Do you have a clear vision for your massage career? Do you have a goal of how many clients you would like to see each week, how much they will pay you, and how you will balance work with the rest of your life? If the answer is yes, bravo! It is imperative to have a strong vision of what you want, if you truly want to get there. But let me guess—are you waiting for something to fall into place before you really go for it?
Maybe you are waiting for your website to be complete. Maybe you are waiting for the money to upgrade your office. Maybe you are waiting until you have learned that new modality. Or maybe you are waiting for a sign from the universe, to lose 10 pounds, or to get your teeth fixed. Whatever it is, it does not matter. You already have everything it takes to succeed.
There will never come a time when you feel perfectly ready. Waiting for perfection in any part of life is a recipe for missing out. Nobody who reaches success has done so from a point of feeling 100 percent prepared. Life requires leaps of faith. Taking the leap means believing in yourself and trusting that as you reach out for what you want, you are inviting what you need to come to you.
Our Perceptions of Value
In this column, I have written a lot about value. The value we place on our work has everything to do with how we present ourselves to the world as massage therapists and bodyworkers. If we want to be recognized and compensated as service professionals that are as vital to our clients’ lives as their accountants, doctors, and lawyers, we need to recognize ourselves in this way.
It is common to want to wait until we have one more modality certification, one more massage tool, or the perfect office before we step up our marketing game. This idea is holding us back from being our best selves. It is a way of procrastinating. The certificates on the wall, a new towel warmer, and the sign outside the office door are not the things preventing us from realizing our value and letting ourselves be seen.
We are the only obstacles preventing this from happening. It takes courage to go to a networking event and introduce ourselves to strangers and talk about our work. It takes courage to spread our message on our blogs and social media. Any time we present ourselves to the world, we are vulnerable. Do it anyway.
One thing to count on as we begin sharing ourselves with a wider range of people, raising our prices, and touting the valuable outcomes of our work is that we will receive some criticism. Whether it comes from a client, a peer massage therapist, or a family member who has a negative reaction to seeing our growth, something will happen that will sting. Knowing that this is inevitable, do it anyway.
Any negativity we receive will be a tiny fraction of the overall response. It will come from people who want us to stay small so they won’t feel pressured to grow themselves. So many more people will be happy we are sharing our skills and our message. They have been looking for us, they need our help, and unless we open up and share, they will never know we are there. You could even say that if we continue to wait for something outside of ourselves to give us the confidence to share our skills in a bigger way, we are actually harming the people who need our services now.
We are required in this field to endow ourselves with our own value, as massage therapy does not have a long history of being valued in our society. We need to know in our minds, bodies, and souls that what we offer enhances peoples’ lives so much that it is worth earning a good living wage. Our best clients already know this. They know they require our work to live their lives to the fullest. Listen to what they say about your work, and use these words to promote what you do best.
Life Starts Now
It is human nature to procrastinate. We can make really good excuses about why we need to wait until later to do something. We will be more prepared in the future. We will know more then. We will have more experience. While this may be true, it also may not. Time can go by and we can lose focus and energy. We can begin to talk ourselves out of our deepest desires so we don’t have to face the challenging parts of the journey.
I am not advocating that you stop learning new techniques and improving your skills. Not at all. What I am suggesting is that you do not wait for some undefined point in the future to begin thinking of yourself as a professional with something extremely valuable to offer. I want you to start embodying that thought right now.
In life, we need to make a leap. We need to do the scary thing we don’t think we can do. We need to find the value and energy inside ourselves that we are waiting for the world to recognize. Waiting only means we are kept out of view.
People are mostly concerned with themselves and their own lives. There are not many people walking around the world looking to discover you. You need to present yourself to them. Find value in yourself, and the world around you will start to take notice. Do not wait. You already have what it takes.
Jennie Hastings, LMT, BCTMB, has studied money in the therapeutic process from every angle: as a client, patient, and practitioner. From the very beginning of her bodywork career, she received business training and coaching. Now she helps other massage therapists break through limiting beliefs about money with private and group coaching. She can be reached at jennie@massageblossom.com.