I Hate This Question Most Of All - When the Numbers Aren't the Whole Story

Originally Posted Jun 18, 2018

How many patients/clients do you see a week?

ARRRRRGH!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked this in my professional career. Even just this past week.

I was minding my own business, when I got a message from a program that I’ve been participating in invited me into a newly formed Facebook group to allow for more communication and support from the facilitator.

To gain access you had to answer a few questions, pretty standard, likely a helpful way for the facilitator to get an understanding of the types of individuals and phase of practice that each person was in and then there it was, “how many patients do you see a week”

And immediately I felt as though I needed to explain myself. I had this old voice come in my head saying “see I told you, you don’t see enough patients, you’re not successful”

I won’t lie, I had a moment fully triggered and then I remembered that the number of patients a week isn’t what dictates success. It means nothing unless its accompanied with other information.

My little rebel that has been trying to cut through the noise piped up, and yelled. “You don’t know me” You don’t know my practice, my values or what I view as success.”

It was enough to set me free of the doubt and remember that, I don’t need 50-75-100 patients a week to be successful, that isn’t the model that works for me, it’s not the requirement for me to pay my bills, I have next to no overhead. I don’t need to explain myself.

She continued to yell.

I’m an Earth-Water Type, and a boutique practice is where its at for me. Quality over quantity and being of high services for a smaller number of clients is what works for me and my clients.

Deep breath, everything that came into my awareness in that moment was true.And this STUPID question doesn’t account for the other things that I have going on in my practice and business.

It completely negates the most beautiful closing ceremony that I led this past week for the Embodied Alchemy Mentorship and celebrating each woman that participated emerging into new levels of wholeness within their own work, businesses, desires, marriages, LIFE, all of it.To hear each women share their experiences from where they started in September to where they are now 10 months later is so incredible I’m still a bit awe-struck and at a loss of words.

And all of that doesn’t get to fit into the box of “number of clients”

To be honest, I’m over it. That questions needs to die amongst us in the healing professions and we need to instead start sharing what in our work is lighting us up, where we’re showing up for ourselves and our clients and how we are honouring who we are while we do it. And as important as it is in sharing all of the good, its important that we as healers feel safe enough to share where its hard and where we need support.I want to hear more of that.

The numbers, they’re irrelevant in my opinion, hearing us go on and on about them just make me think that we’re all tired and burnt out and disassociated from the reason why we choose to do this kind of work.

And I mean this from the bottom of my heart, burn out and martyrdom are no longer badges that health professionals need to wear in order to prove that you’re doing amazing work in the world.

Maybe you want to grow your practice, or you’re needing the permission to know that you get to trust your own knowing about what’s right for you at this season of your life, maybe your work is in transition and you need to be held in a container with other practitioners that are showing up for themselves, honouring what they know and how they want to do it so that you can be supported to do what you envision for yourself in both life and your practice.

All of this and so much more is available within the Embodied Alchemy Mentorship and I would love to support you in aligning your medicine and offerings with your soul and forever put that dreaded question to bed so that we never utter it again.

It just doesn’t matter.

You, sharing your gifts in your practice and the ripple effects that that produces out in the wider world. THAT MATTERS!

AND BTW, you’re perfect NUMBER starts to show up with way less effort than you ever thought possible when you’re in your own flow.

XO Ashley