Reinvent Yourself Until You Find The Best Version Of You
It's something I had said in passing to Bill at school. He made mention of how often I changed the way I looked and I told him "I just keep reinventing myself until I find the version that I like best."
That response has stuck with me, and I still believe it holds value, certainly more than when I originally used it as a means to deflect the given statement. Reinventing yourself doesn't necessarily mean changing your wardrobe or your attitude, maybe it can start with changing the way you listen to feedback. For the past few weeks, my brother has tried to drive a single point home with me, and it finally resonated with me.
Value yourself.
I took this as a few things, the first of which is to know and be confident in the fact that I provide a commodity that people are willing to pay for, so I should take value in the service I provide to others and will try not to shortchange what I am capable of doing. The other point that I took out of this was to take value in myself by seeing the external value to my own qualities as an individual that others have already recognized in me. I have never been one to take a lot of pride in anything that I do because I've never felt like anything I did was all that spectacular or would gain any real momentum. It is one of the issues that I was on so much medication. I normalized the feeling of inadequacy and would convince myself that any compliments that came from others were out of pity. regardless of who it came from. I still struggle with days like that, and being off my meds I don't know if it will ever truly go away, but that is why one of my prerequisites in a new career was to have something I could see from start to finish, and I would be able to take pride in it.
So I've really been trying to take more value in myself, and I started focusing in an area that others already compliment me on. I get more comments about how the videos I make on my drives home or to work make people laugh and smile more than anything else I do. To me, they're fun little projects to pass the time, but for others, it's something they haven't figured out yet. It gets me excited, finding different ways to show something I love to people in a method they can relate to. I am able to find value in myself by knowing there is something within my individualism that others are able to enjoy for the simple sake of being able to enjoy it. That gift of satisfaction by itself provides me motivation enough to want to create new projects to better myself. So I started with a commercial.
Is it perfect? No. But it's my second or third video of this type, and each one is better than the last. I now have multiple videos planned as part of a spring marketing campaign, and holy crap planning all of this out is new, overwhelming, fun, terrifying, and a number of other emotions that I don't quite know how to express into words. It's difficult to put yourself out there, knowing that your personal success hinges on it.
I'm going to continue focusing on our culture. We are absolutely proud of our craft, we are passionate for the profession we chose, and we want to share the excitement we have about barbering with every person who walks through the door. We aren't fake, we aren't putting on a professional show and dance, we just want to show you a good time.
February is right around the corner, and I love that I have things planned out to actively look forward to until June. It's Christmas every goddamn day at Barbiere DeVino.
-Stay Stronzo
Chris