This is the time to discuss the barnacle lifestyle, a historic wanderer, seeking consistency and security.

The barnacle is confronted with a major decision early in its existence: where is it going to live? Once the decision is made, the barnacle spends the rest of its life with its head cemented to a rock or boat bottom. Not unlike some of the veterinarians we know...

Our friend and academic buddy, Chuck Darwin, spent nine years categorizing barnacles. While it slowed his exploration of evolution, he was the recognized authority, then and now. But even after the peer recognition and fame, Darwin stated it was an imbalanced dedication. The barnacle analogy is important, when we look at practices and practitioners, which stall in mid-career, as well as the habits that are now stagnating this profession we love. We use it to awaken those who have run out of steam, and to issue a challenge.

Hanging in There

We have all seen the pictures of critters desperately hanging onto a branch with a poster caption of "hang in there". Cute and funny, yet, in real life, disastrous. The commitment to survive is commendable, but survival is seldom progressive to the practice team. A consultant must view these individuals with compassion. Assessing the reasons for the "hang in there" mind-set is how an enhancement plan is initiated. Often, life presented the practitioner, or practice, a tougher problem than what could be solved with the available resources at the time. Or something or someone inflicted a major wound to their confidence or self-esteem. In some cases, they were pulled down by hidden resentments, family-learned dysfunctions, or grievances that grew during their adult lives. The feeling of being defeated creeps in on everyone's life at some time. The reactions vary with the personal mind-set. Some become cynical and sour, while others become stubborn and cement the status quo for security reasons. Either case is detrimental in the dynamic and turbulent times in which we live.

I am not comparing everyone to the "top practice" in the area, since I don't believe there is such a place. Even the previously mentioned VCI® Signature Series Monograph Models & Methods for Driving Breakthrough Performance is only offered as an option for the top forty percent of the veterinary practices in America. The rest still have to determine their vision, core values, mission focus, and standards of care before they can move forward.

Every practitioner has his or her own vision of practice excellence and success, and that is what the initial target needs to be. What is categorized as "hanging in there", in my mind, is when a practice culture stops individuals from learning or growing. They may appear busy, but in close evaluation, they are just going through the motions of old processes. Following set processes in itself isn't pathogenic. Life is hard. Just to keep going is sometimes a significant act of courage, I do worry about women and men who function far below the level of their potential, and become especially concerned when the individual's development is retarded by the practice management philosophy or doctor-based apprehensions.

We must face the fact that many veterinarians out there in the world are more stale than they really know. Just look at the rate of continuing education attendance, by themselves or their team members. Often these veterinarians and staff teams are more bored than any care to admit. Boredom is a secret ailment of many practices. The "boss" is so concerned with ensuring process that the outcomes, as well as the original reasons for operation, are lost in the quest for mediocrity. As asked so often, "How can I be bored when I am so busy?" we reply, "Let me count the ways!" It is known that boredom can rise to the level of a mystic experience. Some of the busiest veterinarians are among the great mystics of our day.

Complacency and Rigidity

We can't write off the danger of complacency, growing rigidity, and the imprisonment by professional habits and opinions. It is an inherent characteristic of any professional who is taught there is "one best way" by the current academic training methods. In healthcare, it is especially ingrained with the worry of malpractice and the awareness of community practice standards. Look around, even at people who are younger than yourselves. Many people are trapped by fixed attitudes and habits. Like a clock with frozen hands, they will occasionally be perfectly right, which will reinforce the validity of their inflexible position. Working within the professional associations of this profession, I could list "leaders" whose clocks have stopped, and could even tell you approximately what year it occurred. I'll stop there, simply because I still have to deal with them periodically.

The term "arf" is well known in veterinary medicine, but it should be capitalized as "ARF", for "Absolute Rigid Flexibility". If we approach life with an "arf" attitude, we might understand that everything that occurs actually offers us options. It is not the choice of the right path, since every choice has consequences, and, therefore, every path has a track to follow. The real options in life are how the path is followed, or better yet, how someone leads a team down or up the path of life. Yes, leadership is the key to successful choices, rather than the quest for extra data to ensure someone makes the "best choice". Risk is associated with every choice in life, and the apprehension and failure to take a risk or make a new choice is, in fact, a choice with a risk.

