Celebrate Yourself Today! Community Acupuncturists!

Whew, I have been writing and editing so much lately I haven’t had any words left in me for blogs. There’s an exciting book a bunch of us are putting together from best of the best blog posts and a bunch of interviews with CA punks about working as a Community Acupuncture Employee. That should get unveiled at POCAfest (fingers crosses) and will be super awesome!

Today I want to talk to everyone about celebrating yourself today! Have you felt accomplished today? this week? this month? Well if you haven’t it’s time!

I have been just having a crazy crazy month filled with ten million things to do for the clinic and talking to people about their crazy lives. Celebrating your accomplishment is the other side of the coin for dealing with burnout (which is like my favorite topic of ALL time).

I saw in the 160s a few weeks ago and tax stuff is still going on along with a million other things. I think I should just tattoo “Don’t Burn Out!” as my life motto somewhere.

Okay, but really. You! You community acupuncturist! When was the last time you felt accomplished?!! Do you finish the week going “YEAH! I had a great week!”  or the day going “Yeah I did good today!”.

I hope you did!

I am the same. I think after dragged myself out of the clinic on Fridays. I am more like it’s done “YEAH!” , but I don’t know if I do that day to day. But I SHOULD!

There are a million things I am behind on, undone, it’s too dusty in a million places, and someone left with Du 20 in again :P.

But still. You Gotta Celebrate Yourself! Every WEEK, Every DAY, Every MONTH!

Recognize what you ARE doing. Set an achievable goal and Celebrate when you achieve it!

I could probably do a WHOLE blog post about setting reasonable goals for what you’re doing but let’s just come up with some random examples.

“Reasonable” Goals

That means you can achieve them.

That means it takes into account the randomness of days as a community acupuncturist.

That means it takes into account your circumstances.

For Example: My weekly goal is to see 100+ patients a week. That is a reasonable goal for me because I am usually anywhere from 100-140 normally. But I am content with 100+. That means if I have a slower week I don’t get upset about it.

If it was a daily goal of 20 it might be too much, because there’s a lot of variation in my days. What if I saw 47 patients on Monday and 18 on Tuesday? I am not going to cry about my Tuesday. 😛

Another Example: For someone that works different hours or have a different clinic average maybe it would be good to set a goal of seeing 75 patients a week.

For a growing clinic: Maybe set that to seeing 40 patients a week.

Important it needs to be doable. If I set my goal to 145 every week. And I did for a while, THEN you REALLY start hating yourself for NO REASON. I’d freak out everyday I didn’t hit like 30 a day. It’s just unreasonable.

For a clinic focused on marketing: Maybe sending 15 postcards out a day.

And please don’t set a million goals. I mean seriously like ONE, TWO, OR THREE.

For a while my daily goal list was like #1) Breathe #2) Treat Patients #3) Take out Trash. I am SERIOUS I would get upset at myself because I couldn’t finish everything on my to do list for the day at the clinic even though I had seen 30 patients and taken out trash (which is a major accomplishment end of day).  

It’s NOT a to do list. I have a unreasonable to do list. But I have reasonable doable goal list.

You have to find the goals that a reasonable for you and that are meaningful. And CELEBRATE when you reach them!

And that’s the secret to not burning out! 🙂

(High five!)

Author: Jade Fang

Opened Jade Community Acupuncture in July of 2009. Loving the CA experience. Love being a part of the community. It's my first time being in business by myself, so writing about the roller coaster ride it is being a first time businesswoman. Have some marketing experience, love to help people with their marketing. Really appreciate the community of support with CAN! Everyone's helped me so much!