Do you run your business or do your clients tell you how to run it?
Do you speak up and tell others what’s not OK?
In short, do you set boundaries, or are you silenced? Are you so afraid of being disliked that you fail to speak up.
All the boundaries in the world are useless if you don’t communicate them and enforce them. It’s no good saying ‘I’m allowed to say “no’” if you freeze up when you need to. Your boundaries – and your safety – is only as good as your ability to enforce your boundaries.
Today we are going to talk about professional boundaries – why clear boundaries are the biggest test of a healing practitioner.
What are boundaries?
At the very simplest level, a boundary is your statement of what’s acceptable to you and what isn’t. “Talk politely to me,” and “don’t touch me without consent” are boundaries.
Territorial boundaries are a statement that “this space is mine.” When nations test and defend territorial boundaries it’s call geopolitics. When companies do it, it’s call competition.
Why do we need boundaries?
In a perfect world, perhaps we wouldn’t need boundaries. Everyone would totally respect everyone else’s space and there would be no sense of violation.
However, in the world we have created for ourselves, most of us feel abused, taken advantage of, or violated, at some point in our lives. To protect ourselves, we need boundaries. Boundaries prevent us feeling abused.
In other articles on this blog I will write more about personal boundaries and sexual boundaries, and how lack of boundaries can contribute to emotional and sexual abuse.
Today I want to talk about professional boundaries and professional abuse
What happens without professional boundaries?
I can only write from my own experience.
When I started teaching healing courses I had all sorts of “shenanigans.” Most people paid on the day of the course (cash), that is if they felt like it. It’s almost as if people paid what they felt like it, because at the end of the day there would be several people who hadn’t paid with notes on the registration form that “X needs to speak to Simon about it.”
People would ask me during – like half way through – the course whether there was a concession price or whether I’d be open to some form of exchange. I was bewildered. I couldn’t fathom how or why they thought it was OK to ask this question during the course. But I realized of course that it was “my stuff.” I took responsibility for it.
I was uncomfortable talking about and collecting money in relation to healing work. So my emails to students before class did not refer to financial boundaries. The only reason student’s didn’t respect my boundaries is because I didn’t have any!
Over the years I’ve learned to be firm. Kind, yes, but firm.
We no longer accept cash on the day of courses. We expect payment 1-2 weeks before the course. And you know what? 90% of our dramas disappeared! I realized that all of our problem students and last minute headaches (including the dreaded “no show”) were due to people who promised to pay on the day. By insisting on payment in advance we eliminated the problem. That was one of the best boundaries I’ve ever set.
Once we got the booking policy sorted, the attention was cast to the cancellation policy. A cancelation policy is basically what happens to a student who has paid for the course but changes their mind or has to withdraw.
Students withdraw for all sorts of reasons, some really legitimate (medical reasons, death in the family) and some quite spurious (“my angels told me not to do the course”).
I find that our courses – especially the Level 3 course – can be quite confronting. I often observe that students manifest the most significant obstacles when fear comes up about the course. Many students have withdrawn after registering and many have lost their deposit because of fears that have come up before the course. Usually the fear will manifest an excuse – like a family or business reason why the student cannot take the course.
The fact that intense courses generate a certain level of fear or cold feet means that it’s really important to have a very clear cancellations policy.
Cancellations – who is being protected and what’s the fair outcome?
Before we agree on what’s fair, let’s talk about the intention – who is really being protected?
Obviously a person has boundaries to protect themselves, but can a person’s boundaries protect others too? Could a business’s boundaries be there to protect the clients?
In developing a tight cancellations policy I decided to put my students first. Not their wallets, their Beingness. (A distinction they usually don’t like!) I ask this question – if I refunded money to everyone who asked, is this in their best interests? Not their short term financial interests, their “best” best interests? My view is that the answer is almost always “no.” (I acknowledge that I have not made friends with this policy!)
As proof of this I can point to the 10 or so times when I refused a refund, and the student re-arranged commitments and did the course as originally planned. In each of these 10 cases the student came up to me and thanked me for being “hard-lined” with them, as they were so grateful that they had the breakthrough needed to do the course.
This really brings up a point related to what I said in my recent post about charity. The fact of getting the money together for the course can be a bigger breakthrough than the course itself. Similarly for someone who has the money, clearing their conflicts and getting themselves to the course can be a bigger breakthrough in itself than what they get on the course. It’s often the breakthrough they need most.
That’s why I firmly believe that our policy helps the students as well as us.
So what’s our policy?
If you haven’t read our legal page you are probably wondering what our cancellations policy is.
You can click the link to read it in full. I’ll summarize it here. It says that deposits are non-refundable. Period. We will refund the balance given enough notice, but prefer to transfer it to another course. Once someone decided to do an RPT course with us, we know they are guided to do so, and we believe that the obstacles that come up are just caused by fear. So our entire policy is designed to support them through that fear and ensure they end up doing the course.
How fair are we?
We are so fair and flexible that we will even transfer the payments to another person or hold it pretty much indefinitely on trust for you.
About 3 years ago I had a student withdraw at the last minute from a course in another modality I used to teach. Three years later she asked if she could apply that balance to a Reference Point Therapy course. Not only was it a different modality but I had shut down the other business. There was no legal obligation at all, and yet I honored the commitment and I allowed her to apply her old deposit as partial credit to a different course in a different company. I feel that I was right to refuse the refund 3 years ago, and I was right to give it to her now against a new course.
