoughts and feelings. But, like a sixth sense, it’s a mode of awareness of our higher self.
Intuition goes deeper and draws information also from the subconscious mind’s storage of information (considerably more than is available to conscious thought). A “hunch” is born. We are all connected through all time and space is one belief.
Einstein said, “There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.”
Components of "learned" intuition...
Dr. Charles Martin (http://AcademyOfDentalMasters.com) gives a remarkably clear summary of
these components...
- Historical information: Information we have stored mentally
on a wide list of subjects over the years, here it’s related to
medical practice and the medical profession.
- Current times: Information impacting our minds about
financial and economic conditions, legal effects on business,
government actions and regulations, current trends and
interplays in the marketplace, national and local news
- Experience: Handling similar matters successfully in the
past. Some we have participated in and some we have witnessed.
- Knowledge: Knowing core competencies, capacities, resources,
alliances, capabilities, supplies, speed, and logistics
- Competitive intelligence: Learned methods, strategies,
interactions, and factors affecting competition and how you fit
into that puzzle
- Understanding and using human nature: Innate and learned
behavior patterns of people, which are predictable or can be
manipulated. Important to doctors communicating with and
treating patients with innumerable behaviors and beliefs
- Willingness to learn and be trained to think differently, see things
differently than most others-- A constant attention given to what
you do and see being performed around you every day with a
mental focus on how things could be improved, work loads reduced
and done more efficiently, and organizational thoughts about
how it could be accomplished.
These components are nothing more than the information fed into our brains during our daily living, many of which we just don’t pay much attention to. By paying more attention to each thoughtful event with a much more critical view about how it can be used, it enables us to
develop our intuitive nature to a higher level... like adding fertilizer to your garden.
It’s a level where, when it comes time for decision making, the implanted and accumulated information in our subconscious mind can automatically slip over into our conscious mind easily.
The access barriers have been removed somehow.
My thought about this activity is that a thoroughly thought through idea or process at the time
it appears to us becomes recorded in a special area of our mind. It’s an area that is considerably
more accessible to us later. It’s much closer to the surface of our consciousness than most other
stored information.
Consequently, it’s kept in a kind of no-mans-land for intuitive information access. These special stored bits of information reach the surface as a “hunch,” just waiting for the right time
to be recognized.
Hell, I may have just entered the twilight zone here, but it seems logical to me.
Now that we have ideas to work with…
How do doctors implement these components into medical practice?
It’s taken over 900 words to get here, so it’s time to see results you can use… right?
If you seriously make an effort to run through the possibilities for use of every idea that hits you in the face, you build up a larger inventory of intuitive “feelings” about future activities you can use to much better advantage.
You will open up a variety of options for yourself and your medical practice,
such as...
- Your talents and capabilities become much more recognizable.
- Your ability to mentally step out of your box and comfort zone
becomes easy.
- Previously unrecognized opportunities become clear to you.
- You not only feel what is right for you… you just KNOW it!
- Identifying the chinks in the armor of your medical practice and
fix them is more important and necessary than before.
- Relationships with your patients and the customer services you
provide move you to higher ground and real confidence.
- You begin to trust your intuition more and hunches can be acted
on more often.
- You see that good decisions for your practice are easier.
- You recognize the leverage you can create to grow your practice
and income you hadn’t thought of.
- Your ability to recognize medical practice and professional trends
improves dramatically and quickly.
- You will understand why timing is important to your practice
efforts and changes in direction of your medical practice focus.
You may have noticed that I have not said a single word yet about your medical practice marketing, or even about the business aspects of medical practice. I did that because you and every physician should spend time thinking about the above issues that are so very important to your medical career and the financial survival of your practice.
Possibly, you have already decided this intuition stuff is a bunch of hooey. You can take it for what it’s worth, but after 40 some years in and around medical doctors and the medical profession I could give you a list of all the wonderful opportunities I have consciously passed up.
