Realistic expectations

With all this talk about psychology and spirituality, you might be wondering what exactly is going to happen to you if you decide to become a massage therapist. Will your friends still recognize you? Will you wear only white clothes, pray with people over the massage table, and sport a turban wrapped around your head?

No need to worry. Besides the potentially "esoteric" aspects of the massage business, it is also filled with some reassuringly normal and down-to-earth matters. What can you realistically expect from your new lifestyle if you decide to become a massage therapist? The answer to that question changes depending on who's asking it. However, many therapists find that several new experiences are shared by a majority of their colleagues. Certain rites of passage must be faced. Certain self-concepts must be redefined. Certain new habits must be cultivated, others left behind.

Although everyone's situation will be unique, it may be helpful for you to hear some of the things other people have gone through during their gradual metamorphoses into massage therapists. The challenges and opportunities change as time goes on.

Stage One: The Neophyte
You've just graduated from massage school. Your skills have been sharpened through hundreds of hours of practice. You have stars in your eyes as you contemplate the myriad new adventures and opportunities that await you. You have already gotten started, yet at the same time you are feeling like you can't wait to get started. It's a paradoxical time of rapid growth that almost always seems too slow.

During this period, normally throughout your entire first year as a therapist, you can:

•    Expect to struggle at first. It's never as easy as it sounds on paper. If you're like most new therapists, you've taken the average fee for a massage in your area, multiplied it by eight hours in the workday, and come up with some staggering numbers for your soaring new income. If you charge fifty dollars for a massage right out of the gate, you'll expect to be making four hundred dollars a day—and that's an expectation that can cause you some personal pain. Tone down those expectations, and you'll have an easier first year. Instead of multiplication, try some division, and you'll probably end up much happier.

Current minimal monthly living expenses / the fee you receive per massage =
# of massages to aim for per month


•    Expect to try a couple different approaches before settling on one that works for you. Many new therapists think that they can see a seamless career path already custom designed to take them into the future, and this may indeed happen to you, but the majority of people entering into the profession find that they continue along a steep learning curve for their first year, and their projected trajectories change one or more times, sometimes dramatically.

•    Expect to run into some less-than-desirable clients. Not everyone comes to massage out of purely therapeutic motives. You will quite likely have to overcome some sexual issues at the beginning of your career. It will take a while for you to develop your own way of spotting potential problems before they happen and dealing with these situations if they occur. Besides customers soliciting sexual favors, you may run into several other annoyances that include: 1) people with poor personal hygiene, 2) clients who nag and complain and whom you can never please, 3) people who are chronically late and don't respect you professionally, and 4) people who undervalue your skills and think of massage as merely a "rubdown." You will find that all of these problems gradually dissipate if you are persistent and learn from each experience.

•    Expect to be misunderstood by an employer. Maybe it's your boss at the new day spa. Maybe it's the chiropractor at the clinic where you work. Employers in general may not completely understand you or appreciate your art, especially when you first start as a therapist. It will take some time for you to prove to others, and to yourself, just how necessary and beneficial your services are to other people.

•    Expect to experience a minor identity crisis. What do your friends think of your becoming a massage therapist? How about your family? How about you? How will your current colleagues or coworkers or buddies view you if you start touching others therapeutically for a living? You'll have to deal with the social context of your new identity. This is especially evident when you're lugging around your big massage table to people's apartments, through lobbies, up elevators, with the entire world seeing what you do. It can be exciting, but it can also take some adjusting to.

•    Expect to wonder if you have made the right decision. When you become a massage therapist, everything is suddenly different. Most of it is wonderful, but you may find yourself alone one night, with barely enough money to buy food for your cat (which happened to me more than once during my early years), waiting for the phone to ring, or settling for a temporary low-paying position in another field just to make some money. You know you're heading the right direction in your life, but in the meantime you are suffering a little, and you wonder: On the other side of those trials, you'll find out if you're really a massage therapist or not. The way to tell is if you're still doing massage. Usually at least once during your first year, there comes a moment when you must demonstrate to the Higher Power that you have faith and will continue in spite of any obstacle or setback or problem. Remember: At the end of this trial lies the goal you dreamed of before starting—a career and a way of life dedicated to helping others and at the same time achieving personal financial freedom and respect for yourself. It's worth it.

