Who else wants to sign their own permission slip?

What I really want to talk to you today in the spirit of mindset + new beginnings is this: sign your own permission slip!

You don’t need to wait for someone else (a teacher, mentor, influencer) to grant you permission to build a certain kind of practice, work with a certain type or group of clients, or put your ideas out there and advocate for new ways of working and healing.

Really, you don’t.

It can be a challenge to believe this, especially given all of the bars and challenges you had to clear to become a licensed practitioner in your field: from your specific accredited training, to state and even national licensure exams, detailed Continuing Education requirements, and perhaps even deep bureaucracy and knowledge to master on the insurance front.

You’ve been trained to see your professional world as a series of approvals, first from teachers + trainers as you mastered a deep fund of knowledge (and canonical texts), and then from certifying bodies and agencies, even insurance companies.

This waiting for approval gets internalized in ways we don’t always realize when it comes to doing business. 

And it can lead you to follow custom, wanting to be seen as legitimate (by doing things the way others do) and fearful about going out on a limb or being seen as rogue. (And by rogue, I do not mean anything unlawful, sketchy, or out of integrity—I simply mean confident in your own vision to create the kind of healthcare practice that you see fit to build.)

Something is missing in your market—and it’s yours to claim.

Yes, standards of practice or insurance issues may give you constraints. But there is more room to maneuver than you are claiming for yourself.

Bottom line: Decide the kind of practice you want to create, the people you want to help, the causes or challenges that you want to champion—and then set out to do just that step-by-step, and skill-by-skill.

It can feel daring, or rogue to do at first. But once you do, it will set you free. I see this time and again in my work as a communications advisor, writer, and creative conceptor for health experts + practitioners.

Intuitively, you may have sensed it’s time to write your own permission slip and may have even begun the process of defining what you want to create and why. Now is the time to pursue it in an orchestrated, coordinated way.

You choose. You decide the keywords of your practice.