Ep #52: Your Best Year Yet

Episode 52, Your Best Year Yet. 

Welcome to Clinicians Creating Impact, a show for physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists looking to take the next step in their careers and make a real difference in the lives of their clients. If you’re looking to improve the lives of neurodiverse children and families with neurological-based challenges, grow your own business, or simply show up to help clients, this is the show for you. 

I’m Heather Branscombe, Therapist, Certified Coach, Clinical Director, and Owner of Abilities Neurological Rehabilitation. I have over 25 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, and I’m here to help you become the therapist you want to be, supporting people to work towards their dreams and live their best lives. You ready to dive in? Let’s go.

Hello there and Happy New Year, if you are listening to this when this podcast episode first drops. I’m so excited to be back with you in a season that feels like the peak of new possibilities. I love this time of year. So many times, including now, I’m coming off a season of rest, some longer than others, but this year it’s been a good week of rest for me. And the possibilities of what this could be this year feels super energizing to me. 

What I know about us as clinicians is that we are super goal-orientated and are super committed to our goals as well. And I don’t know about you, but I have some massive goals for myself this year that I’m really motivated to work towards. And I wanted to help you if you want or need some motivation as well. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but my relationship with goals has evolved a lot over time. Truthfully, I used to work to get goals to feel better about myself, to feel like I was enough and, truthfully, to maybe prove myself to others. And I’d be lying if that didn’t creep in again every once in a while. Those neuroplastic patterns run deep and they take time to change. 

But now when I feel most motivated, the goals that I set aren’t about any of those things. In fact, it’s actually the opposite of motivating for me now. What actually motivates me is who I get to become as I figure out how I want to achieve a certain goal. 

So I wanted to give you some questions today to ask yourself to help you decide what would make this your best year yet, and what the next best step is for you to figure out the journey to get there. 

But before I start, I wanted to ask a favor of you. As you may know, this podcast is a passion project of mine because I want all clinicians, even if they never work with us at Abilities, work with us or work alongside us, I want all clinicians to be able to have the ability to use this tool as a way to magnify their impact. And one important way to do that is to spread the message. 

You can help me do that in a couple of ways. First, follow, rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to it to help feed that algorithm so then when a clinician is searching for some kind of podcast like this, this podcast will come up. 

Second, if you share this podcast, or better yet a favorite episode with a colleague of yours, you could consider it a gift to me and my goal, because I would be eternally grateful for you to do any and all of the above. Thank you so much in advance for your help. I really do appreciate it. And then with that, let’s get back to your best year yet. 

So as you consider what your best year yet may look like, you want to ask yourself something like this: why do you want to get the goal that you’re working towards? I love asking myself that because it helps me to uncover the reasons for my motivations. And then I get to decide if I like those reasons or not. 

So for example, for myself, growing Abilities to X amount of size because what others will think if we have so many locations really isn’t that motivating for me. And I know from experience that growth in and of itself doesn’t change me as a person. Abilities has grown from one to five clinics with me as the sole owner, and while I have learned an amazing amount of skills, I am no more worthy of a person now than I was before. 

And that’s the same for you. You can gain some amazing skills by working towards your goals, but I’m here to tell you that big goals don’t solve the feeling of imposter syndrome, for example, it only enhances it. Because really, if you were an impostor before, aren’t you a bigger impostor now that you’ve achieved X goal? Maybe. 

So what I would suggest is to take the reasons you want to do something, the reason that you want to achieve this big goal, think about them, and then check in to see how your body feels about it. I know, checking in with your body and seeing how it feels, it might feel woo-woo to you, and that’s okay. Just try it anyway. 

If those reasons feel motivating on a body level, I would suggest to you that you really are on the right track. My goal, for example, is to empower the clinicians at Abilities to get the skills that they want, to create the biggest impact for themselves, their clients and then, overall, our industry. For me, growing Abilities is all about the skills that I’m learning along the way. The skills that I get to share with the personal impact that I get to have, along with my professional colleagues. And then the cumulative impact that we have on the clients and the families that we serve. 

That motivates me to no end. And I know that there is a goal that can light you up in a similar way. It’s finding your why that’s so talked about so often. It’s a cliche, because it’s true, but it’s not always implemented in real life. 

