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I first started looking into this idea that your beliefs and thoughts create your reality after reading a series of books by Don Miguel Ruiz. The first one was the “Four Agreements” in which he talks about living life by 4 guiding principles or agreements. The book is a really easy read, but actually living by the Four Agreements is the key to discovering just what it is that you do believe.

Your beliefs and thoughts are reflected in your life around you in your relationships, in what you have or don’t have.

Do you have a successful and rewarding massage practice?

Many massage therapists in my experience, struggle along with less than flourishing practices always trying to make ends meet. What must one believe if you are always struggling and suffering. Something like “life is hard” is my guess.

Where did that belief come from? From seeing parents struggle to raise you? From school and always having to work hard to get good grades?

Learning more about what you believe and learning to change them can be a difficult and painful process. As you learn more about yourself and the patterns of behaving that keep you from having what you want you will often discover that other side of you that fears abandonment and rejection, that is fearful and struggling with self confidence and that fear of being able to surrender and trust the process.

The Four Agreements are:

Be impeccable with your word. What you say is a reflection of your beliefs. Whatever you say will become a reality. So if you keep talking about how you don’t have any clients and want more you may actually be creating the whole situation of not having the clients you need. The example in the book is if you say something to someone like ” I can see by the color of your face that you are going to get cancer” the chances are that they will believe it and get cancer.

Have you ever had any massage therapist say something to you like ” oh those are the tightest muscles I have ever seen” what do you think it makes someone think about? Their tight muscles of course. So what we say with clients can be very influential in creating a relationship for healing.

“Your opinion is nothing more than your point of view. It is not necessarily true. Your opinion comes from your beliefs, your own ego and your own dream. We create all this poison and spread it to others just so we can feel right about our point of view.”

Don’t Take Anything Personally.

“Taking things personally is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me”. Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.

This is a really difficult one to comprehend and practice because we are all so wounded and hurt from things in our past that we think that everything happened to us was our fault. If a client doesn’t come back for whatever reason, it is not about you even though it may feel painful to be rejected. It isn’t that you didn’t do your best massage it is because it wasn’t what the person needed at that time in their life.

Even when they are telling you how wonderful you are. It still isn’t really about you. Your presence and the massage you did had nothing to do with their experience. Each person will have their own experience of your touch. One may think it feels soothing like the touch of their mother, others will be reminded of the pain of abuse. It is so easy to fall into the trap of feeling like it was you who “healed” this person. It is really more about that person and their willingness to heal.

Don’t Make Assumptions: This is closely related to the last one of not taking things personally. We are making assumptions about what ever someone said or did when we take things personally. Assumptions only set us up for pain and suffering. When you can stop making assumptions you can be impeccable with your word.
The way to avoid making assumptions about clients is to ask questions. Asking questions in a way that helps draw people out like using open ended questions can help create awareness. For example – asking “Does that muscle feel tight?” You already put the idea out there that it is tight but what is more important is how it feels to the client. You could ask “How does that feel” and get clients to draw their attention to that area.
Always Do Your Best. Following the first three agreements will bring out your humanness. We all struggle with the agreements we have unconsciously made a long time ago without questioning them. Learning to live by the four agreements is the biggest challenge you will ever undertake. No one is perfect and even with practice they become easier to be aware of but circumstances will always challenge your awareness. Just do the best you can and don’t beat yourself up over it. The ability to be successful is more about how many times you can get back up on the horse and try again.

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3. Taking things personally The biggest thing I had to get over when I...
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5. Law of Attraction The Law of Attraction states basically that everything you have...