As chiropractors talk to me about their fears in practice, they are always surprised to learn that their biggest issue is the fear of "failure's bigger brother" -- the fear of success.

When D.C.s begin in practice and have nothing to lose, their fear factor is sub-threshold, which allows them to do "whatever it takes." But when chiropractors reach a certain level of achievement, growing to the next level is challenged by what they perceive could be a "potential loss."

A chiropractor's mindset begins to significantly shift even at as few as 150 patient visits per week. This shift towards fear slows down his or her decision-making and action implementation process.

There are eight opposing forces to confronting success, which can freeze a chiropractor's potential to moving his or her practice to the next level.

1. Fear of change. Making right changes within the right time frame defines a velocity needed for success. There is a constant and never-ending volume of "better actions" for you to evolve into that will determine the height of your success. A fear of change will stop you in your tracks.

2. Demand vs. capacity. Growth always occurs in a vacuum but most chiropractors practice to the pace of their schedules, not to the pace of the next level of growth. In fact, most teams don't even train properly to increase their capacity and create the vacuum needed for growth.

A practice needs 50% more capacity than its weekly volume to have a chance of growing. In other words, if you're seeing 200 patients per week, you need to be practicing at the pace of 300 patients per week (50% more) in order to keep growing.

3. Transition paralysis. No change happens without a transition phase (usually four to six transition steps per change). If you get into transition and it feels unfamiliar, the key is to push through it to the next step. Instead, many chiropractors either get stuck early in the transition or retreat to their previous position. Transition issues are why less than 15% of all chiropractors ever get past 300 patients per week.

4. Transition endurance. Transition is the means to an end, not the end itself. The only reason to get in a transition is to get beyond it, not out of it.

Lowered discipline, lowered energy, and high distraction are absolute transition killers.

The danger here is that you can get far enough into transition, stay there, and then not go back to where you were before beginning the change. Many chiropractors have unknowingly found themselves in this place and remained there for years.

5. Transition illiteracy. "New" change often requires new language. If you commit to confronting success by making a change, but use old language, previous attitudes or intensity, the change is already doomed to fail. That's why any change also requires an adaptation of the culture and environment of the practice in order for the change to succeed.

6. Team behavior. Behavior is defined as belief in action. If your team hasn't been led to completely believe the need for change, they can take new action but experience no new result. Likewise, if your team has a strong belief but continues to take old actions, there will be no new result. The level of action and the level of belief determine whether team behavior has actually improved and progressed.

7. Control vs. disorder. Growth only happens during controlled chaos. A chiropractic team afflicted with perfectionism that only feels secure when everything is in perfect order will be unable to generate the magic needed to cause growth. Controlled chaos means you intentionally caused the disorder for the purposes of growth and you understand it is necessary to recreate order at a higher level of success.

8. Achieving new standards. A change is only as valuable as your ability to sustain all of its originally desired impact. A chiropractic team must acknowledge that a desired change has been achieved and agree to take all necessary steps to preserve its presence. Otherwise, even a solid change is destined to deteriorate and lose the impact it was designed to create. A change has been successful when your practice experiences a sustained change, with no loss in intensity or execution, for a period of at least one year.

Carefully evaluate which one (or more) of these eight opposing forces is keeping you from achieving your full potential in practice.