6 Books to Empower Ketamine Clinic Owners: Growth, Mindset, and Creativity
Synopsis: Discover six inspiring books to help you grow personally and professionally, fostering creativity, mindset, and purpose while running your ketamine clinic.
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Why Running a Ketamine Clinic Is a Journey of Growth and Transformation
Starting and running your own private practice—let alone a ketamine therapy clinic—is a journey of patience, courage, and grit. It’s also a spiritual journey, as you may already know if you’re familiar with our blog posts or have ever chatted with us.
Watching your patients heal and transform through this therapy is a profoundly beautiful experience. But here’s something curious and surprising: one day, months or even years after opening your clinic, you might notice that you’ve transformed and grown too.
The personal and professional growth of running your own practice is powerful, but it can also be painful and frustrating. Spoiler alert: brace yourself for self-doubt! Throughout our journey, we leaned heavily on supportive friends, family, and much-needed wisdom found in books.
While we hope you have a strong support system, we understand that sometimes it’s still forming, or you just need additional encouragement. To complement your journey, we’re sharing six books that have fortified our mindset and strengthened our hearts as healthcare professionals and entrepreneurs.
Support your growth, mindset, and creativity with books as you start and run your ketamine clinic.
The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
By Kishimi Ichiro and Koga Fumitake
Many of us do things just so that we are liked; or to avoid being disliked. Have you ever said “yes” to something, like covering a call or staying late for a shift, just to avoid being badmouthed or labeled “that guy”?
When you’re running your own clinic and juggling a business, setting boundaries is essential. And sometimes, setting boundaries means you won’t be liked, and that’s okay. The Courage to Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi, offers practical principles for self-forgiveness, self-care, and breaking free from past traumas and societal expectations.
Before we read this book, we honestly didn’t realize that part of the hesitation to set or uphold boundaries had to do with such a fundamental issue of likeability. As we read, we both discovered how striving to gain or maintain likeability influenced our decisions, but it played out differently for each of us and to varying degrees. Despite those differences, this book provided us both with the courage and perspective to face pushback—whether from vendors or even patients—and move forward with confidence.
Some practical takeaways from this book include:
Letting Go of Approval-Seeking: You can’t please everyone. It is impossible and often leads to stress and resentment. True freedom comes from being authentic and making decisions based on what you want rather than others’ opinions.
The Importance of Self-Forgiveness: Freedom from guilt comes from releasing regret and accepting your past mistakes. These bumps in the road were part of your growth.
Understanding Interpersonal Relationships: Relationships thrive when they have a foundation built on equality, mutual respect, and freedom. Codependency won’t happen when you respect the autonomy of others and maintain your own.
This book was a powerful reminder that when you focus on being something for everyone else, you can lose sight of what is important to you.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
By Oliver Burkeman
Have you ever felt like you wish you could clone yourself? There just isn’t enough time in the day. When you’re running your own clinic, it’s easy to get caught in this mindset, which unfortunately only leads to more stress and anxiety.
Cut to Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Instead of treating life like a never-ending to-do list, this book encourages you to embrace the reality of our finite time on earth—roughly four thousand weeks, or about 80 years. Through its unique perspective, the book challenges you to focus on what truly matters rather than being consumed by everything that feels urgent.
Some practical takeaways from this book include:
Embracing “good enough”: Many of us were A+ students, and the drive for perfectionism can easily carry over into our professional lives. But aiming for perfection often leads to procrastination and frustration. Learning to accept “good enough” has been liberating for us and has helped us become more action-oriented.
Setting fewer priorities: Instead of spreading yourself thin, focus on fewer meaningful goals that align with your values and purpose. Speaking from personal experience, not everything is important!
Letting go of control: Accept that you can’t accomplish everything or please everyone. This has been a hard lesson for us, but when we manage to let go, we notice a significant decrease in anxiety, especially about unfinished tasks.
We’ve found that shifting our mindset about time has helped us prioritize both our clinic and personal lives with greater clarity and less guilt. Four Thousand Weeks offers a refreshing reminder that doing “less” can actually mean living “more.”
Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
By Anthony De Mello
As part of the holistic approach we take with our patients, we often encourage them to reconnect with their own spirituality. For some, this might mean returning to a prior religious practice or exploring new avenues of spiritual growth.
In Awareness, Anthony De Mello weaves together Christian spirituality, Buddhist parables, Hindu breathing exercises, and psychological insights. These teachings come together to emphasize the transformative power of awareness—the practice of truly seeing yourself and the world as they are, without judgment or distortion.
Some practical takeaways from this book include:
The power of self-observation: Similar to what we encourage patients to do, De Mello encourages stepping back and observing thoughts and emotions without becoming attached to them. This practice can reveal patterns that hold us back.
