The thing most patients want is hope. Hope enlarged the reception rooms of the Gonstead's, the Thompson's, the Epstein's and the other masters past and present.

Patients have ultra-sensitive hope receptors. The primary channel they use is the countless nuances of your body language that communicate certainty and confidence. Carefully scripted and practiced words calculated to cover up such deficiencies are rarely effective. When they are, it's with the least discerning and gullible. These days, there aren't enough of those to make much of a living serving them.

Recipe for uncertainty:

• Sell out your principles for money or acceptance.
• Have poor, nonexistent or unenforced boundaries.
• Invest your spirit in outcomes you can't control.
• Constantly worry about whether patients like you.
• Have an inflated sense of your adjusting ability.
• Acquire a thin skin, stop growing and improving.

Do the reverse! All the while being certain of this: no hope, no healing.