HOW LONG

CAN YOU HOLD ON?

Maybe a year? Y’think? Six months? Hmmm? Three or four weeks? Whew! Hours perhaps? Ack! First of all, if your answer is “forever” or “a lifetime” or “long enough,” you may want to revisit your brain because if you’re not living IN it, you’re dangerously close to fantasyland.

One thing I’ve learned in this blessed long life I continue to have is that NOTHING on Planet Earth is permanent. Nothing! That may be no surprise to scholars who know that circa 2600 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “Nothing is permanent except change!” (Pretty heady stuff for a guy that old, eh?)

Q. 

What are we talking about here?

Businesses? Families? Friendships?

Entrepreneurial ventures?

Professional practices? Our minds?  

A. 

All of the above!

We “hold on” in five different (yet mostly intertwined) ways:  financially, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually. And most of the reasons we hold on are anchored in shifting sands. We have numbed ourselves with fear of failure. We have built artificial (and, admittedly, often flimsy) protective walls around our endeavors, pursuits, and ourselves.

So what am I saying? We should all run out and be more carefree? Take bigger risks? Throw away everything we’ve worked hard to earn? Change horses in mid-stream? Stop paying taxes? Buckle under to competitive pressures? Cut off shaky relationships instead of working them through? I’m saying it may be time to reassess what we’re holding onto, and why.

What’s the worst thing can happen by taking a couple of minutes out tonight and thinking through what is and isn’t worth it in your life —  your business or practice, your family, your relationships, your finances, your emotional stability, your intellectual pursuits and development, your body, your sense of spirituality and religious commitments.

Give yourself the benefit of doubt. Just dabble in this arena of yours for a few minutes. Think hard about what it’s all worth, and what you can and are free to choose to do right this minute by making a decision to change things for yourself for the better . . . and then choose it, and do it. It’s really not so hard –and can be fun– once you put yourself on the path.

Letting go may seem –and even feel– hard, but it’s a piece of cake compared with the stress and strain of hanging on to a piece of fantasyland. In the end, for all humans everywhere, reality wins. So why not grab it now and ride it to the finish line? — Your business. Your relationships. Your self. Old song lyrics:

“We may never pass this way again.”

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Just What Americans Need:

Less Healthcare. More Politics.

Shame on you, AARP, and tsk-tsk to Marsha Mercer, “freelance journalist who lives in the Washington, DC area.” Neither of you appear to offer much in the way of common sense, or even the hint of a realistic viewpoint, when it comes to your manipulative and politically-charged-below-the-surface feature story that appears in the AARP March Bulletin.

Your front page hype,”Fixing The Doctor Shortage – Big Changes For Patients” (and guts of the story) deceptively suggests that the evolving physician shortage is one that’s the product of an aging doctor marketplace and by private insurers undercutting Medicare reimbursement rates. Simply not true.

Relentlessly increasing

government control is the culprit.

MEMO TO AARP: Put the premise that your article spotlights in the drawer, and start making phone calls. Ask a few hundred doctors. I have. They will tell you in so many words that relentlessly increasing government control is the culprit.

The article’s lead source, Dr. Steven Berk, is certainly a distinguished one, yet the context of his quote appears to have been quietly tucked away. Surely, Dr. Berk had more to say about the subject than thirty-six words? Could it be that the rest of his comments failed to support the sensationalist undercurrent of your story?

And how about adding the link for 2012 Physicians Foundation survey that you cited so people can check it out for themselves? Check it out here. Certainly the survey IS worth noting. Skewed, though it may be to represent the best interests of its sponsoring organizations, it seems credible enough.

So what is worth noting you ask? How about the glossed-over fact that all the alarming findings referred to have taken place since (and are compared only with) the survey of 2008? Does that strike you as worth noting?

Hmmmm! And what else happened in 2008? An increase-government-control advocate was elected president. So, are we to conclude that most of the problem we face today regarding doctor shortages and the systematic transitions in healthcare that have forced the issue are attributable to physician aging and private insurers, as the article purports? Not likely.

To Find Doctors we should be looking — instead of to state medical associations — to family, friends, neighbors, other doctors, and other healthcare professionals. After all, isn’t it TRUST we seek? Surely, it’s not more government in our lives, or politically-motivated state medical associations trying to justify their membership fees.

Let’s remember that –far and away– the single greatest reason that the vast majority of Americans seek any (even including ER) medical care is to get reassurance. Reality, even for seniors, isn’t a TV hospital show. It’s seeking reassurance.

Oh, and please: FORGET about .gov websites. They are not invested in helping you. They are invested in controlling you! Go instead to private practice websites. Go to The American Academy of Family Physicians and other non-governmental professional physician credentialing organizations. And stop believing what you read in AARP propaganda.

