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Not many people will use the words wealthy and massage therapist in the same sentence. I personally like the feel of it and the sound of it.

It felt so perfect for all that I have been writing about and saying. I got the idea from Suze Ormans book/PBS show “Women and Money”. She has a section called “8 Qualities of a Wealthy Woman”. It could be called “Massage therapists and money” and “8 Qualities of a wealthy massage therapist”. Her words really were nothing that I haven’t been saying all along. A successful massage therapist is one who can set clear boundaries for themselves and their business.

The wealthy massage therapist values themselves enough to charge what they need to make a GREAT living.

A Wealthy massage therapist charges for the time and energy they put into doing a massage.

A wealthy massage therapist participates in peer supervision groups to get a better understanding of why they want to help others and take a deeper look at the shadow side of helping.

A wealthy massage therapist takes responsibility for their success and doesn’t blame the economy, their location, the competition or the phase of the moon.

A wealthy massage therapist shares what they know with others and makes money doing so.

A wealthy massage therapist understands that they need money in order to take care of themselves and their families and when this it taken care of they will be in a better place to help others.

A wealthy massage therapist says “It is about the money” and I value myself enough to want the money that I need to take care of myself and my family.

A wealthy massage therapist is in harmony with their deeper or true selves. They think, feel, believe and act in alignment. The have faith and courage in themselves and their ability to start and run a successful business.

A wealthy massage therapist understands the value of their time and energy.

A wealthy massage therapist is in tune with their feelings as much as possible and learns to find the deeper meaning they are providing. They are telling you when you are out of alignment. Anything but love and joy is telling you that you are thinking something that is not true. It is a false core belief that you have acquired to protect yourself at an early age.

A wealthy massage therapist understands that their wanting to help others is a defense mechanism and it keeps them from feeling something that they have long held back.

A wealthy massage therapist creates professional boundaries and sets policies and procedures to support them. They don’t date clients. They don’t become friends with clients. They charge for no shows and late fees. They respect the clients needs for privacy. They keep their appointments on time. If they take time in between clients they charge for that time. They are aware of the possible problems with billing insurance companies and selling retail products to clients.

A wealthy massage therapist….

This whole new craze about the “Law of Attraction” and the movie “The Secret” is a culmination of many years of thought and study. The people in the movie have studied most of them to get where they are today. They have all built programs that people pay a high fee to participate in but the bulk of the early writings can be found online.
The earliest writings on the “Law of Attraction” came from such writers as:

Wallace Wattles: The Science of Getting Rich, The Science of Being Well

Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich, The Richest Man in Babylon

Joe Vitale – The think and grow rich workbook,

Spiritual Marketing

Attaining Your Desires by GENEVIEVE BEHREND as presented by Joe Vitale

Charles Haanel - Mental Chemistry, The Master Key System

There are many more out there because the copyrights have expired and the works have become public domain.

Desire is an interesting concept to study and be curious about. It is what drives us onto success and it is what will drive clients to us.

Desire is quite different from wants or needs. Our wants and needs are often ego driven. We want a new car, a nice house or other things outside of ourself. We think we need it. Real needs are the basics of life. We need air to breathe, food to eat and water. A desire comes from the heart.

A person has to desire a massage enough to make the phone call and make the appointment. They have to get fed up with where they are at in their life and want more or want something to change. They have to take responsibility for whatever issues they are experiencing – pain, stress or whatever it is= and take the step and call.

As a massage therapist building a practice, what you need is a strong enough desire to make it so. Just thinking that you want to have a practice isn’t usually enough or wanting to earn money is not usually enough. There has to be a burning desire to make a difference in your own life. It may require that things have to get bad enough and so that you can’t take it anymore and take the responsibility (the steps ) to making it happen.

Taking responsibility is just part of life and every year older I get the more I see how much responsibility it takes and how much more I need to take for myself.

