Do you ever feel like you’re in a professional slump and you just don’t know what to do to push yourself forward?
Have you ever thought that you career as a stylist has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows?
Kind of like peaks and valleys where one day you jump out of bed and want to blow dry until your arms burn and the next day you hate social media, are sick of your clients and just kind of don’t know what to do next.
What if I told you that was completely normal and it’s a cycle that actually occurs in all professions? Seriously, even the most successful entrepreneur you know goes through those peaks and valleys on the regular and there is actual a rhythm to it.
I didn’t realize it was a “thing” until I experienced it, not once, but twice this year. I went from head over heels in love with what I was working on, to dreading my day-to-day projects and now I’m back in a place where I’m madly in love with everything happening in my world again.
Now that I understand the cycle, I’m able to work my way through it really quickly and get back to happy and inspired in no-time. I want to give you that same set of tools so that when you start to feel down on your career behind the chair you can recenter and reignite that passion.
PHASE 1: INSPIRED
This is our favorite phase. It’s where all you can see is a world of possibilities ahead of you. Your vision is pretty clear, you’re excited about what it will take to reach your goals and you’re having a good time researching what it will take to achieve your desired results.
This is the phase you were in when you decided to go to Cosmo school in the first place. You had a dream, saw other stylists loving life and decided you wanted that too. You’ll cycle back through Inspiration over and over throughout your year and it’s always the phase that renews the spark.
Places you’ll find inspiration: Instagram, Facebook, advanced education, books, magazines, industry mentors.
PHASE 2: EDUCATION
Once you catch that inspiration and know what you want to do, it’s time to learn how to do it. Sometimes we take the long road and self-educate, sometimes we take a formal class or attend training. Either way, we attempt to train ourselves to achieve the vision we’ve been inspired by so that we can take action and make it happen.
Places you’ll find education: Live classes, online classes, research, books, magazines, podcasts, coaching.
PHASE 3: ACTION
You’ve found the inspiration, you’ve learned at least a basic skill set so it’s time to put it to work. Sometimes it goes smoothly, sometimes it’s a bit of a rocky start, but either way you’re applying something in the hopes that it pushes you forward professionally.
Places you’ll take action: Social media marketing, website development, local marketing, in-salon marketing, retail sales, service upgrades, attempting to become an educator, salon ownership.
Pause here…..generally we stay in Phase 3 for some time. Sometimes weeks, sometimes months, but we all go through a sprint of action when we are pushing to make something big happen in our career.
From here, you’ll go into one of two phases; Overwhelm or Boredom
PHASE 4: OVERWHELM OR BOREDOM
This is kind of a fork in the road and you’ll either settle in to boredom or overwhelm after some period of time.
If you don’t achieve the success you were looking for in the timeframe you created for yourself, you’ll feel like your efforts are for nothing and they’ll start to become a burden. This often happens when your vision wasn’t clear enough or you didn’t educate yourself fully resulting in your efforts falling flat.
If you do achieve success it’ll feel good for a while but then inevitably you’ll start itching for what’s next. Humans are wired to want growth and we get bored when life becomes stale even if we are achieving what is perceived as success.
Either the overwhelm or the boredom will set in and you’ll feel unmotivated, confused and a little lost in your career.
Sound familiar? I know, we all do this and go through this cycle. So how do you prevent it from happening so that we can keep a strong momentum with consistent growth?
Inspiration. That’s it, you have to stay inspired.
Inspiration will always be the secret sauce. It’s our happy place and the place we make brilliant, creative and positive decisions from. Creating a life where you are receiving weekly inspiration is crucial to having a balanced, wealthy, fulfilling career because as soon as that zest and spark is dimmed we slip back into the cycle again.
I want you to find time once a week to just live life with eyes wide open. It might mean journaling every Sunday about your vision for your life. It might be finding fun Instagram accounts that are in line with your target market and noting what you love most about them. Maybe you need to start a business reading list and start reading some super uplifting biz books (I’ll be starting to share my favorites reads on Instagram so be sure you follow me for inspiration there!) All of those things will continue to fuel your flame and I promise that as long as that flame burns you’ll find endless avenues to explore and deep clarity on what truly excites you.