Unless you prefer some politician to give you a diagnostic workup, prognosis, and treatment program?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0911

Miracles Will Never Cease!

It’s true. As long as you work harder and not smarter (Ask those who succeed instead of those who teach!), stay perpetually positive, appreciate those who support you, believe in yourself, and pray to and trust in God, you can boost your odds for success right through the roof! 

~~~~~~~

Here’s what happened. So many of you (Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.) have posted and called and emailed me with your warm wishes and prayers during this family trauma period that has absorbed me over the last few weeks, that I’m convinced you made a difference.

The emotional roller coaster is finally slowing down.

The daily episodes of great mental, emotional and physical stress are giving way to what all the doctors and nurses and others involved are now saying was a true miracle.

After racing her unconscious to the ER, followed by two weeks in intensive care including ten days in a coma, literally no one expected to see her survive.

Kathy, my wife of 25 years, is now alive and thriving. With her life hanging by a thread, no one had given her a chance . . . no one except Kathy. It all came down to her and God.

She is –Hallelujah, and thanks be to God– more alive now than she has ever been!

Those who visited her early on, who saw her with tubes in her throat, her nose, her fingers, hands, arms and legs –a medical marionette– with dials,  switches, beeps, graphs and blinking numbers coming from nearly two dozen monitors, do not believe her now. Five days later, she is walking, talking, eating, joking, and remembering details.

But she wasn’t given a chance of even surviving.

And what does this have to do with small business and personal development? Everything. There can be no greater fight than fighting to live. Whether it’s a battle for business survival, or –and I truly hope you never go through what Kathy and I experienced– your life or the life of a loved one, you can never be too prepared.

Like  children getting their value systems in order before the age of five, we need to work hard at cultivating and growing our fortitude, attitude, authenticity, integrity, self-esteem and self-confidence, our spirituality and love for life every day.

Every day. Because –like a fire extinguisher, parachute, healthy body, and alert mind– self-reliance marks a winner.

Kathy is a winner. I am so proud of her, and so grateful for what one doctor called her “absolutely astonishing will power.” From this perspective of reality, I have decided to continue with my blog posts on a two or three times a week basis, instead of daily, as it’s pretty much been since April, 2008. Life is simply too important.

Thank you, all my thousands of blog visitors and Twitter friends. You are amazing!

I will hope to keep hosting your visits here two or three days a week. God Bless You. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Updated From the Best of Hal’s Christmastime Business Posts . . . 

Watch where you’re going,

Handshakes,

Kisses, and Contracts!                                                                                                                               
                                   

It has been proverbially said in entrepreneurial circles that when two partners agree on everything, one of them is not necessary. This is probably a truism that is rarely given credibility until a highly-agreeable partnership goes south.

WHERE HUGS AND KISSES REPLACE HANDSHAKES

By the same token it has been often advised to never go into partnership with anyone other than your spouse because no one else shares the same values. There are of course –as with anything else– exceptions. I can think of two I’ve known that seemed to work, out of many hundreds I’ve consulted with.

(Curiously, both of these exceptions involved partners of father/son age differential, but neither was a father/son business. In both cases the older partner worked fewer hours and handled all computer and paperwork; the younger partner oversaw sales and operations.)

The point is that only a spouse can have the same single-minded purposes and focused energy to share. “Ah,” so you say, “but if my husband (or wife) ever worked with me, we’d divorce or kill each other! We already have too much friction between us and that would rapidly turn to anger!” Or, well, something like that.

Here’s the news: friction is a positive ingredient in life, without which in some form, a lot of life would even be possible. And anger? Reality dictates that anger –controlled anger– can be very stimulating, invigorating, motivating, refreshing, illuminating, and serve as a prompt to forward motion.

Anger is also a release. It can –again, in its controlled form– clear out and refocus unproductive stress, and invite innovative thinking. It can trigger improved communications.

Partners need not eat together, sleep together, and vacation together, but my experiences have shown that those who do, almost universally succeed because they share what they believe in, offset one another’s personalities, and support each other’s intents and initiatives to a fault. As a competitor, it’s hard to overcome that unified front.

WHERE CONTRACTS REPLACE HANDSHAKES

The place I’ve found partnerships to be most forced, and most frequently fail, is in the professional practice arena — doctors, dentists, lawyers, allied medical sciences, accountants, management consultants. Egos far above and beyond the norm tend to flair and breed “control freaks.” Unproductive know-it-all attitudes prevail.

Winning partnerships require

winning leadership attitudes and

clearly defined separation of responsibilities.

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!