Welcome back to My Good Allied Health Practice—where we talk about the wins, the wobbles, and the real work behind running an allied health practice. It’s been a while between episodes, and today I’m back with a big old dose of honesty.

In this episode, I’m diving into the idea of heaviness—not the physical kind (though mid-40s, toast, and tight jeans do get a mention), but the mental weight we put on tasks that really aren’t all that hard.

We all do it. That job ad we haven’t posted. The short email we can’t seem to send. The feedback we need to give but keep rehearsing in our heads. These things aren’t always hard, but the stories we build around them make them heavy. And heavy gets in the way.

Here’s what I covered:

• Why I hadn’t recorded a podcast in months (yes, I forgot how!)
• The real reason I didn’t post a job ad for weeks—even though it was written and ready
• How a two-minute staff question turned into an accidental systems audit
• The sneaky ways we decorate simple tasks with overthinking, what-ifs, and guilt
• The difference between something being hard and something just feeling heavy

And most importantly, I shared what I’m practising to get out of that heaviness:

• Let it be simple – not everything needs a flowchart
• Let it be imperfect – done is better than emotionally drained
• Let it be started – just take the tiniest first step

Key takeaways to reflect on:

• Ask yourself: Is this actually hard, or am I making it heavy?
• Start small and messy. Progress over polish wins every time.
• Pause and notice what you're adding to a task in your mind that’s weighing you down.

If this episode hits home (and I suspect it might), here’s what you can do next:

• Take a pause. Look at your to-do list. What’s actually heavy—and what just feels that way?
• Reach out if you want some support. I offer mentoring, and I’d love to welcome you inside The Connection, my membership community for allied health practice owners.

Thanks for being here with me. You’re doing a really good job—even when it feels heavy. Especially then.

Learn more about me and join the community at:

theconnectionco.com.au

Foreign.

Welcome to my good Allied Health Practice, the podcast for allied health business owners who are looking to bring smart and heart together on their journey.

On the podcast, I'll cover things about being vulnerable and brave, pivoting failures, good wins, things that work, things that don't work.

And I'll talk with other practice owners who are doing good in their journeys.

I'm Amy Geach, practice owner and mum, and I'm here because I believe in you.

So let's go forward on this journey together.

Hello.

Hello, lovely humans, and welcome back to my podcast where I talk about the winds, the wobbles, and the work involved in running an allied health practice.

And I'm really glad that you are here.

I have not recorded an episode in quite some time.

Two things happened.

The hosting platform reached out and said, do you even want to keep your subscription going?

So that was a big kick up the bump.

So, yeah, I did absolutely have a wobble there.

And the second thing was when I got on to record the episode for today, I forgot how to do it.

I was looking around on my laptop.

What's the program I use again?

Oh, that's right, Audacity.

And I opened that up and I was like, no, this isn't looking right.

This is not normally where I record it.

Where do I record it?

So, yes, go me.

Living the dream, living the dream.

Now, what I want to talk to you today about is when we make things heavy, heavier than they need to be.

And this is then a weight that we carry around as practice owners.

Now, if you are in my membership, you'll know that every week I share a word of the week.

It's become one of my favorite things to do.

And it's just a little something to anchor us, to challenge us, or just give us a fresh frame to look through or fresh lens to look through.

And this week, it always comes out on a Wednesday.

And this week, my word of the week was wait.

And no, not the kind of weight that creeps up on you when you hit your mid-40s, which is where I am right now.

And suddenly, even thinking about my toast in the morning just makes jeans feel tight, right?

I'm not loving it.

So I am talking about a different kind of weight.

Not the kind that is sitting around my middle right now or sitting on my chin.

Not loving it.

So let's get into this weight that we carry.

Some weeks, what really wears me down isn't how much I have to do, it's how heavy it all feels because I'm a bit of a Goer.

I like to be productive.

I like to be busy.

So being busy isn't an issue for me.

I kind of thrive in that environment, but it's the heaviness of it that is more likely to bring me to my knees.

Have you ever been there?

Have you ever looked at your to do list?

And technically it's not that long.

I mean, a to do list can go on for forever.

I always believe there is always something to do.

But if you look at your to do list for today, maybe it's not that long.

