Whether you are a new massage theapist just starting out in the field or a seasoned vetran, one of the constant challenges is dealing with low self confidence and self esteem issues.

When you are just starting out it is really common to feel like you don’t know enough, that your massage is not good enough. You may start out charging really low prices saying that you aren’t worth more. You may take a low paying job thinking that this is the way it has to be because you are inexperienced and other massage therapists with more skill and experience will be making higher wages or charging more.

The way to overcome your lack of confidence or lack of experience is to take it step by step and build your own self confidence by doing what you love. Set yourself up for success by setting reasonable things to do. If you are just starting out and needing clients what is one thing that you can do today to get one client today. If you start out saying I want to work on 20 people this week and you don’t even have one- you are setting youself up for failure. In a way you are beating yourself up by doing this to yourself.

So when you can set one achievable thing to do today and you do it - the biggest part is to celebrate! We so often forget to do that and compliment ourselves for doing the things we set out to do. We make excuses and say it wasn’t anything or ‘I only got one client when I need 20 this week.’ Beating yourself up with your words decreases your self confidence.

The way you talk to yourself and talk about yourself will say more about you than any massage technique or your lack of self confidence. Learning to become aware of what it is that you are saying to yourself at all times is a process of learning to stay present with what you are feeling at any given moment and learning to feel that feeling without acting on it. Carl Jung and others call this the process of individuation which is basically what growing up and becoming an adult it. Some may think growing up is just having a good job, a family and a nice house and car. There is much more to it. It is about learing to be responsible for your thoughts and your actions.

Your thoughts are what create your reality. If you don’t know what you are thinking - which most of us don’t at any given moment because there are so many unconscious thought patterns that develop during life- just look at what you are feeling. Your feelings are what will tell you what you are thinking. It sometimes is difficult to get to the actual thought but just start wondering - what must a person be thinking if they are feeling a certain way and continually lacking in self confidence.

The thoughts usually are -”I am not good enough” or others like that and the thing is that those thoughts are not true.

So the process of building self confidence is just that - a process.  It takes time and committment.  It takes wanting more for yourself which isn’t being selfish.  It takes time to learn to nurture yourself.  We can see it so clearly in the actions we take everyday when working with clients.  What are you doing for your clients that you need to do for yourself?  What would you tell a client when they are saying things like “I can’t do that stetching- it’s too hard or time consuming”,  “I can’t go look for a new job because I am not any good at anything”.

Instead of focusing on the things we don’t have or don’t want, changing to wondering about what we need to do to be able to say “I am really a great massage therapist” and focusing on what we can do and what we do have in the present will take you through the feelings of lack and make you more attractive to those things that you do want.

(Wanting isn’t wrong…that will be a whole other post…)

So if you are ready to start thinking differently about yourself and want to learn to start talking and acting in a better way - a certain way - as Wallace Wattles calls it in
“The Science of Getting Rich“, download the free Ebook and sign up for the online course “Practical Geniuses” ( which you can choose what you want to pay) that will challenge you to start thinking about what it is that you do want and how can you take the steps to get that for yourself - which is what building self confidence is really all about.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 11:54 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.