This includes all the challenges I purposely avoided, and all the changes in my practice that I thought of and never took action on, that I now regret... all because I hadn’t learned how to develop my intuition into a mind provoking discipline.
Your intuitional discipline can be tested by asking yourself a few bloodthirsty questions...
- If and when you recognize that your medical practice income is slowly dwindling, why didn’t you “sense” it before it became an actual reality? You probably did but shook it off quickly like being in a bad mood.
- Surgeons; how did you know when to stop doing surgery? Did the surgery committee have to restrict your operating privileges before you were willing to come to terms with your failing surgical talents? Did you actually realize you were losing your “touch” or was it the committee that woke you up?
- After graduation from medical school, what was it that made you believe you should specialize in the specialty you chose? Was it the best choice you could have made for yourself when you looked at it years later?
- After your medical education and training was completed, you had many opportunities about where to practice, where to live, and what path to take with your career. What was it that told you to choose the ones that you did?
How many medical doctors do you think made the wrong choices about these issues? Isn’t it remarkable that, relatively speaking, very few medical doctors fail to make the right choices at the right time? We think it’s by our conscious deliberation, but it takes help from intuition to be right almost all the time about these choices.
- If you live in a community where the balance of practice competition for patients is favorable and after a few years more medical doctors start practice there, are you able to sense or feel the effects of that on your practice? Or don’t you pay any attention to that?
So, under these circumstances, when do you decide to move your practice elsewhere, or start marketing you practice to keep your practice growing, or retire earlier than you wanted to?
The trends, information, business flow patterns, and your practice statistics are all there to tell you unconsciously. Did you listen? With improvement of your intuition you would be able to recognize it coming long before your practice was failing.
What can you do starting right now that can push yourself upwards on the profits ladder and accelerate your intuition powers?
The components of developing intuition are where you start. You can go back to those elements and magnify your attention concerning each one. You do that by concentrated thinking about each one. Never put to sleep any significant idea, change, or critical thought about your practice without first thinking through all the options available, both pro and con.
My extended education in medical practice business management and medical practice marketing enables me to incorporate those factors into the medical practice system each doctor uses. The results are in the following advice.
- Start Masterminding
This one concept of sharing information with those of like minds is no doubt the most productive method for you to understand what you don’t understand, see what you don’t see, and learn about what you never will otherwise. In the successful business world mastermind groups who gather and discuss possibilities and probabilities for improvement of their business expose their thinking right up to the raw edge of intuitional pain.
Basically, for doctors, it’s a profitable way to beat the “cafeteria doctors,” to kick-ass the idea of, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and catapult your mind into the entrepreneurial zone where you find the answers for maximizing your medical practice potential.
- Develop a “Blackhole” discipline
Being a physician, you are already naturally adapted to a pattern of incessant learning, education, and the accumulation of facts and training that escalate your positioning in your profession. You suck in all the critical essentials close to you to produce a highly profitable medical practice others can only dream of.
Attached to that professional obligation are several even more important manifestations. Your new and improved ability to see things that previously were unrecognized or were underappreciated at the time now will open doors of opportunity that otherwise, you may never have happened. - The key to this process is your constant awareness of new open-minded ways of thinking, even outside of your medical practice success life. Included with your new hyper-thinking process, several changes happen.
You look for new and better ways of doing things in your medical practice business structure. You become constantly alert to resources that appear from previously ignored sources. You are able to remember what you learned in the past that will now help you grow your medical practice business and improve your medical practice management.
Decisions are easier to make and you are more confident about those choices. Your access to aspects of the world around you that will improve your status as a professional, as well as your value to your medical patients, is there for the grabbing.
All of these exciting changes you experience by consciously being mentally attentive to the potential value and usefulness of ideas, thoughts, and underappreciated opportunities that confront you daily.
Your personality and “being” change from satisfied to expectant, from introverted to openly curious, from pleasing to passionate, from follower to leader, from mildly aggressive to renegade (willing to move outside your comfort zone), from adaptive to creative, and best of all, you see your potential expanding beyond what you had put limits around. Your “mid-life crisis” changes can’t hold a candle to these positive changes.
