“I want to go to school for massage therapy. But, how can I know if the lessons the school will teach me will actually prepare me to start working as a massage therapist?”
It’s really difficult to know what you do not know.
That sounds like a tongue-twister or a weird thought right? But one of life’s most important lessons is understanding that we do not know what we do not know. It sounds simple, but really grasping it doesn’t always happen right away.
If someone tells me something that I’ve never heard before, how can I know if what they tell me is true or not true?
How to know if you are going to get good training?
It might seem impossible to answer this question if you don’t know what ‘good training’ actually is. However, there are ways you can determine things in life to identify whether or not you are getting good information.
These are standards you can hold things or people to in order to assess whether or not you are going to choose to believe or disbelieve.
Think about what might make sense. For example, with regard to massage therapy training curriculum:
Has anyone else ever studied this same material before? If so, are they now successfully working as a massage therapist? If so, that will give some credibility for you to be able to believe the training they received and that you will receive is going to be good training.
But you can do more to be more certain. How many people have studied this same material before? If it’s only a few, can you be sure that’s what really helped them succeed or could it have been something else?
Massage training curriculum that has been thoroughly tested and used to train many students before is training material you can feel confident has proven itself for you to trust what you will learn will be what you need to learn.
Is there any other way I can be sure the training program is good?
Yes. You can go further and do more research. If you search online, you can see many different sources and you can find official sources as well that will quickly show you what topics you should be learning in massage therapy school.
Compare what you find with what is being offered. If you have questions, ask those questions of the people at the school to which you are applying. Never be scared or too embarrassed to get the answers you need to make yourself feel confident.
Other ways you can increase your confidence in the planned training are to ask around and call different places and talk to other massage therapists who have been working in the massage therapy business for a while. The best advice comes from people who have lived through what you are trying to start. Make sure you ask more than one person. If you only ask one person, you only ever get one side of a story. Whether what you hear is positive or negative, build your confidence in your path forward by taking the steps to learn as many different ideas, facts, and hearing about as many different experiences as you can in order to build a foundation of knowledge and confidence for yourself.