I want you to think back for a moment to when you signed up for cosmetology school. The world was yours for the taking, right? You had stars in your eyes, big dreams in mind, and the kickass desire to make it happen.
Fast forward one, two, even five years in the industry and you start wondering if this was the right choice. If you’re really cut out to be successful in this industry. If maybe you should have stuck with nannying those kids for more pay instead of trying to make it work behind the chair.
All those thoughts and beliefs are thanks to our inner mean girl.
Back on podcast 081 with Rachel Perry, we met our inner mean girl. She’s the voice in your head that tells you you can’t, that your ideas are dumb, that you need to stay in your lane at the back of the group.
But she’s wrong.
Our inner mean girl is our mind’s defense mechanism. It goes back to the caveman days where we had to mistrust anything scary, new or different.
But to make those big, crazy, beautiful dreams of yours come true, you need to overcome those limiting beliefs shouted out by your inner mean girl.
I want to dive into the top seven limiting beliefs that are holding you back in your career.
1. Others are more successful than me and I will never measure up
Oh yeah, we’re starting with a big one.
It’s so easy to compare your career with other stylists on Instagram, in forums, or even with platform artists… But comparing your business to another’s is like comparing apples to oranges.
They’re totally different things, right? You built up your business offering what nobody else can: you. Focus back on your specialty, your cutting edge, and wholeheartedly believe in it.
If you feel your clientele starting to drop off, I want you to focus on getting your target market back in your chair. If that means some clients leave, that’s okay, because if your business and brand focus in on your target market, you will be successful.
Rephrased belief: I am successful because I can offer something no one else can.
2. I will always struggle to make ends meet
Newsflash: money is a fully renewable resource.
Meaning you can always make more money…but only if you think positively about it.
If you spend all your energy thinking about how money is so horrible, how you wish you didn’t need it, it makes your life so hard, you send all that energy out into the universe, and it hears you. Money begins to avoid you because you’ve sent out the message that you basically don’t want it.
But if you change your mindset from “ugh, I’ll never have enough money,” to a more positive one, the change is enormous. If you think about how money is always flowing to you, you are wealthy in more ways than one, babe, you’ll be holistically wealthy before you know it.
Money isn’t holding you back. It’s you holding you back.
Rephrased belief: Money is flowing to me and my business.
3. I don’t have control over my schedule
This one can be so frustrating. It feels like everybody else has your time: your partner, your kids, your clients, but there’s never enough time for you to do what needs to be done.
Here’s the deal: you are in control of your life. No one else. Not your partner, your kids, your salon owner, nobody but you.
You are deciding to let all of these people run your days, weeks, and months. You are deciding to put yourself, your priorities, and your business on the back burner for them.
Time to take back control, babe. Block out time to decide what’s actually important and what’s not. This will look different for everybody. Maybe you want to focus on leading classes in your salon so you can become an educator. Maybe you want to practice presentation skills to become a platform artist. Maybe you want to lighten up your schedule so you can spend less time behind the chair, more time with your family, and make the same amount of money.
Whatever you decide is most important to you, focus in on it. Put all your effort behind making it happen, and say no to opportunities that don’t push you towards that dream.
Rephrased belief: I have full control over my schedule.
4. I or my business will never grow
This one is especially heartbreaking.
The sad truth is that in this industry, you will experience this limiting belief at least half a dozen times during your career: when you start, after you return from maternity leave, when you move salons or cities, when you turn 50 and suddenly the twenty-year-olds don’t want to see you anymore, and your older clients can’t afford you either.
That’s when the panic sets in, right? We start to question if we’ll ever make it as hair stylists, if we should change professions, and why we chose this crazy industry anyway.
This is your mind playing tricks on you. Can you notice how your inner mean girl is shouting at the top of her lungs?
Don’t give up! Instead, take a hard look at your business. Are there any small shifts you can make for a big impact? Or is it just your inner mean girl?
Rephrased belief: My business will grow to support me, my dreams, and my career.
5. I’m not getting there fast enough, so I’ll never get there at all
Every time we start something new, it’s so exciting when we start working on it, right? It’s brand new, shiny, and full of potential!
But then once we’re in the middle of it, it starts to get hard. Suddenly, we realize this might not be as easy as we thought it would be and we lose steam. Then something that sounded so fun and exciting before feels unattainable, we think we’ll never make it there, and we become complacent.
This is doomsday.
As humans, we don’t feel good when we’re complacent. We always want to level up, find our what’s next, and dream bigger. But we’re living in an Amazon Prime world, where if we can order our groceries in the morning and have them delivered that afternoon, why can’t we make our dreams come true just as fast?
When it doesn’t happen, we get upset, frustrated…and complacent.
Our industry is still a pay-your-dues kind of industry. And I don’t mean that you need to toil as an unpaid assistant for years or be happy with sweeping up behind senior stylists. I mean you need to put in a good, solid 365 of working nights, weekends, and sacrificing time with your loved ones to build a clientele.
We’re a little skewed on how long it takes to become successful because we just see those overnight Instagram sensations rocking it. We don’t see the behind-the-scenes of what it took for them to become that major success. So we think if success doesn’t come quickly, it won’t come at all.
That is so not true. There is no such thing as an overnight success. There are only people working hard behind the scenes to make their dreams come true.
Rephrased belief: Every step on my journey to success is so worth it.
6. Someone or something is standing in the way of my success, so I’m screwed
If you’re blaming your partner who wants you to stay home more with the kids or your salon owner for not supporting you as much as you want, stop it.
These are definitely problems, but you allowing them to stand in the way of your success is a limiting belief.
You are not making a plan to move forward, meaning you’ll be stuck stewing in misery until you do. It might be hard, but blaming your lack of success on someone else won’t get you anywhere.
Something has to give, to flex to make it happen.
Sit down with your partner and talk about different childcare arrangements. Ask your salon owner for a few moments of their time to see if they have any ideas on how to bump up your clientele.
This is the one life you’re living for yourself. Are you really willing to let someone or something else stand in the way of making your big dreams come true?
Rephrased belief: Nothing will stand in the way of my success.
7. My journey to success shouldn’t cause me pain or make me sacrifice my personal life
Wouldn’t it be great if success was served up on a silver platter? If you didn’t have to work for it, but it was just there for you?
But there isn’t a single person on this planet where success just landed in their lap and they lived a happy life. They worked for it, they gave up time with their family and friends, they skipped events and struggled on the journey to success.
If you don’t want to spend your weekends marketing yourself, you chose the wrong industry. Because your income is 100% based on your efforts. If you spend a lot of time moving the needle in your business, you’ll be fully rewarded. If you slack off, your paycheck will show it.
If you think this is too stressful, that’s a major problem. Sure, there will be steps along your journey that aren’t fun, but you’re in this industry because you love it. So those steps that aren’t fun? They’re still worth it.
If this was a stress-free industry where you could have a ton of success without feeling any pain, don’t you think everybody would be wildly successful? The reason a lot of people aren’t is because as soon as we start to feel pain, we shut down. But it’s the people who make sacrifices who achieve greatness.
Rephrased belief: I’m willing to work through the hard steps of my journey to achieve success.
Do some soul searching to decide what you want for yourself, then make a plan to get there. Know that going through pain to achieve success is a very normal thing, so shut down your inner mean girl and focus. You can do this.
