The Greek 9 Muses who inspire creativity

Massage enhances creativity.  There are no ifs, and, or buts about it.  The relaxation that occurs stimulates inspiration, because a relaxed mind and body are more receptive to creative impulses than when you’re tense.

While receiving an Indonesian massage on a luxury yacht off the coast of Thailand, I gained inspiration for this blog, as well as for one on tuning in to what your massage clients experience from your treatments.  During previous massages, I’ve received ideas for other blogs, for new workshops that I’d eventually give, and for new books and mini-books that I’d write.

If you’d like to have more creative people on your client roster, talk to existing clients who are in the creative arts and ask them for testimonial quotes about how your massages awaken their creativity, both during a session as well as after.  Then, create a brochure on massage and creativity, and target local creative people: actors, directors and theater companies; dancers, choreographers, and their companies; writers and writer groups; painters, sculptors, and art schools; musicians, orchestras, and music schools.

Once you’ve completed the brochure—and had it edited and proofread by another pair of eyes—snail mail it to the heads of these organizations.  Tell them that massage is a great boon to creative people, as the enclosed brochure indicates.  Describe your background, and let them know you work with many creative people.  Finally, indicate that you’ll follow up with a phone call in a week.  Make a note to do just that.  Then, get ready for some fascinating new clients.

Forgiveness helps us to prosper

Anger costs you money. Forgiveness makes you money.  By not discussing the prospering power of forgiveness, The Wall Street Journal is derelict in its duties to its readers who wish to become richer.  Like Hebrew National, I answer to a higher authority.

Allow me a personal digression.  Many years ago, my then sister-in-law returned my letters to my nieces unopened.  I was deeply hurt, yet I took responsibility for our breakdown.  I was expecting her usual angry tirade.  Instead, she suggested we forget the past and create a whole new future.  You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather.  Within three days I landed my largest client ever, and four days later signed two more.  It typically took about three months to sign three clients; this time it took only seven days!   I also lost 7 pounds in that week without changing what I ate or how I exercised.

Following is a prospering process to “complete” with anyone for whom you have strong unresolved emotions.

1: Write the person a letter you’ll never send. Say how you feel about the horrible things done or said to you, what a terrible low life s/he is.  Don’t hold back, and don’t censor your language.  Release the toxic feelings inside you; if not, they’ll damage you.  Blame this person for everything awful that’s happened.  By the time you finish, you’ll feel lighter.  You’ll have lifted a great weight from your shoulders, a heavy burden from your heart.

2: In this next letter (which you won’t send either), you’re no longer the victim doing the blaming.  The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  Find out how knowing this person had made you stronger.

3: Letter #3 is an integration of the two letters, and is intended to be sent. By now, you’ll have released the venom expressed in the first letter, and seen how you’ve grown in relationship with this person.  Describe the incident that caused the upset; then describe how you felt about what happened.  Avoid saying “you hurt me.”  The person did something—the hurt is how you reacted to what was done.  Then describe what you learned from what was done, and how you grew.  Finally, express your gratitude for their role in inspiring your growth.

The Course in Miracles talks about forgiveness and the creation of miracles. The Forgiveness Letter described above has brought miracles in communications, new clients, unexpected income and other wonderful new prosperity.  Be wise, and show it to a close friend, therapist or coach before sending so an objective pair of eyes can scour it and make sure that you are complete with the person you’ve written to, and forgiveness shows through.

The computer and database software are an LMT’s friends.

I’ve met countless massage therapists whose office files belong more in the 20^th century than in the 21^st.  I’m not suggesting that LMTs should have paperless offices.  I am suggesting, however, that electronic data be incorporated, as well.

Paper files for each session need no changing.  But as a business coach for massage therapists, I travel the country giving my CE workshop, “How to Build a $100,000 Massage Business,” and I’ve seen and heard about far too many intake forms that fail to ask for email addresses.  How can you communicate with clients by email if you don’t know their email address?  The answer is that you can’t.  And that’s a huge oversight.  I’ve also seen far too many LMTs who treat the computer as an enemy.  (I’ll save that topic for a future blog.)