I just recently read an article in Massage Magazine by Stephen Capellini on taking responsibility for your financial situation and connected it with taking control of others. He used the example of hiring other people and taking responsibility for them financially and saying that you need to take control of them too. While the financial part is one thing – yes you are responsible for paying them – taking control of them is impossible. The more you try to control, the less you will have in my view. I don’t think we can take control of anyone but ourselves. We can take control of our thoughts, actions and beliefs. It is a process of learning about yourself and becoming more conscious of yourself and actions and turning your desires into action.

Part of the problem often is people don’t know what they desire. Their desires have long ago been set aside so they can please someone else or they have been set aside because of the pain of not getting what they want. They give up their desires thinking that they can never come true. Part of taking responsibility is waking up those desires and taking control of your thoughts and learning that all of those things you have been telling yourself about not being able to get what you desire is a false belief -it is your inner critic clouding your vision, clouding your desire.

Waking up your desire requires patience, compassion and awareness of how you treat yourself when you start desiring something.

Resources for Waking Desire and Taking Responsibility

The Science of Getting Rich – Free ebook by Wallace Wattles written in 1910 which is one of the early works that has influenced the creation of the book and movie called “The Secret”. There is also a 30 day online course which I highly recommend. You can choose what you would like to pay to join.

“Wherever there is unexpressed possibility or function not performed, there is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression or function seeking performance. Every desire is the effort of an unexpressed possibility to come into action. It is power seeking to manifest which causes desire.”

Even Oprah is talking about the movie “The Secret“, but for me it isn’t anything new. In fact it is what I have been studying and doing for years. It is what I have been writing about here and on my websites. It is what I have been doing when I write here and on my websites. When I started my websites, I never imagined I would be able to make money doing so. It was just a hobby, a passion. I had the secret all along- they should have made the movie about me!
“The Secret” is a documentary that talks about the “law of attraction” and how to use it for anything from increasing your wealth, finding love, becoming healthy and what ever you want to do with it.

The basic premise is that what you think will become your reality. It isn’t anything different than what Carl Jung was talking about or what Ester and Jerry Hicks were talking about in their book “The Law of attraction“. It even starts earlier than that with the book written in 1910 by Wallace Wattles, called the “Science of Getting Rich“.

I have been doing the online course called “Practical Geniuses” by Rebecca Fine of scienceofgettingrich.net. You can download the free ebook there which is the original book by Mr. Wattles. But the big difference really is in taking the course that she has developed that really explores the whole concept more deeply and helps you to really dig into your unconscious thoughts and change them.

You see your thoughts basically create everything. What you think creates your feelings and what you feel turns into actions. Taking action is the key to getting whatever you desire, but first you have to be really clear about what it is that you really desire and be able to see the difference in what your heart desires and what your ego needs and wants. When you act to fill the needs/wants of your ego, you may be able to make things happen but it will most likely be a struggle or be short lasting.

So often we are not aware of what we are thinking because most of what we think is unconscious. Our thoughts are programed so that we are not even conscious of them. It is like driving a car – you don’t have to tell yourself to step on the gas or brake -it just happens. So the thing is becoming conscious of what you are thinking requires that you start tuning into what you are feeling. Your feelings will tell you when your thinking is coming from your ego because it will be full of fear – competition, not enough money, not enough clients…those are all things that you think up to keep yourself from getting what you desire. And sometimes you may be able to see really clearly what you just thought about to create that feeling and sometimes you won’t, but what you can do is to start thinking something different to create a different feeling. My favorite thing to think about is puppies or kittens- they really make me smile.

So for instance – if you are in debt and keep saying you want to get out of debt you are still focusing on the debt. To get out of debt you need to focus on making more money and how you are going to use your creativity, ingenuity and life force to make more. Keep your thoughts focused on your vision – what you want – not just I want to get out of debt but why do you want to get out of debt – what does it mean to you?

One of the comments from one of the guests on Oprah said something like “debt is not being able to forgive”. Forgiveness is being able to say “thank you for giving me the experience of debt (or whatever is happening in your life at the moment) so you can learn to see yourself more clearly.
or I want to lose weight…or I want to be healthy…they imply that you don’t have health or you are to overweight.
All of these statements are focusing your thoughts on the lack of what you don’t have.