Stage Two: Becoming Established
You are actually making your living with your new skills, and you are even starting to get ahead. Paying the rent is probably not as much of a problem, and people are treating you with a little more respect (because you're feeling more self-respect from within). You have shifted from wondering what it would be like to be a massage therapist to knowing what it's like. You've gotten used to the physical work involved, and your body feels stronger. After working on dozens, even hundreds, of people, you begin to know intuitively what people need when they walk through the door. You've made it through the tests of faith that distinguished you from the other would-be therapists who have now moved on to some other pursuit. For many therapists, this is the true honeymoon stage of their career, sweeter and easier than it was right at the beginning.

During this period, which begins somewhere near the end of your first year as a therapist and continues into your second or third year, you can:

•   Expect to earn more money. The financial dreams spawned by your early calculations begin to take form. You may find yourself demanding a higher percentage of the gross massage income from the establishment where you work, and you'll probably have a few more private clients to work with. This will bring your monetary reality more into line with your monetary expectations. It is not, however, the final step on your road to riches. You will incrementally increase your income over time. This first step along that road may not even be the biggest jump in income for you, but it will probably feel the best.

•   Expect to find your own "rhythm." Some therapists are built to work long, hard hours, performing eight or nine back-to-back massages all day long without wilting or complaining. Others find that one or two appointments in the morning and one or two in the afternoon are plenty, and they can't offer their best work if they are forced to work too many hours. Everyone is different, and by the time you reach this stage in your career, you will have settled on a method that allows you to work to your maximum without overextending yourself. The important thing to remember is that you are OK just the way you are. If a colleague seems fine performing twice as many massages as you, don't fall prey to self-judgment. There really does seem to be a magical number of treatments per day for each therapist beyond which they should not go.

• Expect to start taking vacations. Massage is demanding work, and therapists quickly find that they need breaks to stay refreshed and do their best work. Usually those breaks are a little more frequent and more extended than the vacations of many other people, due to a combination of factors—not the least of which is the independent, adventurous nature of most therapists. Often, these "vacations" include some kind of massage work, as well.

•    Expect to start thinking about the future. Even if you're still quite young, you'll soon realize that you have limits. Your hands and the rest of your body won't last forever under the constant stress of performing massages all day long. Accordingly, start to plan ahead and wonder what other avenues you'll be able to branch out into— usually within the same line of work but sometimes in others, perhaps related. Many therapists become spa managers or open their own spas, for example. Others open massage schools or get jobs teaching at one. That way they continue to work in a field they know intimately, yet they are not engaged in the physical work all day every day.

•    Expect to start feeling some peace of mind. You've done it. You've made the change and have become something you truly wanted to be, perhaps for the first time in your life. You are helping people and helping yourself and working hard; a long road stretches ahead with a lot of potential enjoyment along the way. You may find moments at this stage when your career choice seems imminently right to you, and that knowledge will offer you a contentment that you may not have had before. You may, like so many therapists do, begin to explore forms of meditation, yoga, and Eastern mysticism. A new internal space opens inside you once you've committed yourself to an external form of service in this world.

•    Expect to keep on struggling nonetheless. There will always be issues and challenges to face. Days will still come when you're grasping for the right path to take through particularly thorny problems. But you'll have certain strength inside you now, born of the confidence that has been gathered with experience.

Stage Three: The "Mid-Career Crisis"
You are an established, well-known therapist in your circle. People refer clients to you. You refer clients to other professionals. You've joined one or more of the professional organizations available, and you've made many treks to annual massage conventions around the country and perhaps around the world. You've traveled to study massage techniques in other cultures, and you've given literally thousands of treatments. Three years passed after receiving your license, then four, then five. Now it's been almost ten years. Perhaps you've bought a house with the money you've earned as a therapist. Or you met your spouse as a result of your work in the field. Maybe she came to you originally as a client, and later you started to date. Things have changed for you, and all because of massage. Somewhere around this time, in the seven to twelve-year range, you may likely go through a professional mid-life crisis. This is when some people switch out of the massage field altogether, becoming a salesperson or an investment banker. At this stage of flux in your career you can:

•    Expect to know what you are doing but experience resistance to doing more. There may come a point when you feel stuck. Often this type of dissatisfaction can be positive because it impels you to act and take the next step in your career. Now is usually when a therapist will decide that extensive further education is a necessity, for example.

•    Expect to be quite attached to your lifestyle. Even if you are seriously thinking about changing careers, the life of a therapist has become second nature to you, and the thought of giving it up is mostly unpleasant. You treasure the meaningful interaction you have with your clients, and you treasure your independence.