- Be a hunter
In addition to learning how to see and use opportunities around you each day, start hunting for them aggressively. The most important one is hunting for ways to overcome your internal resistance to change. You underestimate your abilities and capabilities—while accepting mediocrity. Read “The E-Myth: Physician,” by Michael Gerber. Then take note of that screeching sound as your mind begins to open up.
Actively hunt for what you need to maximize your personal potential when you’ve removed the limitations you consciously have created for yourself. For example, you can now earn an MBA online (while continuing to practice). You can also learn marketing well enough to promote your medical practice marketing and maintain a continuous flow of new patients into your private medical practice business while continuing to practice.
Hunt for a success-proven medical practice business system that you can implement into your practice that will enable you to take the most advantage of the marketing you do for recruiting new patients.
Remember, you can market and recruit hundreds of new patients, but if you don’t have a slick, efficient, and profitable medical practice business system in your medical office to handle all those patients properly, you’ve wasted a lot of time and money.
You likely will lose the majority of those patients because of the confusion and turmoil evident to patients who end up frustrated by the customer service they receive from inefficient office medical practice management and medical care treatment.
Be continuously on the lookout for unrecognized and underappreciated potential assets, income resources, effective means to improve your talents, among others that open opportunities for the growth of your practice.
Develop measurement methods for knowing if your practice is increasing or decreasing in volume. Does the number of new patients coming into your practice exceed the number of patients leaving you practice every month? You don’t know the answer… right?
Beyond all else, when a good idea or asset is recognized, take action on it right then... don’t procrastinate. Test it. Try it. Learn ways to use it in your practice that adds productivity and profitability to your practice. Don’t fear it, challenge it.
Scientific studies of intuition...
Three forms of intuition have been studied since 1935 in the elite universities of the world. All considered to be components of intuition.
· Telepathy—communication between two people’s brains.
· Remote Reading—long-distance communication about places
and things.
· Precognition—seeing future events.
A complete summary of studies and their results can be found in a 2005 paper by Paul Bernstein, PhD and in a book titled: Endophysics, Time, Quantum and the Subjective, ed. by Rosolino Buccheri et al., World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, (c)2005].
INTUITION: WHAT SCIENCE SAYS (SO FAR) ABOUT HOW AND WHY INTUITION WORKS...
PAUL BERNSTEIN, Ph.D. Educational Services, 8 Ferry Street, Chelsea, Massachusetts 02150, United States
In almost all scientific studies performed concerning intuition, results have shown the existence of such brain communication powers without a doubt. The theories that are proposed to explain the process vary as one would anticipate. Presently, the most viable theories seem to be elements of subspace dimensions of the time-space matrix. What??
- Fine information wave subspace where magnetic waves play a role.
- Course particulate subspace where electrical charge plays a role.
- The process of this unique communication is still not understood, nor proven, in spite of the fact that it exists. (No different from the debate that you have a brain inside your skull—unless your skull has been opened and the brain seen.) It fits the same definition as that
of religious “faith.”
If you still don’t believe that intuition plays an important part of your professional career dynamics, you will have to become a gambler and stick to luck or guessing.
----Professional Probe----
"How did two bicycle mechanics
know how to build and fly an airplane?"
There were no such things as instruction manuals for
building and flying an airplane, no knowledge about aerodynamics,
no design features that had to be followed,
nor what kind of engine was needed to ensure that it
would stay in the air.
"How could two brothers Orville and Wilbur, owners
of a bicycle shop, come up with the fantastic idea that
they could even create a flying machine?"
Their intuition and precognition was certainly something
that ignited their belief that it was even possible.
In the same sense, doctors are able to draw from their
minds highly creative solutions to medical problems that
either had never been considered or never been
thought of. The ability to do things like this come out
of nowhere. But, it's something to be thankful for,
regardless of the source.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #34, 3-16-22
