Posts tagged Self Care

Many people experience burnout at some point in their lives. Massage Therapists are even more likely to fall prey to burnout especially when they are self-employed because the buck stops with them. If you feel as if you’re starting to burn out here are some things you can do to avoid it.

1. Take care of #1. If you’re run down, you’ll burn out faster. Make sure you get enough sleep, eat right, exercise and de-stress on a regular basis.

2. Make the time to do nothing! We all need to take time to relax, refresh and replenish. Don’t keep pushing yourself. Keep regular business hours and take breaks during your work day. Make sure to schedule in time off and vacations on a regular basis. You’ll come back with a fresh outlook and perspective.

3. Get back in touch with the things you value. Is your work fulfilling and meaningful for you? If not, check in with your values. What’s missing? Where are you compromising? What needs to be eliminated? What are you merely tolerating? Re-assess and re-adjust your priorities as needed. If you work for yourself, you’re in control. Make the choices you want to make by honoring what’s important for you.

4. Think out of the box and challenge yourself consistently. If work has become a chore or you’re in a rut, try spicing things up a bit! Find innovative ways to do mundane tasks, create new products or services to add to your offering, improve performance, or tweak what you do best and make it even better.

5. Establish realistic expectations for what you can and cannot accomplish. If you find that you’re driving yourself too hard it may be time to let go of unrealistic expectations and readjust. Shorten your to-do list, give yourself some slack when needed and know when to let up on yourself and others.

6. Learn how to communicate clearly. Resolve conflicts, don’t run from them. Let people know what you expect from them, and ask them what they expect from you. Be clear and concise with what you say, and how you say it. Listen closely to the people around you, it will teach them to listen closely to you.

We are massage therapists.  We are supposed to be very nurturing, but sometimes work can be a drag especially if you own the business. You get caught up in trying to be more productive and suddenly your life turns into a series of to-do lists. You measure of success by how much you accomplish. You even determine how happy you allow yourself to be by how much you’ve gotten done that day.

Suddenly work feels like a chore. You don’t enjoy giving massages anymore.  You just go through your day like a zombie, doing one massage after another, then doing all of the other projects that need to be done just so it can be over with. Then you can feel good, right? But wait, there’s that thing you forgot about. You still need to do that. And oh yeah, there’s that other thing you haven’t done yet.

Congratulations, you are a walking to-do list.

But work doesn’t have to be like that. The point of work – even giving massages – shouldn’t be just to finish. The point of work should be the work itself. That’s the way it’s supposed to be anyway.

We spend a lot of time trying to find ways to be more productive. To do things faster, better, cheaper and spend our time more effectively. But instead of just doing more in less time, maybe we should focus on actually enjoying the work we’re doing instead.  I mean, why did we become massage therapists in the first place?

Here are 8 ways to make work seem like less of a chore and more like a gift:

1. Follow your natural rhythms. A lot of the time I resent working is because I’m trying to force myself to do something I don’t feel like doing. Naturally there will always be some things you’re not crazy about doing (like doing taxes). But how often do you force yourself to work more, when you really want to relax? When you force yourself to work when you’ve promised yourself a break, you’ll likely just end up distracting yourself with other things and put off working or you will work taking on that one last massage of the day but your heart won’t be in it. Then you get stressed and end up resenting work. Instead, follow your natural rhythms. When you feel like working, work. When you don’t, don’t. Don’t over complicate things.

2. Do, don’t think. I’m going to stay true to this point and not think about writing something elaborate. Just do, stop thinking about it. Fail, make corrections later.

3. Don’t put sugar in your tank. You wouldn’t put sugar in your gas tank right? It doesn’t make much sense to fill your body up with unhealthy fuel either. If you don’t have the energy to get the work you need to done, work will feel forced.

4. Remove hidden roadblocks. What’s making you avoid working? What’s making your work seem like drudgery rather than joyful? It might have something to do with your beliefs about yourself. Maybe you believe you’re not good enough, not smart enough or don’t have enough experience. Question your beliefs about what you can and can’t do.

5. Only do your best. Work can easily become a chore when you’re trying to constantly be perfect. The truth is some of your work might not be so great. You may not relate to a particular client.  You may be second-guessing what your client’s fidgeting on the table means.  If you can accept that and just do your best, you stop judging yourself. Guess what it feels like when you’re no longer picking over everything you do with a fine toothed comb? It feels extremely liberating. It feels like you can actually enjoy your experience, rather than worrying about how everything is going to turn out. That is working effortlessly.

6. Follow your intuition. When you think you have a great idea, believe it. Follow it. Chase it until you’re out of breath and can barely hold yourself up. If you don’t trust yourself, you’ll regret it later.

7. Focus on what matters. Our minds are constantly pulling us in different directions. We have a tendency to follow what’s urgent instead of what’s important. In order to get the important things done, we have to be ruthless at removing distractions. If it takes bringing a laptop (or notepad) to a cafe to write your book, then do that.  Remove all distractions so you can focus on the important things.

8 Refuse to do what you don’t want to do. I often avoid working because I’m trying to do things I think I “should do.” Forget what you think you should do Do what you want to do. Other people will understand. In fact, they’ll probably envy you.

Most of us became massage therapists because we have a need to help others and because we believe in the healing power of touch. 

In our desire to be the very best, our time is spent trying to improve our techniques, our businesses, and our facilities.  We often overlook the need to maintain the homeostasis of our bodies.   

During your training period, your body becomes accustomed to having the benefits of regular massages or bodywork.  Once you finish school and get involved with the business of growing your business, it is very easy to neglect getting massages or bodywork for yourself.  In fact, how long has it been since you last received a totally relaxing massage?  Or do you spend your hour trying to understand the wonderful technique the therapist is using that your mind never rests and your body really doesn’t relax?  Believe me, it happens far too often.

Think about the technique you learned and practiced when you first started out.  Just as your bodywork techniques have evolved, your body has adapted itself to your method of massage and the repetitive movements you do every day.  In fact, your body probably could perform an adequate massage with out any conscious interaction with your mind. This type of “unthinking” massage is what we want to avoid.  Getting regular bodywork is the best way to prevent “unthinking” methods sneaking into our work.

Each client deserves our focus and full ability each and every time we do a massage.  In order to ensure that, you have to guarantee that your body is able to provide what you will require of it.

As therapists, we can become like our worst client . . . so busy “doing” that we have forgotten how to relax.  This imbalance will eventually lead to burnout and total fatigue.

This is a very scary place for a therapist who wants to continue doing massages or bodywork until they retire or die as I have heard some therapists attest to.  So, how to prevent this?  Just getting a regular massage sounds too easy.  There must be something else, some enlightenment, some dragon to slay, something difficult.  No. Regular weekly or monthly bodywork is all it takes. (Didn’t you just finish telling your last client that?)

Remember that keeping yourself healthy is keeping your business healthy.  And it is a wonderful experience!