Good Vibes Come From Being Vulnerable

Vulnerable

Its easy to fall into the "pity party" or "Debbie Downer" attitude, I know this first hand. I think you have to have the good with the bad though. After all, how would we know the good times without experiencing the bad ones? Ying to the yang as they say.

There are times I will be scrolling through my Instagram feed and realize I have to evacuate or I will get sucked into the feeling bad about myself trap. Come on, we have all been there, there is that one person on Insta who is all "look at me, my life is amazing, I have it all, I am a "positive influence". I get it, we want to show the world the highlights of our life. The negative or bad times will do nothing but expose us and make us vulnerable.

When I started out as a small business owner 7 years ago, I set out to be one of the best salons in the Chicago area, and decided to go for it. The plans didn't work though, so I tried again, that plan failed too. The third plan worked though, so much so, we exceeded our expectations, and became a top 200 salon in the nation 4 years in a row.

You see, when we open ourselves up to feeling vulnerable, we learn, and the good vibes come via opportunity. We have been raised though to not show "weakness" and opening yourself up to people seeing you this way takes an great amount of courage. I see online that many are those "perfect humans" especially in the beauty community. I choose a while back to let all that shit go, because it is exhausting trying to be perfect all the time. I was told throughout my Platform Artist career with a major brand to be something other then myself, to just post hair images, and to portray only my best self to the world, to man up my presence, be more like this person. Yep, that happened, all to grow a following.

The power of vulnerability

If we look at superheros though (x-men were my jam) they all have weaknesses and the villains will certainly find it. For example, Cyclopse  had his glasses that allowed him to laser project beams from his eyes with precision, yet without them he was vulnerable. If he were perfect though would we even care?

My biggest vulnerability was in how I looked, did I come off too feminine? So, I hid behind my work. One day out of exhaustion and a "Brittney moment", I dropped it all, and just put myself out there. I decided to break all the "rules" of  being perfect that I received from my platform mentors and peers and started posting images of myself. It took so much courage and I was so scared. The product line I was with in a way blacklisted me but what happened outside of that astonished me, I grew 1,000 followers over night. I realized the imperfect me made me more relatable. I was eventually un-blacklisted and even won a contest with the brand. What a huge relief that was, and while I am still learning, I could continue on with courage to just be me. 

Strive for the best friends, Let down your armor that is perfection, and embrace failure as a learning experience, have the courage to be UN-apologetically you. Once we do this, we can truly live our best lives and attract good vibes.

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