Exactly why are you a massage therapist or indeed any other kind of therapist? What was it that made you decide this is what you want to do?
I have met many therapists over the years, and some will say complementary therapies helped them personally and so that is why they decided to train so that they can help others, some have a nursing background and felt they could give so much more doing therapies to help people rather than work within the constraints of the NHS. Others like me have no idea where the notion of being a massage therapist came from, I always say someone must have planted a seed of the idea into my brain somewhere along the way.
One thing I feel we all have in common though is we tend to be life’s nurturers and carers and often see what we do as more of a vocation than a hard-hitting business. Nothing wrong with that at all if it doesn’t become all-consuming. By that, I mean, putting our clients first before our own health and wellbeing.
It is easy to lose sight of our vision for our business and so a good exercise to do is to think about your core values, what matters to you in life and in business?
Write down say 3 – 5 things that mean a lot to you. Examples could be:
- Happiness
- Fun
- Loyalty
- Business success
- Spending time with family
How does your business fit in with these examples? If business success is important to you but so is spending time with your family, you won’t want to be so busy that you are working 24/7 and never having quality time with your partner/spouse and your kids. If you want to spend time doing fun things, you need to have that downtime factored into your diary and not squeezed out because work is taking priority.
How do you ensure you don’t lose sight of your core values? If you are a creative/visual type of person, make a vision board. Pin to that board things that are important to you. It could be a picture of your treatment room, pictures of your family, favourite places you like to visit, fun quotes, aspirational quotes, even a target of how much you’d like to earn!
Think about how you are working now. Does it reflect those values that are important to you? Is there anything you could change?
What we do is a great thing, and what an awesome job, helping people all the time to feel better where they are always so pleased to see you but don’t let that cloud your judgment as to how it should fit around your own health wellbeing and happiness.
Get that vision board going!
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