I often tell parents that children possess an extraordinary internal world—a landscape where imagination is both vivid and powerful. And every so often, I am reminded just how much we adults can learn from them.
Not long ago, I met a seven-year-old girl I’ll call Sarah. She had lived most of her young life under the shadow of severe asthma. Every cold meant fear. Every sniffle meant preparing for the hospital. Her mother, exhausted by the cycle, hoped there might be another way—a gentler, more integrative path forward. When they came to see me, Sarah was tired, scared, and desperate to feel like a normal kid again.
We began weekly hypnosis sessions, each one an invitation for her to step into the power of her own imagination. For two months, she practiced visualization, breathing, and self-calming strategies that allowed her to feel safe inside her body again. In one session, we drew a balloon for her lungs—a soft, round balloon held steady and open by her personal “superheroes”: a dog, a cat, and a unicorn who protected her whenever she felt sick. In another session, she identified the rising wave of fear she sensed at the start of an asthma flare. Together, we crafted a tapping phrase to anchor her in calm: “Even though I feel afraid, I know my lungs can stay healthy and strong.” She drew her animals in the grass and added three little “buttons” to remind her where to tap whenever she needed support.
About six weeks after starting therapy, Sarah’s sister came down with a cold. Predictably, Sarah followed. The sore throat. The runny nose. The familiar dread. But this time, instead of spiraling into panic, she paused. She breathed. She visualized her lungs remaining strong, open, and steady. She tapped and repeated her affirmation. She used her inhaler when needed, but relied on her imagination as her primary anchor. Two weeks later, she and her mother arrived in my office beaming. She had weathered the illness—simply as a cold. No ER visit. No hospitalization. No trauma. She had rewritten her own story by daring to imagine something different.
Sarah’s success is not only a testament to the transformative potential inside a child’s mind—it is a mirror for us as physicians. Because the truth is this:
We cannot create what we cannot imagine.
And in the world of Direct Primary Care, this truth matters more than ever.
For most of our lives—through medical school, residency, and years of traditional practice—we have been taught to operate inside rigid structures. Schedules, RVUs, productivity targets, panel sizes, rooming workflows, administratively mandated visit lengths. Our careers have been shaped inside systems that leave little room for dreaming, let alone imagining something radically different.
DPC flips that paradigm on its head. For many of us, it may be the first time in our professional lives that someone has quietly placed the key in our hands and whispered: “You are allowed to imagine the practice you want.” No one tells us what it should look like. No one sets the rules. And with that freedom often comes a surprising, sometimes unsettling truth: imagination can feel foreign after years of constraint.
But here’s the good news—we have excellent teachers. Every child like Sarah reminds us that creativity is not frivolous. It is a tool for healing, expanding, building, and transforming. Imagination fuels creative thoughts, which fuel feelings of possibility, which fuel bold and intentional action.
So the question becomes: if you allowed yourself to imagine your ideal clinical life—the version that brings joy, fulfillment, and excellent patient care—what would it look like?
Would you design a practice that caters to newborns and breastfeeding mothers? Would you build a clinic centered around ADHD, autism, and pediatric mental health, truly meeting those families where the system fails them? Would you dive into lifestyle medicine—teaching cooking classes, leading family nutrition workshops, or hosting outdoor movement groups? Would you structure your work week around five-hour days? Or three-day workweeks? Would you intentionally block off two full months of vacation every year because rest enhances the care you give?
Would you create online courses? Host parent workshops? Build a solo “micropractice” where you do it all—or a multi-clinician collaborative practice that becomes a pediatric hub for your community?
Would your clinic be a single cozy room filled with warmth and art, or a shared multifunctional space buzzing with integrative services? Would your window look out onto a tree, a park, or a mural of a beautiful landscape you chose simply because it brings you joy?
There are no wrong answers. There are only unexplored possibilities.
The sky is truly the limit in DPC—but only if we give ourselves permission to imagine beyond what we’ve seen before. This model invites us to practice medicine with artistry as much as with evidence, with intention as much as with logic. It invites us to create the practices we needed back when we were drowning in burnout. And it invites us to build something worthy of the extraordinary families we serve.
Just as Sarah imagined a new reality for her lungs, we can imagine a new reality for our work lives. And once we imagine it—boldly, clearly, unapologetically—we can begin to create it.
Because the future of your practice is already inside your mind.
You just have to dare to imagine it.
If you’d like more guidance launching or growing your own direct care practice, DPC Pediatrician offers a free startup guide, a Startup Foundations group coaching program, on-demand courses, and even one-on-one consulting.
