Surviving Toxic Clients

 I am grounded, centered and present.

Toxic people are something we all have to deal with. It's part of doing business and part of being alive. And while we can't control other people's behavior, we can certainly control how we handle it.

Of course, cutting off toxic clients is one way to deal with it, and sometimes that is the only choice. That works especially well if you have an abundance of clients, so losing a few won't impact you financially. However, if you understand how energy works, you know there are other options. In this blog, I will tell you about one of them. 

I learned a lot about energy while I was working at the Deepak Chopra Center in Carlsbad CA. In fact, understanding how energy works literally changed my life. It lowered my stress, improved my health, and changed my perspective about many things.

Even if you don't understand the importance of keeping your energy balanced, you must accept the fact that as Estheticians, we are up close and personal with our clients. So, like it or not, we are engulfed in personal energy (theirs and ours) throughout our career. Somewhere in my life, I picked up the weird habit of kicking off my shoes whenever I saw grass and walking barefoot. I still do that to this day and I have never known why, but I was always aware that nobody else around me was doing it with me. However, once I learned about energy and grounding, it all made sense. I was balancing my energy and didn't even know it!

Below is an excerpt from my book The Heart of Esthetics: Creating Loyal Clients & Achieving Financial Success which talks about how to keep your energy balanced. I go into more detail in the book, but for this blog I am specifically highlighting the science of grounding. 

ENERGY & BALANCE

For the last couple of decades, energy work has been gaining in popularity in the spa industry. In this section, I am referring to the art of balancing your personal energy.

Methods of Balancing Energy

Taking steps to balance your energy will keep you healthy and stress-free. Although your goal is to protect yourself from your clients’ unbalanced energy, the client will also enjoy the benefit of your balanced energy. Here is a short list of energy-balancing methods:

• Meditation
• Grounding/Earthing
• Visualization
• Affirmations
• Reiki
• Feng Shui
• Aromatherapy
• Subliminal audio
• Negative ions/salt lamps

I expect many of you are already familiar with many items on this list and quite possibly are already using some of these in your esthetics practice. For example, I know a lot of us use aromatherapy, and some of us (like me) are Reiki certified. But perhaps there are a few others that you may not be as familiar with.

Grounding. As a newly-licensed Esthetician, I learned the importance of “grounding.” However, back then, I understood that to mean the process of standing at the head of my facial bed and visualizing roots coming from my feet and traveling down into the earth, thereby connecting my energy and “grounding” me. The reason energy and balance are significant is because the situation with our clients in the treatment room is so close and intimate. Because of this, we risk the transference of energy, either theirs to us or ours to them.

When you are exposed to a client with a negative attitude or perhaps someone in your life happens to be in a bad mood, that energy can directly impact your entire day -- in and out of your treatment room -- and it can be passed along to other clients. And worst of all, you can take that energy home with you and it can impact your personal life. This is why Estheticians must learn methods to maintain balance and practice their preferred method(s) on a daily basis.

Think of energy balancing it this way: You wouldn’t dream of leaving your home without brushing your teeth because you know it is a matter of dental hygiene. Similarly, balancing your energy before you leave your house (or before your first client arrives) is energetic hygiene. Without it, you are at the mercy of the energy you will undoubted encounter throughout your day… like being in a rowboat with no oars, and therefore no control as to the direction you will go.

As a new Esthetician, I also learned about the benefits of negative ions which are molecules that have been charged with electricity. Oddly enough, negative ions create positive vibes which seems counter-intuitive, but that is how it works. If you have been to the ocean, then you have experienced the wonderful energy of negative ions provided by sea air. That’s why everyone feels so good near the ocean. So when you are at the beach, be sure to remove your shoes and walk in the sand and/or the ocean. Or take a walk in the grass. Besides feeling really good on your feet, it’s actually really good for you.

Salt lamps. It is a common belief that salt lamps also produce negative ions so I always had a salt lamp in my treatment room and one in my office. As a new Esthetician, I learned that salt lamps can help counteract the positive ions (bad energy) coming from the electrical equipment in our treatment room. Whether or not that’s true, salt lamps give off a lovely amber light, and that’s good enough for me. 

Grounding is simply connecting yourself to the Earth. Here is a short video that explains it. Down to Earth - Clint Ober

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