So, go through your files and if you don’t have a client’s email address, pick up the phone—another invention that made people uncomfortable in the 19^th century when it was brought into the world—and ask for it.  If you’re not asking for an email address, correct the oversight.

Once you’ve collected email addresses from clients it’s time to build a database.  That’s a slightly high tech way of saying a mailing list.  Except the mailing list I’m talking about is electronic.  The days of massage therapists mailing out paper will soon go the way of the Edsel.

Your computer has database software.  If you don’t know how to find it and/or are reluctant to learn it, find a friend, a client, a colleague or a teenager to do it for you.  If you can’t afford to actually pay them for it, trade for it.

What you’re building is a newsletter of your very own.  And that’s a subject for a future blog, as well.

The relaxed Roger Federer present with the ball

I just came across one of the great Roger Federer’s secrets of success.  Drum roll…in a word: sleep.  Sleep?  That’s right.  The greatest tennis player ever, attributes success not just to his gorgeous array of shots, but to getting 10 hours of sleep per night.

So what’s this got to do with you?  Plenty.  Federer demonstrates an important principle of the Universe that you can take advantage of without having to get all those extra hours of Zs.  The Swiss net star stays cool because that extra shut-eye releases daily stress and strain.

You can release fatigue and deeper-rooted stress in a deeper way than sleep. The best way I know of is meditation.  As a former Transcendental Meditation (TM) practitioner and teacher since the ‘70s, who recently launched Higher Self Meditation, I’ve experienced so many times just how profound this phenomenon is. 

Deprive a person of sleep long enough and that person becomes unable to function properly.  He’ll be irritable, he’ll be unable to concentrate, and he’ll perform poorly. Nature lives by the law of rest as the basis of activity.  The more you align with this natural law, the more you thrive; the more you fight it (burn the candle at both ends, for example) the more you suffer. 

The orange ball that rises majestically from over the Atlantic Ocean every morning, while I sip hot water and lemon (Ayurvedic) rather than coffee (Colombian) demonstrates the point. With the exception of nocturnal creatures, most of Nature sleeps after the sun goes down. We’re told to make hay while the sun shines. The related maxim: make Z’s after the sun sets.  

The daily rest and activity cycle that Nature observes, and that we practice is mirrored by seasonal cycles of rest and activity, as well: much of Nature rests during the Winter, and then comes alive for a rebirth come Spring.  Bears hibernate for months—their deep rest enlivens them for vigorous activity when the weather gets warmer.

Scientific research on stress management indicates a myriad of benefits accruing from deep rest.  The research on TM I’m familiar with shows that a level of rest reached that’s twice as deep as the deepest point in a night’s sleep as measured by oxygen consumption.  A night’s sleep removes daily fatigue, the deeper rest gained during meditation releases deeper-rooted stress that’s accumulated over the years.  

So the next time you’re about to step out onto the tennis court, the basketball court, or a court of law, make sure you’ve gotten in your good night’s sleep—or better yet, your daily meditation.  It works for Federer, it works for the yogis, and it can work for you.

Virtually everyone is making buy one get one free offers.

Restaurants, shoe stores, bookstores… it’s hard not to find a “Buy one, get one free” offer.   Oh, sure, you don’t see such ads for medical practices, auto dealers, and massage therapists. It’s understandable why MDs, ill at ease about advertising, aren’t running such specials.  But massage therapists?  There’s no good reason why they’re not.

For a few hundred dollars worth of advertising, a number of LMTs employing this strategy received ongoing clients—some of whom might be worth many thousands of dollars during the course of their relationships with these therapists.  To make this promotion successful require the new client to receive that free session within a week of the first.

Consider the advantages of the offer: 

1. New people experience your work for half the price they normally would, particularly appealing during a recession.  

2. New clients pay full price for their first massage from you, which is psychologically important for you.

3. New clients get two massages from you in two weeks.

4. The second massage is free.  Human nature being what it is, the tendency to feel obligated to the therapist might inspire the client to book a third massage.