•    Expect to feel some aches and pains. Most therapists, no matter how careful they are, end up at some point with joint stiffness, a sore back, or tired arms or legs, a result of the physical nature of the work. When it happens to you, you may feel like throwing in the towel before your body suffers any damage. Usually, though, these problems can be greatly improved with some increased awareness of body mechanics, smarter working habits, the addition of other therapies to your repertoire, and a few good applications of ice, mud, paraffin, or other products.

•    Expect to get involved with certain business deals. Whether its negotiations to buy your own massage studio property or hiring therapists to work for you or seeking a rung on the many multilevel marketing opportunities available today, you may be looking around for something to supplement your income. Massage may always be your first love, but you've realized by now that there will always be a limit to trading your hours for a specified amount of money. You'll be looking for ways to grow exponentially in the financial sense. And if you're like most motivated therapists, you'll find it.

Stage Four: Long-Term Success
You've made it through, somewhere past the ten-year mark, and you're still a therapist. In a way, now you will always be a therapist, because you've done it for so long that you and others consider you a therapist no matter what. Even if you do something else now for a while, you'll be a therapist who is temporarily doing something else. Your life will be forever colored by the experiences and realizations you've had through your work in massage. Once you reach this stage, which will last the rest of your life, you can:

•    Expect to start teaching others, either officially in a massage school, in workshops, or unofficially as a mentor and guide to newer therapists. This comes naturally to most people. Without even trying, you will find yourself encouraging and offering advice to others. People will come to you automatically when they see and sense that you've gone through the other stages that they are now on the brink of entering.

•    Expect to spread the news somehow. Many therapists end up promoting themselves and their work in ways they never would have conceived of in the beginning of their careers. People who had never written even a letter will write whole articles and essays on massage and health. People who were afraid to speak in front of ten people get up in front of hundreds to express the things they've learned through helping others. You have become known, and you stand for something in other people's minds. If you've followed your original intentions, you stand for health and healing and relaxation and wholeness. People may expect you to act a certain way, to eat a certain way, or dress a certain way when they meet you because they've formed an opinion about you before getting to know you. You will have learned to live with being "known" in this way.

•    Expect to charge more for your treatments—and be worth it. There's no use in under pricing your services. By this time you've gained enough knowledge and experience and created a good enough reputation to demand the higher fees that once seemed out of reach to you. You can do this easily now because you have paid your dues.

•    Expect to create something new. Most therapists find that the long years of work and service have been leading up to something uniquely their own, some special offering that nobody else can give. Perhaps it's a seminar they've envisioned or a new form of therapy or just one particular, excellent technique to add to the canon of massage maneuvers. Or maybe they've found a way to reach out more, give more, offer higher value, and touch people who never have been touched therapeutically before in their lives. It may be big or small, but it will always be something creative. Massage Therapy seems to bring out the artist in people eventually.

•    Expect to be relishing new challenges. Something will always come up in life: maybe a disaster or maybe a great opportunity or maybe both. Whatever life brings your way, you will now react to it through the use of your skills as a therapist. The Red Cross is getting used to the sight of massage chairs being set up on the scene at most disasters. People in those situations are in dire need of reassuring human touch.

•    Expect to be witnessing your life as it turns into an adventure. You will continue to travel and meet new people and branch out in directions you never thought of before. If you keep following your heart and using your hands to heal, you will probably not experience boredom very often.

A positive attitude
Your single greatest asset, especially as a beginning massage practitioner, is your positive attitude. In fact, if you don't nurture a positive attitude about this line of work, one of two things are going to happen: Either you're going to find yourself not working as a therapist eventually or you're going to find yourself working in a dead-end position somewhere, scratching your head and wondering why clients aren't flocking to you automatically and why your dreams haven't come true.

It is especially important for you to cultivate and display this positive attitude during your first year as a therapist. The doctor was not particularly interested in helping her develop her career. He just needed someone to operate a new body-contouring massage machine that was going to make his practice a lot of money. The therapist had three choices: decline the position in the first place, accept the position and work there grudgingly while seeking other employment, or accept the position and give it all she had, knowing that her attitude was going to be the ultimate arbiter of her success or failure.

If you choose the third path, you'll never know what glorious surprises might be waiting for you. Opportunities abound for those who concentrate on their inner attitude first and then worry about the exterior trappings of success.