There is nothing exciting or glamorous about doing what I am doing: building a new practice from scratch. It’s a slow and often mundane process that takes far longer than it looks like it should. There are a thousand questions I need to answer: Where will my office be? What will my logo look like? Does it matter what my logo looks like? Can I get the video of my presentation done? Why is it taking so long? Which EMR system will I use? Will I use and EMR at all, or will a PHR product suffice? Who will I hire? What will I pay them? When will I start? How many patients will I accept at the start? What will I do about my website? Who should design it? Can I do that myself? Who should run it? What about a phone system? Each day uncovers a new set of questions that need answering, and each day passes with most of them left unanswered.
There are two things I’ve been doing which have kept me from becoming discouraged or overwhelmed by this process. The first thing is something called Centering Prayer, which is well-described in the book Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird. Whether from the tradition of the middle ages or from eastern religious practice, meditation is upheld by many in science as a sound life-practice. What makes centering prayer, a form of meditation out of the Christian Tradition, different from other forms is the way one deals with distractions or worries. I’m not an expert on eastern meditation, but my understanding is that the goal is to clear the mind from any thoughts and worries, coming to a place of peace and rest in the mind. Centering prayer, however, does not push away worries or distraction, it changes the perspective on it.
