Knock Hard, As LIFE is DEAF!

“Knock Hard… Life is Deaf” — How To Connect With Patients


We live in a smog of white noise. As business people we live in that smog of white noise.

I'm going to give you three little things on: How to Connect -- and Stay Connected

The radio shouts. The TV shouts. Movie trailers play at jet engine decibels. Facebook never stops talking and reminding us what we’re not doing, who we’re not seeing, parties we’re not attending, beaches on which we are not kissing. Twitter buzzes us like mosquitos. And everybody around us has their bad opinions, and no compunction about sharing them with us.

So how are you supposed to make yourself heard by your clients, patients, customers? How are you to walk up and say hello and expect to stand out from every other doctor or business person? How are you supposed to cut through the rat-a-tat rolodex of people your patients see when they look at your ads?

There are three steps.

STEP ONE…

The first step is to – thank you, Delphi – “know thyself.”

I know, it’s easier said than done. WAY easier.

Unlike meditative isolates of yore, we are each walking Towers of Babel, wheeling around our days, eyes locked on our smart phones, a million voices and opinions vibrating through our heads.

How do you know what you really feel? Do you make time for quiet reflection? Do you get to the beach, the forests, the open fields? Reground yourself in your true natural origins. Take a day and turn off all the electronics. Stop listening to your friends and your non-friends.

Quiet your mind and see what arises inside. Ask yourself: why do I wake up in the morning? What’s the singular most important experience I want to create in my life and practice today? Then create it. What’s my single highest intention to embody today? Embody it. One per day.

If you do this over and over, every day, the CLARITY of who you are will emerge, not only to you but to others. It may be, “I am going to be the best friend I can be today to my friends.” Or “I am going to demonstrate to myself what focus, determination and hard work can accomplish today, and lift myself up out of the stasis I am in.”

Decide what you MOST stand for, and let the white noise of the feebler expression of what you are fall away.

STEP TWO…

The second step is to communicate your truth in a language that your patients understand. This is the core of — how to communicate your strength and high purpose, your humor, your ability to nourish, your devotion to self-awareness and fun both, to carving out a trail in practice that is irrefutably yours.

But not as a display of showboating, not as chest beating, but as a clear, knock on your patient's imagination’s door. You convey yourself with the brash and punchy words of a person who stands for something, with the images of a doctor who is alive – it’s just a skill you need to hone.

STEP THREE…

The third step is to stay present. Ok, now we’re back at the hard stuff. Your tendency as a doctor or business person will be to float off into your thoughts and calculations, your plans and your fantasies, as your patient/customer talks for more than 60 seconds. You’ll be plotting what to say next before they finish their sentence, and you’ll be looking for stories to entertain and impress them even if they are exposing their entire life's history.

Don’t.

Here’s a linguistic tool to help keep you INSIDE your conversation with your patient/client/customer, so that they feel heard, seen and felt by you.

So that they feel your total attention, which is one of the greatest and rarest gifts anyone can receive.

Use this expression: “Ya know, listening to you, I sense that…/I wonder if…/I feel that…/ it seems to me that…/ I’m curious to know… “

The key part of that: “listening to you, I…” It lets them know that – voila – you are actually listening to them. And that you heard them. And that you actually responding in the moment to what they just said in the moment.

This is the scripting part, I'm always talking about, but it's one you'd better learn.

This phrase is like a tether to the hot-air balloon of your mind that wants to float off to higher heavens.

Knock hard.

Make your true self heard.

Convey it in language that cuts through the noise and touches their heart, or inflames their imagination. And then… stay with them, stay curious. Bring your best self, your full self, the incisiveness of your mind and the depth of your heart. Bring yourself deeper. Bring them deeper into themselves.

And thus you will become the channel (the reflection) that they will not want to change.

You have to connect with people. Get away from that and you lose.

All the best,

Dr. Carney

P.S. Knock hard. Life really can be DEAF! Wake it up and do what's necessary. If you do you'll never be sorry. GUARANTEED!