Are you living an authentic life?
I’m in Cleveland Ohio this week searching for answers within my peer group that I love hanging out with over a few days. My head usually hurts from being stretched into “out of the box thinking”. After the third day of intense talking and hashing out different levels of conversation about a multitude of topics, I reflect and start the implementation.
Do you ever feel that you are being as authentic as you can? Have you learned to enjoy who you really are in this world? When you know that you can make a difference with the people that you work with every day, doesn’t that make you feel good about you? It should. I work with some pretty talented people from front desk to stylists and assistants and managers. They each have their own strengths that build on our culture within our salon to make it a great experience for our customers. I truly enjoy that feeling knowing that you will be greeted happily at our front desk. I enjoy knowing that you will be served well professionally with our technicians. We as a team transform our customers into feeling great about themselves with their hair, skin and nails. Our business is so much more than just doing hair or having a facial. We literally can take the canvas of a person’s face and transform them into beautiful or handsome. Can’t exclude the men right? People in general hide behind the exterior and are afraid to come out or be seen and expose those amazing qualities that are hidden beneath. What I love about the hair industry is that we can help bring confidence to women and men by polishing their appearance. Appearance is just the start of a breakthrough for some people. More confidence and self worth can create a new job opportunity that perhaps was not available at a low point in their life or the instance of a newly divorced woman that was transformed into a more confident person that can now take on full time work, raise the kids and start a new career for herself. That is transforming is believing in yourself to know that you can do anything with some exposure to whats possible.
All of this has not come without effort and pain staking training over the years. Is anything that we work on in our lives without some pain to get there? Wherever the “get there” is for you, think about what steps you have to take and what the actions are that will help propel you towards your success. Success is not about money all of the time even though most of us would associate success with money. As I mature, I think about what success is to me and what the value of that is to me at this point in my life. I choose to hang with people that enjoy me as well as my enjoyment of them. I have a very small circle of people that I spend time with privately due to the limited amount of time I have of freedom available. So I say that being able to let loose to share those fun times or cook with or play with or just be on the phone to share stories is really valuable to me.
It’s a shame to let others influence you in a negative perception which can change our authentic selves. Realize that we must grow and sometimes we receive information about ourselves that may not be positive but is useful in the development of who we are in this world. Somebody may have been sent to share that message with you to help you become more distinctive than you were or to help you see something even better than where you are right now in your life. Take these moments as gifts. I know I have received a few of these “gifts” myself and I can tell you that I appreciate them.
My thought for you today is to be who you are and enjoy you. Continue to strive to be the best at what you do to share with others and it will come back to you.
