Beliefs and your success as a massage therapist
Your beliefs and your success as a massage therapist are closely related. By beliefs I am talking about the core values that you hold about things like money, success, helping others and relationships. Most of our basic ways of living are coming from these beliefs that are for the most part unconscious. You won’t know that your beliefs are just beliefs because they are unconscious. What is happening in your life will see so true and real and it is for you at that moment.
Most people think of beliefs as things like religion or politics or think that it just is the way the world is. Most beliefs are just opinions that were passed on to you in one way or another. Beliefs are the filters that we see through and that drive our actions.
Once a belief is set in place you create a whole life and way of being around it. You choose jobs, relationships and careers to support the beliefs so you can keep saying “see it it true” and it is. You keep trying to prove that those beliefs are true.
Whatever you have or don’t have in your life is based on your beliefs. Since beliefs are unconscious you have to start doing the work to uncover your beliefs. One way is to start asking yourself ‘What would someone have to believe about themselves to have that or not have that in their lives?”
Becoming aware of your unconscious beliefs is a process. Some of the beliefs about money and wealth that people hold look like this:
- Money is the root of all evil.
- There is never enough money to go around for everyone to have what they need.
- I have to sell my soul to make millions like Donald Trump
- I can’t make enough to live on doing something that I love. I have to take a job to get by.
- I don’t need any money. Helping is enough of a reward.
- I live simply so I don’t need money for much.
- I am too far in debt to ever get out.
- Nothing will ever change
- There must be something wrong with me since I don’t have any money
- It is better to help others and be kind. That way people will know that I value people and love more than money.
- I wouldn’t know what to do with a lot of money
- People with money are uncaring, rude or judgmental
Beliefs about Money
There are four basic motivators that drive people to make money:
- Freedom – the freedom to do what you want when you want to do it. People with unlimited financial resources can do what they want and so can a beach bum without any obligations. When your freedom is more important you will make decisions to support your freedom over anything else.
- Security – Job security doesn’t necessarily mean financial security but somehow jobs have become the symbol for such. Of course that is changing in our recent turbulent economic times. People once used to work for companies for a lifetime and they were rewarded for doing so. Security is really an illusion
- Power – Everyone thinks of guys like Donald Trump who have power as a motivating force in making money. But so was Mother Theresa. She was one of the most powerful women in the Catholic church who used the churches riches to work for humanity. Power doesn’t have to be equated with being evil.
- Love- People can also use money to get love which is usually something that they were lacking in their early years of life. People will give their last dollar to their friends or spend money with or on their friends or family even if it means hardship for themselves.
People are usually some combination of the above. Knowing what motivates you to make money can help you to become more aware of what you are doing and what you want. It was a relief when I learned that my main motivation for making and using money was for love. I then realized that money really has nothing to do with love and that love is just love. Money is just money.
It doesn’t bring freedom. Freedom is something that you are inside – free to have your feelings and to make choices. It doesn’t bring security. Only feeling secure inside will bring you security. It doesn’t bring power. You only feel power from inside. And love of course can’t be bought with money. I know plenty of people with millions of dollars who worry about their money everyday and also are not happy.
Money is just energy anyways. It used to be connected to something of real value like the gold in the banks but there isn’t any gold anymore that is backing up our money. Money can buy things that can create experiences for you. Money is merely the potential to buy that experience. Money has no real value – only the value that each person puts on money. It is about the beliefs about money that money once represented.
All the basic beliefs about money usually boil down to 3 different beliefs:
- I am not good enough. There is something wrong with me.
- Money is the root of all evil and there is something wrong with having money and making money.
- There is something wrong with the world.
Changing your beliefs starts with becoming aware of your beliefs and starting to challenge your beliefs by questioning them. Finding out what created the beliefs is often not really necessary but getting to the real belief is often helpful. Half the battle in changing the beliefs is becoming aware of them.
As massage therapist and others in the helping professions often say is that “It isn’t about the money”. People would rather help and be seen as a giving, caring person an be broke. I see it all the time in how massage therapists will often undercharge for their massage sessions, how they won’t enforce cancellation policies, how they will work on people that they don’t want to work on who are draining, how they will give of their own time thinking it is more noble to do just that.
People who usually say “It isn’t about the money” usually don’t have any money. People who say that it isn’t about the money are buying into an obsolete concept. If they really thought that they wouldn’t take any money at all for their services. It is one of the biggest collective beliefs about money that our profession has to become aware of. We somehow think that taking money for doing something that is so wonderful would somehow cheapen it or make it less valuable for the receiver. We think that by not having money that it will make us look better to the world and our God. Even becoming a massage therapist is all part of the scheme to further prove that it isn’t about the money since so many massage therapists support that belief too. It is easier to hang onto that belief when others believe it too.
Well I am here to tell you that being a massage therapist can make you $100,000 or whatever you think is an alarmingly high income once you start getting your beliefs out of the way and forming new beliefs and realizing that money is just energy.
