How Limiting Beliefs Are Holding You Back from Starting Your Ketamine Clinic

So, do you have plans of starting a ketamine clinic? Has it been on your mind for a while now? If you answered “yes” to both of these questions, now ask yourself why you haven’t started yet. Are you busy? Do you lack the knowledge? Are you afraid? In this blog, we’re here to tell you the harsh truth that your realities aren’t what’s stopping you from starting. And what is stopping you, exactly? YOURSELF! Keep on reading to find out why…

Limiting beliefs are called limiting for a reason. And by getting rid of them, you will find it much easier to take action and create positive changes in your life.

Limiting Beliefs? Why Even Care? 

You may be thinking, “Are you going to start telling me to think more positive thoughts and do mantras? And then say that’s all that I’ve been missing?” Well, as much as we wish it were that easy, the answer is nope. 

Don’t get us wrong, we’re all for positivity and mantras. In fact, we have them written all over our house! What we are talking about are beliefs or states of mind that prevent you from acting or being in some way. They can develop from past events that have occured which resulted in an undesired outcome or from repeated messaging and programming from authority figures in our past (like your parents, culture, attendings during training, etc.). 

Here are examples of limiting beliefs, as pertaining to starting a ketamine clinic (you might recognize some of them as your own!):

• I don’t have enough time to start a ketamine clinic

• I have to learn everything about starting a private practice before I start my ketamine clinic

• My residency training didn’t include using ketamine, so I shouldn’t provide ketamine infusions

Do any of those sound familiar to you? Perhaps you share these beliefs. You may be thinking, “But wait Sam and Kim, these aren’t beliefs, these are reality!” We completely understand where you are coming from because we’ve been there, right where you are, on the precipice of change and starting your clinic. See, these are limiting beliefs because they are restricting you from taking action. And yes, these realities could be true for you, but only because you are setting these limits for yourself.

Creating reasons and excuses are much easier than actually taking action. By questioning these “reasons,” you will eventually learn that they don’t define your reality.

Limiting Beliefs Masquerading As “Reasons”

If any of those reasons above don’t hit you to the core, you may be thinking, “I don’t believe I have any limiting beliefs.”  Well how about this. What are all the reasons why you haven’t started your ketamine clinic yet? We bet that is a lot easier to come up with right? Or if we want to go down the tough love route, what are your excuses for not starting?!? 

When we lack courage to start something new and unknown, our mind does a wonderful job of coming up with reasons for not changing the status quo. Even if said status quo is burning you out or is not fulfilling. These “reasons” are actually limiting beliefs masquerading under the guise of logical reasoning or your so-called reality. Feeling a little defensive now? We did too! This is expected, and as you start looking at these “reasons” and recognize them as beliefs, you begin to question them. 

The act of questioning them can cause emotions to come up. For some, just the idea of questioning the “reasons” can ruffle feathers! Please know you are in a good place. Recognize any stirring of emotions and any questioning or confusion you may be feeling means you are on the right track!

Go over your different limiting beliefs one-by-one and see how you can dispel them by creating a new reality for yourself.

Time To Dispel Some Beliefs: Examples

To go from inaction due to limiting beliefs to courageous action-taking, let’s start by going over some examples of dispelled beliefs (using the ones from above):

• I don’t have enough time to start a ketamine clinic - when we started our clinic, both of us were working. Sam was working at three different ERs, and Kim was a full time ophthalmologist at an academic center. We had a strong reason to start our clinic, so we carved out time early in the morning (for Kim), evenings (for Sam), and the weekend (for the both of us) to work on filling out forms, making calls, and looking for locations. As we got busier once the clinic was opened, we both scaled back our traditional clinical work. The truth is that you do have time, but you are using that time to do other things like binging on Netflix for example. If you make starting your clinic a priority, then you will make time.

• I have to learn everything about starting a private practice before I start my ketamine clinic - sure you need to learn the basics like how to start your own corporation or LLC or who is allowed to open a medical clinic in your state, but that shouldn’t stop you from actually taking action. We’ve seen plenty of fellow physicians get stuck in this belief, we too had this belief. We spent hours and hours researching online and contacting other ketamine clinic owners asking questions. Yes, of course some of it was helpful, but in actuality we were giving ourselves an excuse to not take action. We believed back then that we needed to read and learn everything so that we could make an informed decision before we could act. Don’t get us wrong, the spirit of this belief can be good for your patients, like “I must learn everything I can about this disease before I treat them.” But when you take this thinking to starting your clinic, too much overthinking and over-preparing could lead to inaction. In the realm of starting the private practice aspect of your ketamine clinic, good enough is good enough. Don’t strive for perfection or you will never start.

• My residency training didn’t include using ketamine, so I shouldn’t provide ketamine infusions - search online and check out the specialties of physicians who started ketamine clinics. You’ll find that some of these ketamine specialists wouldn’t have traditionally had training during their residency for utilizing ketamine in the IV form (like psychiatry or radiology). While you may have your opinion on who “should” or “should not” be allowed to treat patients with IV ketamine, there are physicians out there in your “should not” category that are. Plus they are doing it safely and successfully. How? They learned how to perform ketamine infusions from someone. They read the research. They prepared themselves to be able to handle acute issues or emergencies that could occur during the infusion. Guess what? So can you.

As much as these limiting beliefs seem like reality, they truly aren’t what define you. It takes courage and loads of self-awareness to dispel yourself of these beliefs, but it is definitely possible with determination.

You Have More Control Than You Think

The goal of this blog was to open your eyes to the possibility that your realities aren’t what they actually are. They are simply limitations you created for yourself. The best part is that you have the power to change these limiting beliefs. Don’t be a victim to your circumstances. Own up to your thoughts, take charge, and start identifying what’s stopping you!

In the next blog of this 2-part series, we go over the specifics on how you can dispel these limiting beliefs and start putting your new thoughts into practice.

In the first part of this 2-part series, we explain what limiting beliefs are and why they’re stopping you from building the ketamine clinic of your dreams.

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