When it comes to communicating chiropractic in your community, how effective would you say you are? Do you feel that people are really listening and engaging in an active dialogue with you or are you just lecturing?

If people are openly listening and then becoming inspired to act (participate in care) after you speak to them, then you are definitely on the right track. If on the other hand, you are just getting into dead-end debates that don't result in any new patients or chiropractic families willing to commit to lifetime chiropractic care in your practice, then you may need to rethink your strategy.

Think about how much time you spend in your practice and personal life talking to people about chiropractic. Do you ever feel like you've talked about the benefits of chiropractic until you've become "blue in the face" or you're so frustrated because people aren't taking action after you've invested all that time and effort in educating them?

If you're going to spend 30 to 40 or even 50 hours a week being a chiropractor, you know you're going to be spending a lot of that time communicating about chiropractic whether you're effective at it or not. Doesn't it make sense to become super effective at mastering this communication process so that you can maximize your results? Of course it does.

In fact, if you were going to master just one thing in addition to your ability to adjust people, this would be it. Most people "innately" know that chiropractic is true, though rarely has anyone been able to put it into language that they can readily understand. That's your job.

In The Family Practice, we teach a "Chiropractic Communication Continuum" that educates chiropractors in how to effectively connect with and reach people in a way that will cause them to take action and participate with their families. It holds to the philosophy that people are motivated or driven to make choices that cause them to experience pleasure or eliminate pain. (We'll be reviewing the Chiropractic Communication Continuum in detail at our March seminar and chiropractors will leave as communication masters!).

Aren't we all motivated by some desire for pleasure? For this very reason, it sometimes takes the presence of its exact opposite (pain) to get us to finally take the action we know makes sense to improve our health and lives.

Many of the famous motivational gurus, like Tony Robbins, have taught us this. Choose the angle or adjust your communication based on the level of pain or lack there of (desire for pleasure) that each of your individual patients has. In other words, when communicating chiropractic concepts to your patients, you must connect with them and communicate the principles in a way that will create value for them.

For example, if you have a patient who is experiencing excruciating back pain, you will want to communicate with them in a different manner than you would with a patient who is a "scratch-golfer."

While the center of your communication about chiropractic principles will never change, the way that you connect these principles to each patient's life will.

If you have patients with a high level of pain, it's important not to emphasize that chiropractic will alleviate it. Instead, you'll want to explain the larger picture of how subluxations affect the central nervous system and how this in turn could be causing "dis-ease" or weaknesses in the body that is generating the pain.

From this information, you can simply build a "bridge" for the individuals about the value of removing that interference and keeping it permanently out of their lives, thus allowing a high quality of life to be consistently maintained. You won't be telling them you'll "treat the pain," but you will be saying you'll remove the interference to permit the body to heal itself.

On the other side of the coin, "scratch-golfers" might need to understand how interference on their "lines" might interfere with the normal mechanics of spinal motion and actually hamper their golf swing. These individuals will be interested to learn that if this interference is removed, a greater level of flexibility could be realized that might improve their swing and help them drive the ball further than ever before!

That's one reason why many top golfers (including Tiger Woods) have chosen to participate in chiropractic care on a regular basis. Rather than lecture people and turn them off with your academic knowledge about chiropractic, relate stories to your patients about real life people. Better yet, relate your stories to their lives. Make real connections with your patients, and get real results.

Communicating chiropractic like a master can turn your practice on -- and around! Dedicate yourself to lifetime chiropractic care for everyone. And make the commitment to become a chiropractic master communicator today!