Just a few days to the New Year and another opportunity to write your resolutions for 2026. I wrote a similar message to my patient/community list on Monday and asked was losing weight, exercising more, improving your diet, finding time to relax and taking more vacations high on their list?  These popular topics are all health and wellness related and begs for their attention. Unfortunately, most of us fail to realize our resolutions quite early within the New Year.

As far as chiropractors, businesspeople, responsible for the health and wellness of our community, there is more of a challenge. We need to be on top of our game. managing patients and staff as well as our personal life. It is a challenge for sure.

My goal has been to write these weekly e-newsletters and provide sound chiropractic business advice with motivation and doable concepts including links to Youtube videos and articles that add content to the topic of the week. Here we learn together but for me what is most encouraging is the number of weekly readers and how many share these with others reaching close to over thirty countries each week. So, please take a moment to read them, I spend a lot of time writing them, and forward them along to chiropractic students and colleagues. My resolution is to keep on keeping on. Always great to get your feedback: joel3639@aol.com

When it comes to our practice and business in general, it’s easy to free float concern worrying about odds and ends resulting in excessive stress with unstable outcomes. This keeps you busy managing rather than creating. When I was in high school, a popular magazine was Mad Magazine. Alfred E. Neuman was the main character, featured above, who always found ways to create chaos saying "What, Me Worry." This very popular magazine was discussed amongst the students which was a way to view the folly in the world and being appreciative it wasn't you. It also spawned a number of other like characters.

In today's MAD world and the ever changing healthcare environment, we need to return to the past before GPS, smart phones and the internet to create our personal Trip Tik to fulfil our practice resolutions and avoid pitfalls, roadblocks and tributaries during our New Year journey. If you were a member of AAA, you ordered a TripTik, a flipchart booklet and map outlining your journey. Today, AAA offers it on their internet app. Want a Healthier, Happier and More Prosperous New Year, then spend the next few weeks creating and writing your professional goals (Your Personal TripTik) with specific Actions and Baby Steps. 

Outline important business changes including how to recapture the resolutions you did not reach in 2025. Set these goals and be sure they are not too lofty but reachable. Write them down with solutions and the roadblocks from this year with ideas to avoid them in 2026. Also, who can you depend on to help you along the way, someone that will keep you on track? This may be a staff member, a fellow chiropractor, your spouse or partner or a professional consultant. Having someone looking over your shoulder and watching your back makes it less a risk to fail.

As chiropractors, we need to lean on each other. There are more than enough patients out there, the game is getting them in and managing them correctly. This should be within your goals for 2026; have patients follow their treatment schedules, maintain their adjustments with monthly appointments, tell their friends and family about chiropractic and your office and be assured your staff are team members not just an ornament. As a businessperson, don't overextend yourself financially and have a solid financial plan for patients so you keep the steady stream of money coming in. Plan active staff meetings, take time to meet and greet community professionals and create alliances that draw a steady flow of new patients.

I hope you benefitted reading my weekly e-newsletters. One may not be relevant for you that day but may be very relevant in the future, so a quick look might come in handy. There are plenty of chiropractic consultants, seminar gurus, professors and others that have a gift for gab and can offer you more than what I have been sending to you, but my humble attempt to share with you has been a gift for me. Sharing is Caring and learning from each other should be our New Year's Resolution and Goal for sure