Letting go of illusions: Many of our struggles come from clinging to beliefs or expectations that don’t reflect reality. Awareness helps us let go of these illusions and embrace what is.
Living in the present moment: When we cultivate awareness, we learn to stop living in the past or worrying about the future. This brings a sense of peace and focus to our daily lives.
This book is a beautiful reminder that awareness isn’t just for our patients—it’s a practice we can all benefit from as clinicians, entrepreneurs, and human beings.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being
By Rick Rubin
You know the old adage: practicing medicine is an art. As an extension, we’ve found that tailoring treatment for each patient in our clinic is an act of creativity. Similarly, as a small business owner, you may also find yourself engaging in creative pursuits like writing blogs or shooting videos to connect with your community.
The Creative Act, by Rick Rubin, is a guide to nurturing and expanding your creative potential. The book’s short chapters read like a series of creative koans—bite-sized pieces of wisdom to meditate upon and inspire action.
Some practical takeaways from this book include:
Embracing a beginner’s mindset: Be open and curious when challenges arise, even if you’ve faced similar ones before. Creativity often blossoms when you let go of assumptions and approach situations with fresh eyes.
Letting go of perfectionism: Rubin emphasizes that creativity thrives in experimentation and imperfection. For us, some of the best opportunities and ideas have come from moments when things didn’t go “perfectly.”
Staying attuned to inspiration: Creativity doesn’t follow a schedule. Rubin suggests cultivating daily habits, such as journaling or mindfulness, to remain open to new ideas. Practicing what we preach, these are the same activities we encourage our patients to incorporate into their lives.
Whether you’re navigating patient care, writing, or developing your clinic’s voice, The Creative Act is a powerful resource to inspire and sustain your creative pursuits. We personally recommend the audio version, narrated by Rick Rubin himself, who brings the insights of this world-famous music producer to life in a deeply soothing and reflective way.
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life
By Héctor García
Before we started our ketamine clinic, we were caught in the “golden handcuffs” of being high-paid physicians. Eventually, we asked ourselves: "Why are we doing this?" That pivotal question made us realize that we wanted to fulfill a bigger purpose, and for us, that meant building the ketamine clinic of our dreams.
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, by Héctor García, profoundly influenced our choices as business owners and continues to guide our journey. This book explores the Japanese concept of ikigai, which refers to living your life’s purpose—the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
Some practical takeaways from this book include:
Clarify your purpose: Take the time to reflect on what brings meaning and fulfillment to your life. Your ikigai serves as the foundation for building a clinic or pursuing any dream. Your purpose is your guiding light during difficult times.
Align your work with your passions: When your work aligns with what you love and what you’re skilled at, it feels less like a job and more like a calling. In other words, less burnout and more fun.
Focus on small, consistent actions: Ikigai emphasizes the importance of daily habits and incremental progress toward long-term goals. These little yet powerful habits add up over time, something else we share with our patients!
If you have plans to start your own ketamine clinic, the first step is to discover your why. For us, that why is a combination of autonomy, freedom, and practicing medicine in a way that aligns with our values. This book is a gentle yet powerful reminder to build a career—and a life—that truly reflects your passions and values.
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)
By Don Miguel Ruiz
If you’re looking to shift your perspective on the challenges of pivoting your career—or starting your own ketamine clinic—The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by Don Miguel Ruiz, is a must-read!
This book is filled with timeless wisdom that can reframe how you approach both personal and professional obstacles. The entire book is gold, but if you’re curious, here are the agreements:
Be Impeccable With Your Word
Don’t Take Anything Personally
Don’t Make Assumptions
Always Do Your Best
Of the four agreements, the one we’ve found most challenging is number 2: Don’t Take Anything Personally. It’s so easy to internalize feedback or take unkind words to heart. However, learning to embrace this agreement has brought us more peace and less overthinking.
As clinic owners, we serve patients who may be having bad days, and we work with others who may also be dealing with their own struggles. When we remind ourselves not to take their words or actions personally, it feels freeing. This agreement has helped us focus on what matters most—our work and our well-being—rather than getting caught up in unnecessary emotional weight.
For us, The Four Agreements has served as a guide to maintaining clarity and focus, both in running our clinic and navigating life’s daily hurdles. It’s a powerful tool to get your mindset back on track.
Discover More Resources to Support Your Clinic Success
We hope this book list inspires and supports you as you navigate the rewarding yet challenging journey of running a ketamine therapy clinic. Each of these books has provided us with invaluable insights, helping us grow both personally and professionally.
If you enjoyed this book list and would like access to more helpful resources for your entrepreneurial journey into providing ketamine therapy, sign up for our mailing list!
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