The Importance of Self Care as a Hairdresser.

Like most creatives, we learn to run on passion and passion alone - but what happens when the passion starts to run out because of a lack of self-care?

We are taught from the beginning of our career that clients are the most important thing to think of. "We don’t have one boss we have many" was a quote I remember hearing a lot, meaning our clients are our bosses, and we can’t let them down. If we are ill, sick or injured we have to think twice about whether to take the day off or we get given a set recovery time which we cut short to get back to our clients, even if it’s detrimental to our own health. I know so many hairdressers that have done this, including myself.

What I’ve learned, and the hard way, is that if we are not feeling our best we cannot give our best to our clients, so why do we do this to ourselves? It’s just like on a plane with the oxygen, we have to secure our masks first before we help others. To take the industry into the next chapter we need to start looking after ourselves. Whether we are completely salon based and looking after clients one to one or session-based and dealing with multiple contracts and bosses, it’s important to step back sometimes and breathe.

When dealing with clients we absorb a lot, clients open up to us in ways they might not feel comfortable with others in their life. We are a disconnect from their everyday life which makes them feel safe to talk. This means we are a very important part of their lives, and we emotionally connect with them. How many times have we gone home and worried or thought about a client, because you’ve connected with them so much? We all joke that we sometimes feel like people’s therapists that also cut hair. The difference is that trained therapists have to regularly go to therapy themselves to off load. We don’t get that luxury. So we need to find ways for us to reconnect in other ways.

Salon health:

It’s important for the salon team to support each other. Make sure you’ve always got each other’s backs, and if one of you isn’t well, look after each other and give each enough space to feel they can go home to rest and recover if needed. Start the day with adding positive affirmations into your team meeting, so you start fresh and ready to take on what clients are going to be throwing your way. End the day with some energy, rather than just running for the door. Come back together as a team so you can talk about anything that has happened, offloading any baggage within a supportive and understanding network so you don’t take it home. Be each other’s therapists, and share the load. Great team-building exercises are wellbeing days with each other, such as a yoga session in the salon or group meditations. It might be something none of you have done before and it’ll be fun and relaxing for you all. HAIRDOTCOM now offers a wellbeing expert that comes into salons to help them reconnect with their creative self.

Creative health:

Our creative health is so important to keep going. Book courses, head to a hair show or have a ‘play day’ with your team or salon. It’s good to get out of your normal environment and learn new things, not just to come back and earn money but to feel connected and creative again. Courses aren’t just amazing for knowledge, they are great for you to just spend a day in a new environment, where your brain is thinking about something other than earning a living. One of the best things I did last year was a couple of wig making courses, I don’t think I’ll be making any full wigs from scratch anytime soon, but I got to spend a week in a different studio learning something I’d never done before. It was an investment in my self care and creative health. The london wig making school is a gorgeous environment to learn too.

Playdays are such a great way of looking after you and your teams’ creative health. Plan a mini photoshoot where you can make hairpieces collaborate with a makeup artist and just all get creative together. This will reconnect you with why you love what you do, and you won’t have the pressure of pleasing a client, just yourself!

Community health:

Community connection is so important to our self-care. There are so many amazing communities in the industry that can help you feel connected and support you. Whether it’s on Facebook, with the industry group pages like how to cut it, or in the physical like The Fellowship for British Hairdressing. Start getting yourself and your team involved in things. It’s always great to meet like-minded people, and to hear that others go through the same things you do. Being able to talk about our experiences and ask for help from others is invaluable. The fellowship also puts on lots of events for you to get involved in to look after your creative health. When we build communities around us we have strength to be ourselves.

Personal health:

It’s a well known joke in the industry that hairdressers live on cigarettes and coffee. Never giving ourselves lunch breaks and pushing through on caffeine alone. I personally don’t drink caffeine or smoke, and someone once asked me how I make it through a busy day! What we put into our bodies is what will come back out, so keeping a healthy balanced diet will help to keep us powering through and looking after all our clients. I love hearing more and more salons and barbers are now making staff take lunch breaks for a full 45mins/hour and in return productivity goes up. This is because we are fuelled up and ready to work. It’s also really important for our hair and skin to be eating healthy, so we are our own advertisements! If we want this career for a long time we need our bodies to be looked after so we can physically do it for a long time.

It’s so important for us to look after ourselves first. Clients won’t start to take this seriously unless we do. Clients come to you because you are amazing at what you do and they connect with you, you can’t be that for them if you are burnt out. We need to start looking after ourselves to be more productive and ultimately earn more money.