Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1102144
Ta k e 5 a n d t r y A B M P F i v e - M i n u t e M u s c l e s a t w w w. a b m p . c o m / f i v e - m i n u t e - m u s c l e s . 61 Set Up to Fail The intake examples on pages 59 and 60 might give the impression that I think this is easy, this whole "knowing people" thing. It's not. Clients want you to know them and to really care about the things they feel are important. And yet, they skip whole sections of the intake form when you ask them to complete it. They give you monosyllabic answers to the questions you think you're asking. They ask your advice on all kinds of things that are solidly outside your scope. Many of our clients expect us to know as much as they think their doctor knows, about them and about everything else. The other story that gets told is that massage therapists are particularly caring and intuitive people. We want to believe that story as much as our clients do. We feel pressure because clients show up expecting us to know the things. We act like we know the things (and sometimes we actually do know a few things), but very little of what would support us in meeting this specific person on this specific day exactly where they are is actually shared or known. When this happens, we're both at fault. Stick with me here. It's true that many clients don't want a deep, personal connection with you. It's also true that the only thing many clients really want to know about you is that you're going to make them feel better. We're tricky things, humans. We want people to listen to what we're saying, but we really want people to listen to what we're not saying and even to know what we're not saying. When it comes to our clients, this is a tall order, but far from impossible. Curiosity and real listening will quiet the insistent helpfulness of our "expertise" and allow us to hear what matters. At a mindful leadership summit late last year, one of the speakers suggested to the audience that, "If you always have the answer, people will stop telling you the truth." When you only make enough room for the person in front of you to confirm your assumptions, you stay safe in those assumptions and the actions that are informed by them. You never have to do anything different than what you planned to do. You set up a sweet little system where you welcome information that supports your hypotheses, and you discount or reject anything that would require you to shift. If this is how you do it, congratulations. More proof that you're a functioning human organism. Your brain is designed to function in exactly this way. This is efficient and your brain is all about efficiency. Your brain knows that moment-to-moment perception of what's actually in front of you is really hard work and your brain is not interested in hard work. It has enough to do. Here's the rub. When you give in to the evolutionary pull toward knowing, toward assuming that what's happening is something you already know, you skip off the real, the challenging, the new and useful information (verbal and nonverbal) in any given moment. Instead, what if you use your hall pass to ask your brain to do something different? What if you and your brain break out of your easy patterns and choose instead to seek connection over certainty? Wait. Listen and patiently sink. When you sink, you drop below the surface where you can see and feel past what's easy and readily available. You see and hear much more than you already thought or expected. Genuine curiosity. Seeing. These things are not the product of minutes or hours. They are the product of intent, of a deep desire to be surprised by things you couldn't learn any other way than by shutting up, sitting still, and asking the occasional open-ended question. Surprise is the gateway to deep connection Curiosity and real listening will quiet the insistent helpfulness of our "expertise" and allow us to hear what matters.