Different Values In Different Rooms?

When I talk about the business of massage, I often talk of a house with two rooms. One room is a massage room. The other is an office. Held together by their common ceiling, floor, and walls they are one house, one home.

And yet.....

We often treat them as two different houses rather than two rooms. We may -- consciously or not -- believe that the standards, values, rules, and priorities we use in one room can't apply to the other room. Many any of us are living with a split personality -- our massage selves and our business selves. This doesn't work very well. Split personalities so rarely do!

What words do you use to describe your values as a massage therapist?

• heart-centered
• well-educated
• wise
• smart
• compassionate
• presence
• intent
• partnership
• more?

What words to you use to describe your values as a business owner?

• tough
• smart
• savvy
• quick
• driven
• focused
• more?

Maybe your two lists line up better than this. If, however, there's not a lot of common terms between the two lists, you've got a problem, you've got a split personality and it will seep into both rooms of your house.

How do you reconcile these two lists? If I said "make the biz list match the massage list", would you think I was crazy? Is that totally impractical?  Can business be done from a heart-centered place? Can it be wise and compassionate? Can it be done with presence and intent? Can it be a partnership with your client?

Not just "yes" but "hell yes!"

If that still seems utterly insane to you, I'm going to ask you to make sure you know exactly what you mean by those words in your "massage" list. Oh, sure, we all know what "heart-centered" means.....don't we? Doesn't it mean being all squishy and warm and easy? Doesn't it mean always putting the client's needs before our own?

If that starts to capture what "heart-centered" means to you, I'm inviting you here and now to write a better, real-world definition of "heart-centered". Be very specific. Ask others to look at it. And do that with all the words in your massage list that you think can never be used on the business owner side.

Do the same thing with the words on your business owner side. Can you be tough in the massage room (I've had to be a few times)? Can I be driven? Is that a good thing? If it isn't, why is it one of your values?

The change of the year is a good time to step back for a moment and re-visit our core values, motivations, and perspectives. Do they still work for us? Is it time to move in a different direction? A time to reconcile things that appear to be in opposition to each other? This is the right time of the year to go in, to go deep, to ruminate.

Want to be part of a conversation about whether the values of these two rooms can be in synch with each other? I'll be giving a free talk (yes, I used an MTs favorite word: free) in January.

Doing Business With A Compassionate Heart

Friday, January 11 2013

PMTI (Washington DC)

6:30 - 8 pm

Share the word. I want to continue this conversation with the healing arts community far and wide.