If we are aware that there is continual danger of "mental atrophy", we can initiate counter-surveillance measures. The surveillance is sometimes auditory, as in the phrase, "We have always done it this way." It is sometimes visual, as in "Remember to smile when you answer the phone." Occasionally it is olfactory, as in, "I smell an old habit recurring, musty and stagnant." Some readers have fur-lined their rut so well that they feel change and enhancements are just not possible for them. That life and their practice have them trapped. This is not fact. It is perception. Life can take unexpected turns.

It is not unlike the trapper trekking across the snow-capped mountains with snowshoes and a load of furs. The smart trappers knew which ravines led down to water and shelter, and the adventurous kept trying until they found a way. The less smart kept on their snow shoes, because they didn't want to take them off when they dropped below the snow line to explore alternatives. Their bones are often preserved in the snow fields of their first "mountain top" experience.

Prisons and Jailers

It has become very evident that we seldom get to build our own prisons. Our society, the family life experiences, and our parents have had a major hand in building the prisons of our lives. These three factors created the roles, and self-images, that routed career choices, and initially held each of us captive for so long. Any individual, who selects a "new path" in life, will have to deal with the ghosts of the past: the memories of earlier failures, the remnants of childhood experiences and revolts, and accumulated grievances and resentments that have long outlived their cause. Some people cling to their ghosts with a tenacity of valor, sometimes approaching a form of pleasure, but concurrently hampering their growth, making their existence inescapable. As mountain climbers so often state, "You never conquer the mountain, you only conquer yourself."

Others may have been instrumental in building our prisons, but we are our own jail keepers. We often consider growing up a function of adolescence, but in life it continues much longer. (To you parents of teenagers, I apologize for scaring you with this statement.) It takes being an adult to learn how to release oneself from the prison of the past. If it occurs by the age forty, you must consider yourself lucky. There is a myth that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks", which every member of every veterinary medical team knows is false. Yet, they put limitations on themselves. It's what you learn, after you think you know it all that really counts.

The jail keeper in you must be awakened, and you must learn about your own life. Learn from the misadventures. Learn from the successes. When you hit a spell of trouble, ask your jail keeper, "What is life trying to teach me?" We learn from families, our friends, and our life encounters. We learn by suffering, by growing older, and by bearing up under the things we can't change. More importantly, by nurturing others, by loving, and by taking risks, we learn faster. The lessons are not always happy ones, but they keep coming. It isn't bad to occasionally pause and look inward, to challenge that jail keeper inside you, and reflect on alternatives ignored or cast away as not appropriate, for that one moment in time. By mid-life, most people have become fugitives from themselves!

Barnacles are not on Mountain Tops

There are many different types of barnacles, and Darwin listed them. But they all live below the surface. They don't make waves. They don't cause ripples in the pond. They just survive.

Humans scramble up the mountain of life. Each person sweats and strains to reach a new plateau, where they can "catch their breath". It is curious that we subject ourselves to scoring by others, as we reach each plateau, in a quest to learn about our own excellence. It is more curious that "excellence" has grades of competency in most people's minds, such as in A-B-C-D-F, or with scales rated one to ten.

As each person ascends a personal mountain, intermediate goals are reached. When you stand on that plateau and look around, chances are there is an empty feeling, and maybe even more than just a little empty. You wonder if the climb is worth it, or worse, whether you are climbing the wrong mountain. But life isn't a mountain with a single summit. It isn't the single-finger answer to life employed by Curly in the movie, City Slickers. It isn't a game that has a final score. It is an endless unfolding of self-discovery. It is an endless and unpredictable dialogue between potentials and life situations.

Unlike the barnacle buddies, each person has more resources of energy than what they have tapped. There is more talent, more dreams, and more strength than what has ever been tested. Each person can give more than what has been given before, given the right environment, the appropriate cause, and the personal self-belief to make it happen.