Cutthroat Blogspot – Eoin McCarthy
If I tricked you into reading last weeks blog entry then good, that was the whole point! Not to worry though, you weren’t the only one! Unsurprisingly to me, I got quite the response from it in comparison to my other blogs. Sad really, as I feel like they are all valuable in some sense – but it just shows the power of the message behind that blog & headline. Don’t be fooled people!
If you haven’t read it, go do so! However if you are too lazy & can’t be bothered, in a nutshell last weeks blog was about the fact that we all want to achieve our goals quick & easy right? Well let me tell you something, that’s not the obvious, which I feel has helped me – letting go of perfectionism.
Perfectionism is something that us as hairstylists constantly battle with. It can make us amazing stylists who always make sure our work is 100% & on the other end how it can be our biggest enemy & hold us back from achieving our goals.
I’ve been on both ends of the scale & I am sure you have too, but the further I am now into my hair career the less I am caring about such “perfection”. In saying this, it doesn’t make it ok for me or anyone to butcher someone’s hair & let them walk out of the shop without giving them our best effort. Perfect is subjective & everyone’s idea of perfect is different.
What we need to remember is – hair is hair & for the most part it is not perfect. We all have a few clients who have been blessed by the hair gods & have that “perfect” hair. It’s easy to fade, they have lovely non-complicated hair growth patterns, it styles effortlessly & just always looks good. However if you are cutting 15 people’s hair a day this level of perfection just isn’t achievable on everyone.
We all get fooled by Instagram. I am most certainly guilty of it! Instagram has made “perfect” look achievable, so now “real” has become undesirable & if you allow these unrealistic expectations of perfectionism take over, they will hold you back – I can guarantee you! How many of you have multiple haircut posts in your drafts that you haven’t uploaded yet? This is an example of it. I have 65. 65 bloody posts sitting in my drafts! So if you are the same I would advise that you go & unfollow the pages such as @barbershopconnect because they will mess with your head! Our main focus should not be to achieve the “photoshopped haircut” – it should be pleasing our clients & making them happy.
I have always been the type to jump into the deep end way before I am “ready” & way before things are “perfect”. So far it has always worked out for me, it’s either sink or swim & most of the time I find that I swim. I don’t follow societal norms within the hair industry. I wasn’t ready to educate, but I am now. I wasn’t ready to do editorial work, but I am now. Damn, if I did follow these norms I’d be only qualified for 1 year & wouldn’t even be in a position to write this blog.
All in all, something that has helped me in achieving my goals is not being too pedantic – having a keen attention to detail yes, but allowing perfectionism to stop me, no. Don’t be scared & don’t let your perfectionism hold you back from achieving & reaching your potential.
Eoin
