Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1358392
L i s te n to T h e A B M P Po d c a s t a t a b m p.co m /p o d c a s t s o r w h e reve r yo u a cce s s yo u r favo r i te p o d c a s t s 83 life span of a therapist's career only a little more than three years? After surveying over 1,200 therapists around the globe, 69.4 percent report that the two biggest challenges they face are (1) not having enough clients overall or (2) not enough bookings each week. How do we close this crazy gap between creating incredible health, life transformations, and experiences for people, and getting stuck not seeing enough clients—or feeling totally overwhelmed and burned out? Most of us got into this profession because we want to help people. We learned how muscles work and the powerful effects our soft-tissue skills could have on people's bodies. Elongating this, stretching that, deactivating a trigger point here, even holding the space for someone who is a little overwhelmed and sharing a genuine listening ear. This all adds up to a pretty rewarding career! It's funny—we often think if we build our hands- on skills, the business side of things will naturally flow. But what I've discovered in my 20 years as a therapist is that mastering your business is a skill that must be learned and practiced just like anything else. Acquiring business skills is a similar journey to acquiring hands-on treatment skills. It starts by understanding how we influence our own decisions and actions, and by realizing that while hands-on skills are vital, they do not teach us how to make money, retain clients, or even run a great business. Those are different learned skills, and among them, the one that underpins everything else is understanding the role mindset plays in our success in business (and life). MINDSET Mindset—to me—is our ability to learn, adapt, and show resilience as we make it through the challenges of business. A mindset that leads to success is strong and flexible, like a tree that is able to bend. The reason we see palm trees still standing after hurricanes is because of their ability to adapt to their surroundings even when things get extreme. Likewise, with mindset, the person with the most behavioral flexibility is able to stand strong through times of chaos. Another good example of behavioral flexibility is driving a car. When you drive a car, you adapt your behavior to suit the conditions around you. Your car might be able to do 100 miles per hour—and probably has the capacity to go even faster—but we drive according to the conditions of the road. Raining? We put on the windshield wipers. Fog? We slow down and turn on our lights. How did we learn how to do this? Experience and skills. What if the concept of adapting our mindset is like driving a car? Imagine our mind has instruments like on a car's dashboard that show us how to behave. If you are driving along and your check engine light comes on, most of the time you would use that as a signal to know you need to . . . yep, check the engine. If you want to turn left or right, you put your turn signal on (and you see evidence of that on the dashboard). If your gas tank gets low, then you pull into a gas station and fill it up. The way we read and understand the instruments affects our behaviors. Imagine if the instruments didn't work properly. For example, what would happen if you put your foot down on the gas pedal and instead of seeing the speedometer go up, you see the fuel gauge on empty and think this means you are not going anywhere? How confused would you be? This crazy car analogy is how some therapists show up in business. They incorrectly interpret the data, make decisions based on wrong information, and then get confused about why the results are not what they expect. Why is the average