How do we help others change?
Being a dietitian is hard work. How many of you have had this experience: client contacts you, is ready to make changes with their health, all on board and wants your first appointment. Client comes in, shares their goals and hands the baton off to you. You converse back and forth, ask all the right questions, get a pretty good picture of how to work with this client and then provide the plan. The client is ready to go, seems motivated and verbalizes they understand everything, make their follow-up appointment and off they go to implement it.
Until they don't show up for their follow-up and you don't hear from them for 6 months or ever again.
For us as practitioners, it is trial and error with each client. We know we can't have a one-size-fits-all approach but we also know we are dealing with....HUMANS. One minute we are in it to win it, the next minute we are over it. We know the secret sauce to help people as dietitians. We know it takes effort every day for many days to see positive changes. We know people do not usually like to give change the time it needs.
So how can we help others change?
I believe, we need to quit telling people what they think they want to hear to reach their health goals. I think we need to stop making them subtract things from their lives and instead change the environment in which they live. Habits can be great and habits can be damaging and most of us live in a habit created environment.
If there is one takeaway from this post today, when you are meeting with a client about their health goals - ask them what they do from the minute they wake up to the minute they fall asleep. What motions do they go through and that's where the real secret sauce is.
#quality | #embracethehellyeah
~AE
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