November is a month of reflection – Thanksgiving, coming down the home stretch of the year, the leaves turning, symbolically displaying the transition between the old and the new.

Your goals for the New Year should be written, and your attention should be firmly on finishing the year strong – this usually isn’t a time for major course correction, but rather for playing your hand and maxing out your results for this cycle.

You know where you expected to be at this time – did you surpass your desired objectives? Hit them? Get close? Miss by more than you projected? No matter what the outcome, there is valuable information hidden in your results that can help you identify sticking points and challenges to address for the New Year.

Do you need to focus on new patients? On developing better patient compliance? On establishing better financial policies and enforcing them? Did you hold yourself to a high standard of personal growth and development? Is your practice a good example of what you are attempting to build? All these thoughts go into the mindset for a November that provides both a solid climax to this year, and a powerful jumping off point for next year.

And don’t forget to acknowledge Thanksgiving in some way, whether you do a major promotion or not. It’s a time for expressing gratitude, and we have so much to be grateful for, let’s honor the season with an overt demonstration of our appreciation, for our patients, for our profession, for our families and for our lives.