It could have things like send an email to the gp, follow up that NJS inquiry for my client, write the job ad.

Each task on its own could probably take 10 to 15 minutes, maybe for a job ad, maybe 30 minutes.

But somehow we end up carrying it around all week like it's a sack of bricks.

Take the email to the gp.

You know it only takes a few minutes to write, but you start thinking all sorts of things.

Should I sound more formal?

Will they think I'm being pushy?

What if they don't reply?

Do I follow up?

What if they do reply and I'm too busy to deal with it and then suddenly you've spent two hours across three days thinking about it, worrying about it, feeling guilty that you haven't done it and re remembering what it was even about?

The task itself is often light.

Not everything, but a lot of the tasks are often light and not overly time consuming, but the mental weight of the task heavy.

And when we overthink it or we go round and round in a circle, we make it heavier than what it needs to be.

Lately I've absolutely been catching myself doing this a lot.

Here is a classic example I thought I would share with you.

I have had this plan in my practice that I've wanted to re bring back our lymphedema clinic.

We used to have one in both the Wagger Clinic that I own and the Launceston Clinic that I own and we close it down to go back to focusing on our core business because there were already lots of other lymphedema services that were popping up in the area and we didn't have the staff to dedicate to the lymphedema service at the time.

Anyway, long long story short or short story long, which I often tend to do.

We ended up closing that down, but recently I've been wanting to start that back up again.

I've got some renewed energy around it.

I've got some really, really great ideas on how to run the Lymphedema clinic in a more creative way, which I'm really excited about.

So I need to advertise for a lymphedema therapist.

Now, this is pretty straightforward.

We've done this before, we've had this service before, it's not hard.

I know exactly what I want, who I'm looking for.

So, yeah, absolutely, should be straightforward, right.

But I have sat on it for weeks and weeks and my CFO said to me the other day, my chief finance officer that I have on my team, she said to me, have you advertised for your lymphedema therapist yet?

Because on the budget, even that's going to look nice for my clinic.

And I said, no, I haven't.

It's all there, ready to go.

I've got all my thoughts there and drafted ad and everything.

But I just wasn't doing it.

And I was making it heavier than it needed to be because I kept thinking, how do I word it just right?

Do I mention that we're flexible?

What if we don't get anyone?

Is now even the right time to be hiring?

What if I can't deliver a creative lymphedema service the way I want to?

I'm not on the ground who's going to onboard them the way I want this service to start.

And round and round and round it went.

Anyway, I finally sat down this week, wrote the final copy of the ad, popped it online and it took me, Yep, wait for it one hour.

Done.

And I have been carrying this around for weeks.

I had made it so much heavier than it needed to be.

Not the actual task, but the build up.

The build up.

Here's another one.

I had a staff member just yesterday ask me a really simple question and it was a great question.

She said, if the client has filled out a certain form online, do they still need to do this other one when they come into the rooms?

Pretty simple, yeah.

It was a two minute question.

I could have said, all good, they don't need to, or, yep, just get them to fill that in as well and explain why.

But instead I went on this investigative deep dive.

Suddenly I found myself reviewing the entire ecosystem of our forms.

What do we collect?

When, where, what's duplicated?

Should we move to digital fully?

Who designed these forms anyway?

When?

What's the prompt for them to go out?

Do they have all the information that we need?

Why do we have a double up here?

Um, and I was asking the questions back to my client coordinator as well.

In this tone of trying to investigate it, she was Being extremely helpful.

Anyway, an hour later, I have completely spiraled and the original question was still unanswered.

And I just stopped myself and thought, this isn't the time to be doing this right now.

I have made this heavier.

I'm now got this weighed on my mind about our forms, when really I just needed to answer the question.

And I always see this play out in our community too.

As allied health practice owners, I see it all the times and some of the places I see it is when maybe you want to post something on social media.

You plan it, you overthink it, you delete it, you rewrite it.

You're not posting.

Doesn't get done in the way that it could quickly get done.

You've got a client who's overdue on invoices.

Instead of picking up the phone or sending the email, you marinate in the resentment or the anxiety about it, and the invoice remains overdue.

You need to give a team member some feedback, maybe.

So you carry it around in your head, imagining 47 different outcomes, crying in the shower.

