Well, have you tried it? I mean really tried it, embraced it, lived it – have you done the work? Visualizing your day and preparing for it in advance.
The technical “success principle” term is called: Scripting. Scripting out your day in advance knowing exactly what would happen. Don’t think of this as writing out every conversation word for word like a movie script. Instead, simply a flow of your day that guides you through everything that you want to happen.
The power is in the fact that you get to write the script. Therefore, you are deciding what happens and how you want it to go – and if you control that then you control the most important part: the outcome.
This is why I strongly encourage every team member and doctor to have their own “success system” protocol for their individual patient interactions.
I don’t care if you call it a protocol, a script, a game plan, a perfect visit checklist, or make up your own name.
The thing is if you want to be successful you aren’t going to just show up and go through the motions without any preparation first of all and secondly you aren’t going to leave anything up to chance. You are going to set yourself up for success and eliminate mistakes.
There should never be an, “I forgot to get that information on the phone.”
Or, “I scheduled them in the wrong spot.”
Or, “I didn’t have time to take pictures.”
Or, “I told them we’d talk over their treatment next time.”
Or, “I missed the part about the pre-payment.”
Or, “That instrument is in the other room, I’ll go get it.”
These are all errors on the field, they lead to lost opportunity, disrupted flow, and most of all wasted time and extra work.
Yes, I know it’s tough love, because that’s what is necessary. It’s fine to be forgiving of yourself when you make an honest mistake when striving to do your absolute best. It’s not okay to make mistakes by accepting excuses and not holding yourself to a high enough standard.
The bottom line is you will make fewer mistakes when you visualize, prepare, and script out your day and patient interactions for success.
Don’t leave it up to chance or happenstance. Winners never do. They’ve already lived through the moment in their minds before it is happening and that’s why it becomes second nature allowing them to excel with every opportunity.
I challenged you last week to do this for yourself the night before and to take ownership of the coming day. The best way to do it is to write it down. Keep a notepad or a daily journal and map out the time of your day from waking up to going to bed and everything in between.
It literally takes a couple minutes at most and the beauty of it is you’ll never lay down in bed and be thinking about all the things you haven’t done.
Then just before you rinse and repeat for tomorrow, you can look back on your day and celebrate the victories, as we discussed last year.
If you want to take your professional performance and your outcomes with patients to the next level, you will practice scripting out your day and your individual patient visits so that you go into every interaction with a plan for success, a plan for how you can serve this person today, a plan for how you can move them forward on their pathway to health, and a plan to help them achieve their goals.
I’ve told you the famous saying before, “Success leaves clues.” This is a big giant clue right here… the mapping out of success in advance of not just what it looks like, the outcome you desire, but the exact way you are going to bring it go life.
That, my friend, is the way of the champion: preparation, visualization, and scripting your days for success. Winning every day is not that difficult if you have done it before the day even starts.