Now, next, if your brain is like mine and so many other brains, it’s going to come up with all the reasons why your big goal can’t happen. What I want to suggest is, instead of ignoring those things, dismissing those reasons or making those reasons a problem or even a reason not to move forward, I would suggest actually the opposite, that you lean into those reasons. 

And when I say lean into them, what I actually mean is write all those reasons down. Really listen to that part of your brain that, all in all, really just wants to protect you. I bet that there are both unreasonable and reasonable items on that list. 

I actually like to list them on my notes app as an ongoing thing. And so if I’m somewhere, it might not even be at work, at night or doing something else and my brain pops up with a reason, I quickly jot it down like I would a grocery list. It shows my brain that I’ve taken that reason seriously and that I won’t forget it. And then I have this list of reasons. 

Then once I’m ready to look at each item, I look at those items with the eye of assessment. And when I say the eye of assessment, I’m giving each item time and space to be explored, just like an assessment. So just like we explore the barriers to a goal with our clients, this is my opportunity and your opportunity to explore all the barriers to our goal and with our own goal in mind.

Finally, as part of this assessment, you’re going to take that list and then you’re going to also explore where you’re going with that goal, but maybe not in the way that you might expect. I want you to think about someone who you think could reasonably accomplish the goal that you’re looking to create. Think of someone who has already accomplished it, or maybe someone that you know if they stepped into your professional life right now could get it done. 

It could be a colleague that you know or even someone fictional, it doesn’t matter who that person is. I just want you to have someone in mind as you answer the following questions. What does that person have, in terms of the qualities that you think they have, that you think you need to develop to achieve that goal? How do you think that they think differently than you do right now? What is it that that person does that is different than you? What do they not do that is different than you? 

And then based on those questions, what kind of person do you need to become to accomplish your goal? I don’t know if you’ve noticed this already, but what those questions are doing are really kind of fleshing out what is the end part of that goal and who you will need to become as you achieve that goal. 

I love these questions because, for me, the answers to those questions change all the time. And it switches the focus for me from the end result to actually the journey that I’m about to go on. And that’s the same journey that you are going to undertake as you go and achieve those goals. It really does help you to see the future you who has already accomplished what you want to accomplish. 

And then now, as you connect with that future version of yourself, ask that person how they overcame the obstacles in that list that you created. That’s like your treatment planning, isn’t it? But what we’re doing with this treatment planning is we’re connecting with that future version of yourself with the qualities, with the way they think, with the way they act and asking that version how they achieved the journey that you’re about to undertake. 

Notice how it’s really like understanding the skills to create any of the goals that your client has and how to create, again, that plan where the client is, the obstacles that they have and then a way to overcome them to reach their idealized and result. Cool, aye? I love seeing the parallels of the things we do as clinicians in our clinical life and then applying that to the broader scope of our professional life. 

So, again, when you do this, just like with your clinical planning, I’d invite you to take time with this strategy for each obstacle in your professional planning. This is the kind of clinical assessment, and I would also offer our professional assessment, that will really set you in the right direction. Then, all you have to do is to fail your way all along to your goal. 

Now, when I say fail your way, I actually mean fail your way all the way to your goal. How does that sound to you? Are you maybe not ready to fail yet? That’s totally okay if you’re not. We’re going to talk a little bit about that in the next episode, where I hope to show you how failing to your goal is the answer to actually achieving it. 

In the meantime, give this process a try and let me know how it goes. I’m happy to help you all along the way. And I know that you can create amazing things as you do it. Have an amazing week and I will see you soon.

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to worry about missing an episode, you can follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review to let me know what you think and to help others find Clinicians Creating Impact. 

It doesn’t have to be a five-star rating, although I sure hope you love the show. I’d really want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome podcast that provides tons of value. To learn more about me and the work that I do, visit my website at www.abilitiesrehabilitation.com/clinicianscorner to download your free Getting it All Done at Work process and to see what I’m up to. Thanks so much.

Thanks for joining me this week on the Clinicians Creating Impact podcast. Want to learn more about the work I’m doing with Abilities Rehabilitation? Head on over to abilitiesrehabilitation.com. See you next week.