As an entrepreneurial physician, to soar creatively you need to expand your wings!

Very often, when starting coaching, my physician clients uncover one of the key missing ingredients for a happy professional life –that of Creativity.

Much of what we do as clinicians is not inherently creative, but instead is guided by the kind of thinking that reduces many possibilities to the one likely diagnosis, or by guidelines and "evidence-based decision making". While this is undoubtedly an excellent way to reduce good results in clinical practice, it is not fundamentally inventive or creative.

It didn't take me long to discover as a physician business owner that one of the truly enjoyable aspects of my work was building the business. This is perhaps the most creatively satisfying aspect of what I do. I get to invent how things are done, what is offered, and how my days flow.

But in order to succeed as an innovator or creator, I had to learn to let go. It’s impossible to fly, let alone SOAR, if your wings are held in the tightly tucked position. You have to feel those feathery tips streaming in the wind…

In fact I'm still learning to let go – of my preconceived notions of business, of attempts to copy how other people are doing their business, of the parts of business that I don't enjoy… and still a big part of my identity, as a physician!

I’ve had to confront my scarcity fears, my “I can’t do this” wobbles, and my “what if I fail?” stomach knots to tap into my deepest desires to build, create, produce.

If you pause for a moment and take a look at your own professional life, where do you see your own creativity being constrained?

What’s holding you back from expressing your creativity on the job?

Most importantly – What would you like to be creating, or inventing, or innovating?

In order to rediscover your inventiveness (yes, we both know you were inventive once upon a time – just look at any young child at play!) it is necessary to let go. “But of what?” you may ask.

Do you have to let go of:

• Your preconceived notion of what a medical practice has to look like?
• Your fear of being judged by your colleagues as being somehow too different, too radical, too outrageous, too nontraditional?
• Your beliefs that you have to be tied to a certain kind of status or lifestyle, which are in fact holding you hostage away from your creativity and daring?
• Your intimidation by the thought of breaking away and creating a new professional opportunity or life for yourself?
• Your concern that you “don't know enough” or are "not an expert" when it comes to anything other than clinical practice, and so could never make a living?
• Your scarcity beliefs that make you so risk-averse you won’t even put pen to paper about a new idea that’s tickling your brain?

Let's look ahead now.

What words spring to mind when you think of 2011? Circle the four or five that jump out at you and inspire a positive feeling:

What’s it going to take to pursue those positive experiences that draw you the most?

Isn't it time to begin your planning?