What you do have is the simple things – you have 2 legs, two arms and a head (hopefully – or what ever it is that you do have).

If you have diabetes, focus on what you do have- not the diabetes.

What is it that you do have? Do you have a nice house? great family?

So for purposes of building a massage practice and attracting new clients and XX amount of dollars to live and be comfortable. I always used to keep adding up -ok so x number of clients a week would give my x amount of dollars or how many clients would I need to do to get x amount of dollars. When I finally stopped counting and started focusing on what I want to be doing and that is creating a healing environment where people can get massage and what I think massage does is allows people to feel themselves more.

I also found that I really love writing and love the website concept- being able to make money writing about what I love and then also teaching others how to do the same. It sort of just happened when I was busy doing what I love – the writing and creating websites. That is why I love the Sitebuildit! process also. It keeps you focused on what it is that you want to be doing and provides the software (and people) for supporting that process. The whole concept is to build traffic through creating high quality content and also that it is NOT a get rich quick scheme but something that evolves and it is a learning process. The whole idea is to be so passionate about something that you will keep learning and do what ever it takes to make is a success. (Success is just following through!) SBI is all about the secret – it gets you thinking about what it is that you really love and helps you figure out a way to make money doing so. The step by step process keeps you focused on your concept and keeps you acting in a way that supports what you are trying to do.

So if you are interested in experiencing the secret first hand - Purchase a SBI site, Join the Science of Getting Rich program and watch the movie The Secret.

The thing to remember is that we are all human and this is a process. We aren’t perfect.

It is all just another way of saying “Just do it”…

A few years ago I read a book by Harv Eker called “The Millionaire Mind – Mastering the Innere Game of Wealth”.

It was one of the first books that really put the essence of wealth together and connected it to what is going on inside of us as well as knowing about the physical aspects of wealth like investing and saving.

In the book he talks about your money blueprint. He says:

“How well your business does is a result of your money blueprint. You will always validate your blueprint.”

He goes one to say:

“How can you tell what your money blueprint is set for? One of the obvious ways is to look at your results.”

Your money blueprint is created at an early age from the way you were raised. It is created by all of the things you were taught that you just accepted as truth because you didn’t really have any other choice at such an early age. Those truths become programmed into your subconscious. It is like the act of driving a car – you don’t have to really think about it – it is subconsious.

Our thoughts are programmed and create our feelings. Our feelings create our actions and are actions create results.

Discovering and changing our money blueprints is a process. I have been working on it in various ways and becoming aware of what the blueprint is for starters. You can’t really change anything until you are aware of it and the funny thing is how can you be aware of something that you are unconscious of -because it is unconscious. It’s a little mind twister if you ask me.

But one of the ways I have been learning about it is I have been following a system of writing down my weekly priorities and intentions and tracking the results. I also have been participating in peer supervision groups which really helps in the area of creating awareness because it really helps me to see myself differently through the mirroring from the group. I also have been reading everything I can on the topic and participating in “The Science of Getting Rich- Practical Geniuses class which is a 30 day program of short little but life changing exercises to help you become more aware and start making the changes you desire. They do have the Ebook called the “Science of Getting Rich” written in 1920 or so by a guy named Wallace Wattles. He was on to this long before Harv Eker or anyone else for that matter. While the ebook is insightful, it is much more powerful to participate in the exercises and group discussion.
As a massage therpist, one of the things I hear so often in the profession is that doing massage is not about the money. Harv Eker says that we are trying to justify the situation of not making any money by saying things like that. It puts people in the role of victim – which is another way of just needing attention. When you are a victim, he says you end up being a people pleaser which is a common trait of massage therapists. (OK I am generalizing here)

The good news is that there is a way out of all of this that requires stepping up and taking responsibility for your thoughts and actions. It is a process of changing your thoughts and programming and building a different blueprint.

The book goes on to list various ways we sabatoge ourselves and helps create a new awareness so we can begin to think and act differently. The Science of Getting Rich calls it “Acting in a certain way”.

When our inner world becomes more congruent with our outer world, we have the chance to reach our full potential and participate fully in the present moment and create the life we desire.