How fair do students think we are?
I would love to say that everyone thinks our policies are great and fair, but they don’t.
The whole point of boundaries is that they are there to protect you. That means that any exploration of boundaries is going to be sensitive.
I have several times been very firm in saying “no” to people about refunds because of the cancellation policy. The very first time I did that I received a reply admonishing me to “do the spiritual thing,” as if disrespecting your own boundaries is spiritual!
Yesterday my manager Valeria, said no to a refund to a student needing to withdraw from our next level 3 course. She merely pointed to the Cancellation Policy. He replied today:
Enlightenment, isn’t that part of what Simon is selling? Here, you had a tiny opportunity to show something of your business and your personal ability to reach into a set of facts and respond. And you did what you did? Amazing.
It’s such a brilliant mis-statement that it prompted this entire blog article. The “set of facts” he’s referring to is his reasons why the published policy should not apply to him. (To be fair he might be right that the policy is unfair in his case, I will discuss it with him.) I’m quoting him as an example of how people react when you point them to a published policy that they read, or should have read, before booking.
There’s something else here really misguided. Let me set the record straight publicly: I am not selling enlightenment. Anyone who does is a charlatan. Enlightenment cannot be sold.
I teach personal development courses. That’s all I do. I found a much faster way to clear your “stuff” and lead a successful life. That’s it. I pitched my work at people with a background in alternative healings, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less comfortable in front of a board room. The fact that I might use words like “mastery” and “soul” doesn’t bind me to someone’s arbitrary set of rules about what’s spiritual. What if I’m not spiritual?
One of the most important things I teach on my courses is boundaries. I help my students (especially Level 3) to practice saying “no,” to clear their fears of full self expression, and to go home from the course and set boundaries to protect themselves. Those boundaries have to be clearly-communicated and expressed (just like I published my cancellation policy on my website and link to it before you can book into a course).
Here’s the thing: If I agreed to a full refund to someone who booked into a 2 week course without checking he was actually available for it, then I am making a hypocrite of myself. That’s not boundaries, it’s something else.
I teach by example. My Level 3 students graduate with a really strong sense of self and personal power. They can say “no” and mean it. My Level 3 graduates do not get abused. How do I get this result? Because I teach by example how to say no.
Being liked versus being successful
I’ve written previously on this blog about my “business guru” Tim Ferris and his article “the benefits of pissing people off.” Read Tim’s article if you haven’t before. All I can say is that if I tried to be friends with everyone and have every student like me, I would never have achieved anything.
I wasn’t even able to launch RPT without upsetting my colleagues in my former modality who probably felt betrayed when I spoke my truth. The entire existence of RPT is predicated on the fact that I value boundaries and outcomes more highly than being liked.
And that’s my final point on boundaries really, boundaries are not about being liked. Only people with really bad boundaries need the world to like them. People who are successful just are. They don’t need you to like them.
I learned this from Tim Ferriss and from my brief NLP studies with Christopher Howard (author of “Billionaire Bootcamp” modeling the success factors of billionaires): successful people don’t really care what people think about them.
Think about some of the world’s most successful people: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, all of our political leaders – how thick skinned must they be to succeed? These are some of the most hated people in the world, and the most successful.
My teacher for the week: Steve Jobs. This week his company, Apple, overtook Microsoft in market capitalization. Jobs didn’t resurrect Apple by being nice to people, he did it by setting some of the world’s tightest and harshest boundaries about how people use his products. Very few people like him, almost everyone admires him. I personally dislike his boundaries which limit how I can use my iPhone, but I still buy his products and admire his strength of character.
As for me, well I have really great friends, and an incredible wife / soulmate. I don’t need you to like me. If you do, great, and if you don’t, fine. I have no “guru complex” so I don’t need your love, respect or adoration. I am abundant so I don’t need your money. Like Steve Jobs who I dislike and admire equally – I offer you a really awesome product that no one else offers at this time. If you like it, here are my boundaries. If you don’t like it, Microsoft is just around the corner…
End of boundaries part 1…
I’m sure we’ll talk a lot more about boundaries on this blog.
Like to learn more?
On our Level 2 course we use an incredible technique I developed to reset your boundaries. We see the membrane around the egg at the time of fertilization as a metaphor for your personal boundaries. This is a Key Developmental Event. The way in which the egg reacts to penetration by sperm sets a reference point for your personal boundaries. It may sound odd but it works – it’s an instant way to reset your personal boundaries and one of the most important benefits of the Level 2 course.
Please comment here
Are my boundaries too tough? Am I being too generous? What would you do? Have you been hard done by me? Here’s your chance to comment and to help me gauge whether I get my boundaries right.
Gerhard 
Renee Hawkins 
Alf 
Megajn 
Great article.
I think your personal boundaries are teaching a lot of people to take a look at what they call ‘spirituality’. So many spiritual people are out of touch with the real world. They let people walk all over them, and as a result live in poverty or abuse. For me it’s a breath of fresh air to meet someone that works in an ethical way, keeps it all REAL, and practices what they teach.
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