Finding the Balance: Business vs Self-Care
The greater culture within the United States tends to focus on productivity as an end goal. Being busy, overloaded with work, always doing more, and making as much money as possible has become valued status symbols and unconscious expectations of how we’re supposed to work and what we're supposed to achieve. While we're in the middle of the daily grind it can become too easy to forget to ask ourselves what we need, to really look at what works best for us.
As Pilates teachers and movement professionals we are constantly focusing on others, our clients, to help them navigate pain and discomfort while trying to feel better and enjoy life. So we can easily forget that we can only give out what we have. Some of our favorite reminders are "you can't pour from an empty cup", or "put on your own oxygen mask first before you help others". We've all heard that many times, but it continues to be true. We have to take care of ourselves to be able to take care of others, especially in careers like Pilates teachers where we are managing and caring for many clients.
What does a Pilates teacher do when the client keeps wanting a different time or wants you to work a day that is your usual day off? What do you do as a Pilates teacher when a client cancels last minute? What do you do if a client decides to tell you what to teach them and what they want to do today in Pilates?
These are just a few of the boundary issues Pilates teachers run into during a Pilates career. How do you maintain your boundaries in your Pilates teaching career in order to take care of yourself while balancing your business?
In our podcast “ Finding the Balance: Business versus Self-Care” we looked at aspects of the business side of teaching Pilates while maintaining the boundaries and balance that works best for us. Looking at how to maintain these boundaries helps us keep our Pilates career strong in terms of income and, most importantly, our well-being.
We can get lost in this mindset of always going, stacking as many clients and classes as we can. As teachers, the product we sell is our time and expertise. When our time is limited, and when our commodity is limited, we only have so much to give each day. We can remember as newer teachers starting out, hearing other teachers brag about how many sessions they did each day. Often they would mention doing 8, 9, or 10 sessions while trying to squeeze in more. And we have all had days teaching 10 sessions. Sometimes starting at 5:30 am and ending after dinner hours! We quickly realize that is not sustainable to maintain a career long-term, and we can't continue pouring from our cups once they're empty.
For the people who that does work for, who do enjoy that strenuous schedule, that's fantastic. And for the people who that would never work for them, absolutely great too. We need to find the schedule and client load that allows us to teach while maintaining our own health, well-being, and inspiration.
Some of us can teach back-to-back clients and then be done for the day while others need a break after a few clients to then come back and teach. The key to this is to figure it out for you and to stick to that boundary of how many you have each day, each week, and guarding those days off and not just saying “ oh, sure I don’t normally see clients on that day but for you this time…” because guess what? Now they know if they ask nicely or beg you will fold. You will let them cross into your day off, your busy day, or your vacation time.
What we think self-care looks like is often spa days and massages and laying by a pool with an ice cream sundae. And that definitely can be. But self-care to avoid burnout and fatigue can also look like taking a day off from teaching, signing up for a new class, going to a workshop for new inspiration, and delving into a hobby completely outside the realm of our work. Even when we are passionate about the work we do, as most Pilates instructors are, we still need breaks from thinking about kinesiology, Pilates, anatomy, and exercise. Good questions to ask ourselves are:
What types of self-care do you gravitate to?
What recharges you?
What would your perfect day off look like?
This all leads to the boundary of your schedule. That over time will change as your life and where you teach evolves and changes. Pilates teachers need to find out quickly how they can handle their schedules. While it is important to focus on balancing our own self-care with our daily grind, most of us do still need to make money and many of us still want to grow our careers and businesses. That's the tricky part finding the magic number, the perfect amount of clients per day or per week, where it feels manageable to us but where we also feel like we're not stagnant, bored, or not making enough of an income. Good questions to ask ourselves to find the balance between business and self-care are:
How many sessions do you feel comfortable teaching in a week where it's that goldilocks number, not too many where you feel burned out or overwhelmed, but not too few where you feel bored or that business is suffering?
What's your magic number? How many clients do you want to teach in a day? In a week?
What does your perfect teaching day look like?
The answers to these questions may change over time. As new teachers we may have to simply take whatever we can get, any new client at any time of day, to begin building our session load. As we become more established in our careers we can choose to become more particular, not teaching certain hours or over a certain amount in one day. The balance may shift as we age and as life changes.
When we find a balance that best works for us, we then need to maintain our boundaries around that schedule. Often a client will ask for a session time that may be earlier or later than we prefer, or when our day is already full. If that request doesn't work for us, we have to be confident in saying no, that we are fully booked that day, or that the time is not available. Being able to figure out and subsequently maintain our boundaries is a long-term process and important for not only our teaching careers but also in life in general as well.
One of the silver linings of the Covid lockdown was being forced to reset and completely rebuild our schedules. Society had to take a giant pause. We had to shut everything down and evaluate what we actually wanted to build back up when the time came. After years of grinding through many back-to-back sessions, taking minimal breaks, and working through many holidays, we were able to slow down, to stop, to really look at what we wanted to go back to. The covid lockdown helped us learn our teaching balance. Many teachers now take more breaks, and we've noticed many clients aren't asking for as early time slots. We can better organize our time to be able to do things outside of the studio and to balance our energy to be able to fully connect with each client without being depleted or dreading our schedules, to be able to give to each client without feeling exhausted or drained by the end of the day.
We all have many various stressors pulling at us, societal expectations, financial stressors, and family pressures. We're learning to re-evaluate those cultural norms of success, the drive of eternal productivity, and the feeling that our worth is based on our monetary value and productivity. We've all been realizing that there are other things that are more important. What makes us feel financially stable while also feeling healthy and balanced as a teacher?
To have a long and happy Pilates teaching career we need to remember and set those boundaries for ourselves, not what others think we should do or need to do. It is true that teaching Pilates is our passion but, it is also our job. Every job has a schedule, we get paid, and we have vacation or sick time.
Realize that we are giving a service, and we love doing it but we are giving the client a service they schedule, keep, and pay for.
Keeping those boundaries will keep us healthy and happy as Pilates teachers for the full careers we want to have, for as many years as we want to teach. Confidence and understanding of what we need and expect from clients create respect for us as teachers. So, don’t apologize for what is needed to run our Pilates business. Keep those boundaries and clients will appreciate our professionalism and honesty throughout their Pilates journey.
We give so much to our clients all the time, and taking some time for ourselves can feel selfish…we "should" be teaching or working…but really we should also be taking care of ourselves as best we can.
Associated Podcast Episode