The peaceful state that accompanies a massage is far more subtle than a sloppy Big Mac or an eventual sweaty pair of Nikes, each of which can also be purchased on a buy-one-get-one-free basis, so some LMTs might feel odd compared to such multinational giants.  But for a massage therapist to be associated with the two most prominent logos in marketing history can only be a good thing. 

The proverb–“Well begun is half done.”–recognizes that it’s good to get off to a good start. So isn’t it peculiar that marriage–what we vow is a long-term “permanent” relationship (“Till death do us part”)–begins with “falling” in love?   Why associate this most delightful state of consciousness with falling?  What good ever came from falling?  How can a relationship that starts with a fall do anything but fail?  Too soon after the rice has been thrown and the wedding cake is eaten, far too many brides and/or grooms call divorce lawyers.

Cupid is looking to put people in love.

Rational people might argue that “falling in love” is just a figure of speech.  But the subconscious mind takes the words and thoughts that we feed it literally.   So it’s high time we replace “falling” in love with “rising” in love or “growing” in love.

We have a host of expressions that don’t give love a chance.  Consider the following:

“I’m crazy about you.“

“I’m madly in love.”

“Love is blind.”

We associate love with craziness, madness and blindness.  Is it any wonder why six in 10 first marriages end in divorce?   What if we changed our expressions?

“I’m crazy about you” could become “Being with you helps put me in my right mind.”

“I’m madly in love” could morph into “Being in love frees me.”

“Love is blind” could change into “Love opens my eyes to higher realities.”

Loving another person can lead to delightful and liberating states of being, to marriage and children, and to a lifetime of commitment together. It’s high time that we give it a chance to get off to a good start by calling its early delicious stage rising in love.

Business cards are for exchanging

A business coach for massage therapists, I’m not going to tell you what to put on your business card.  Designers are far more capable with layout and graphics than I am.  I’m going to tell you how to use this card.

Let’s look at a typical place you give out this little piece of ID: a party.  You’ve given it out so often and nothing ever came of it.  You used it incorrectly.  Let’s look at a correct and enlightened use of that card.

Let’s say you’re talking to some guy at the guacamole dip.  You’ve talked about what you do and he expresses interest, so you automatically give him your card.  He now has a way to contact you–but you have no way of contacting him.  If you’re a woman in her mid-40s or older—you may remember a time before the advent of cell phones, pagers, and voicemail—when you may have sat beside the phone waiting for a certain guy on whom you had a crush to call. You felt the vulnerability of being reactive.  Now I’ll show you how to be proactive.

Change the adage “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” to  “When in America, do as the Japanese do.”  They trade business cards.  A Japanese businessman expects to receive a card from whomever he’s giving his to.  Say to the guy at the guac dip, “As for cards, I love the civilized Japanese tradition: I give you my card and you give me yours.”

Then say, “Think about if you’d like to get relief from that pain in your (insert here whatever his pain is, he’s no doubt told you and probably even showed you), and if I haven’t heard from you within a week, I can make your life easier and give you a call.  Would you like that?”

Instead of being that disempowered teenager years back, you can be an empowered adult massage therapist and call him.  I’m not saying he’ll be your client if you call.  But if you don’t, he probably won’t.

The Buddha in his Enlightenment

The Enlightenment I’m going to speak about in this blog is much more than the Enlightenment that the great French philosophers Rousseau and Voltaire wrote about in the so-called Age of Enlightenment that helped create the idealism and egalitarianism that led to the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.  These two documents helped inspire a more enlightened way of looking at government throughout the world for decades and centuries to come.  They still do.

The Enlightenment I’m going to speak about in this blog is also more than the understanding of the Law of Attraction and Creative Thought that’s become so popular with the best-selling book and video, The Secret.  It’s also more than the understanding of New Age principles.  It’s the realization of living truths that were recorded more than 40 centuries ago.