And when you actually have the conversation, it's surprisingly fine, sometimes even good.

So often I find we don't just do the task.

We decorate it with fear, guilt, what ifs.

We turn it into the whole opera.

So here is what I keep returning to.

It's not the task that's hard.

It's the story I'm telling myself about the task.

And when I feel something getting heavier than it needs to be, I try really hard to pause and ask myself, is this actually hard or am I making it heavy?

Most of the time, I'm making it heavy.

So what helps in this situation?

Here's what I am practicing, and I want to really pause on that word there.

This is what I am practicing.

Because I don't have this down pat.

Okay?

What I'm trying to do is let things be simple.

Not everything has to be strategic.

Not everything has to have a flowchart.

Doesn't have to be emotionally intelligent, perfectly worded, or even especially amazing.

I just need to get it done.

My second thing that I am practicing is let it be imperfect.

Done is better than emotionally drained.

Progress over polish.

And I saw this really great meme the other day on Facebook when I was doing a bit of scrolling, and it was about somebody who is a perfectionist but also a procrastinator.

And they were, you know, laying on the ground worrying about the things that they hadn't even started yet.

And I thought, yes, spot on.

I can fully relate.

Let it Be imperfect.

And that's okay.

And the third thing that I am practicing is let it be started.

And I always encourage everybody else to do this.

What is the first small step you can take?

What is the micro step?

And then what's the next micro step?

I'm not always great at doing that myself.

Sometimes even opening the email draft is a win.

And just writing Dear Dr.

Blah blah blah, and then just making a start.

So let it be simple.

Not everything has to have a strategy.

Let it be imperfect.

Done is better than being emotionally drained.

And let it be started.

Just start the first small step.

And once it's done, I often think, why did that feel so big?

Like all that drama in my head and the real task, Easy peasy, easy peasy.

So let's wrap this up because I think, I think you've got what I'm putting down today.

Here are my takeaways.

Number one is identify what's actually hard and what is just heavy.

And that could be on a daily basis.

Maybe when you write down your list of things you need to do that day.

If, if you are in the habit of doing that, maybe just make a little note of the things that you think you might be inclined to make heavy just as a little check in with yourself.

Not all tasks are created equal and I absolutely get that.

But I want you to notice when you're over carrying something that is actually smaller.

The second thing that I want you to take away from today is to start small.

Start messy.

It's hard for us perfectionists, but start messy.

Just start.

Because momentum is our gift, right?

And you don't need clarity or confidence.

You just need movement.

Okay, so just start.

And the third one is to use the power of the pause.

When the task feels heavy, pause and ask what am I adding to this in my mind and what's the actual task here?

Because if you go back to my lymphedema ad that I was wanting to put out, the task itself was posting the job ad that I had drafted weeks and weeks and weeks ago.

All I had to do was post that onto OT Australia to some Facebook groups around job vacancies.

That's actually all I needed to do.

That was the task.

But I had added to it in my mind and grouped that one task with how am I going to onboard this person and roll out this creative lymphedema clinic that's on my mind.

So I had added all of that in and made the task of posting the job add so much heavier than it needed to be.

You have more energy than you think in your tank.

You're just using it up, carrying tasks that could have probably been already done by now.

Ouch.

I'm kind of talking to myself there, but maybe you can relate.

So if this episode hits home, and I think that it will for a lot of you, is, here are a few ways to take it further.

Reach out to me if you're ready for support.

I offer mentoring.

Or you can join my membership and just offload a little because we are here and we're here to help you.

And sometimes sharing what's on your mind can make it so much easier and take some of that heaviness away.

So that's one thing that you can do.

You can take a pause, write down your list, and mark those things that feel heavy for sure.

Next time you're staring down a tiny task and it feels like a ton, just remind yourself you don't need to carry this whole thing at once.

Just take that first step.

You are doing a really good job.

Running a private practice is not easy.

Okay.

And even when it feels heavy, especially then, you were doing a really good job.

See you next time.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you for being here.

I am incredibly grateful.

If you have a friend that would find this helpful, please go ahead and share it with them too.

You can learn more about me and and how to be part of my Allied Health Connection community over at theconnectionco.com au.