The Enlightenment I’m going to speak about in this blog is more than the Cosmic Consciousness flashes depicted in the revolutionary book, Cosmic Consciousness, written slightly over a century ago by the Canadian psychiatrist R.M. Bucke.  In this seminal classic, a desert island read for me if I was limited to even just a handful of books, the Walt Whitman biographer voluminously revered the mystical glimpses of great seers, sages, philosophers, poets and the like throughout history.  The book is so important in the history of consciousness because the spiritual experiences that it celebrates are given greater importance than the ritual performance that takes place a couple of hours every weekend in America.

As important as all these different versions of Enlightenment are, Enlightenment is much, much more.  It’s only fitting in this age of 24/7 that Enlightenment becomes widely known as the all-time 24/7 state that it is, rather than an occasional glimpse or fleeting experience that it isn’t.  You may visit Paris as a tourist for a vacation: a Parisian on the other hand, is French.  And so it is with Enlightenment: a perpetual condition of transformed consciousness as much as it is of purified physiology.  Because it takes the transformation of the nervous system to consciously reflect for all times—all the time—the timelessness of the Transcendent that’s your essential nature, the ground of your inner Being, your true higher Self.

The 9 Muses

One of the best ways to deepen your connection to your Muse—your creative Source–is an exercise called Discovery Writing.  It taps the infinite creativity of your subconscious mind to enhance your creative output; increase income; enrich relationships; organize your life; deepen your spiritual connection, and so on.

Here’s how it works. Write one objective you want to work on at the top of the page.  Let’s say it’s “20 Things I Can Do to Increase My Income 25 Per Cent this Month.”  (If you want to double your income, then use that as a goal.)  Then, for two minutes, keep your pen moving. Set a timer.  Jot down whatever is in your mind, even if no sensible income-stimulating idea is there, never letting the pen be idle for a second.  Even if it’s seemingly off-topic like “chocolate chip cookies.” Who knows—maybe you can make money selling the cookies you bake in your spare time. (Debbi Fields sure did before she thrived as Mrs. Fields.)  Maybe you just need an occasional milk and cookies break. Your inner child might be trying to give you a tip that all work and no cookies make you a dull boy. The act of letting creative juices flow without editorial censorship opens you to provocative ideas from the Unconscious.  From this, I developed new workshop ideas, ideas for books, and names of people who could expand my work.  After two minutes, put down your pen and look at your list. If any idea appeals to your rational mind, consider acting upon it the way you’d act upon any good idea.

If you build it, he will come

 “If you build it, he will come.”—The Voice, in A Field of Dreams

Recently, while communicating on my Facebook coaching page for massage therapists (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hillsboro-Beach-FL/Business-Coaching-for-Massage-Therapists/329153699118), an LMT in New York State asked me how to get more clients.  I asked her how many more sessions she wanted to do each week, and how much time she had for them.  She said she wanted 10 more weekly clients.  A business coach for massage therapists, I proceeded to teach her a secret for manifesting that I teach in some of my CE courses, that wasn’t mentioned in The Secret, the best-selling video and book.  In other words, you heard it here first.

Step one, I told her, was to block off time in her calendar for these 10 new clients.  In her case, what made the most sense was to add two more clients at the end of each of her five workdays, say, from 3—4 PM, and from, say, 4:15—5:15 PM.  In and of itself, that doesn’t automatically cause 10 new clients to ring her up on the phone and ask her for late afternoon appointments—at precisely the time when she wants them.  But, I told her, here’s the kicker: if no new client shows up on Monday from 3—4 PM, when you’re “expecting” him, then work on marketing your business at that time.  Since it’s already blocked off for massage, it becomes more possible for such a person to learn about you and reach out for you.  Ditto from 3—5:15 PM when there’s another open slot for such a person.

You can also use part of that blocked-off hour to do some “inner” work to help manifest such clients, such as affirmation and visualization exercises, among others.  These I’ve already explained in previous blog posts.  Build new clients into your consciousness and schedule book, and happy manifesting!