How To Not Lose Your Sh*t When Sh*t’s Going Down By Robyn McAlpine

Well, this isn’t the kind of article I thought I’d be writing to kick off 2022! If you head to the archives to my same submission for this time last year, I thought that the worst of it all was behind us and that the disruptions of quite literal pandemic proportions would have been but a distant memory of sourdough starters and banana bread filling up our Instagram feeds.

But alas, here we are starring down the barrel of another year of dodging delta and clinging to the hope that this will all be over… soon.

How naïve was I to think that with the crossing over of a new year, that so too our troubles would have been left behind with Tiger King and Carol Baskin, but even they look to be making a season two come back and I’m definitely NOT here for it!

I like to think I’m your personal hype girl, your mentor in all things skin and here to pep you up when you’re feeling down but there’s only so much toxic positivity to go around and I’m pretty sure I’ve used all mine up.

So instead of coming to these pages to tell you that “you’ve got this, you’re doing great” I’m here to tell you that actually, not a single one of us have “got this” and were all just doing our darned best.

I’m here to blow some gentle wind in your sails and tell you that even if you accidentally lost your sh*t at the bazillionth client rescheduling their appointment or you snapped at a team member or your completely lost it and bawled your eyes out in front of your team (like… proper ugly cried), or have done all three, that it’s ok!

We’ve all been there, and if not, at some point along this epic marathon we’ve been thrown into, we are going to be. But what I can hand on heart assure you is that you can and will get through this!

If we’ve learnt anything the last two years it is that perfection is an illusion that has a finite limit.

There comes a point where putting on a brave face to get through a rough patch actually becomes a true brave face and brave faces aren’t about being pretty. They’re battle weary, lined, sometimes a bit beaten up because brave-ness comes from doing courageous things and doing courageous things means often doing the things you didn’t think you had the strength for!

What does courage look like? Well aside from tired, battle weary and creased, courage arrives when:

Doing whatever it takes to keep your business boat afloat when there’s a million holes in it. That’s bold, daring and courageous.

Closing your doors and learning a whole new way to serve clients is bold, courageous and brave.

Learning how to do skin consultations virtually is bold, courageous and daring.

Staying up until 1am night after night, setting up an ecommerce arm to your website (when you don’t even understand tech) is courageous, tiring, but still courageous.

Learning how to navigate and hold space for new and strange emotions, yours, your teams and your family’s- that’s brave and courageous. Letting your team go to fly solo, even though it deeply hurts your heart to do so, is bold and courageous.

Hanging up your beauty apron to pivot into a new career so you can keep your babies clothed and fed is bold and courageous.

Standing up for what you believe in, when the entire world is telling you you’re wrong for believing it, yet you still faithfully hold your place, that my dear friend is bold, courageous, brave and admirable.

Juggling the cash flow, trying to balance the last two cents and deciding who takes priority, that is courageous.

Sitting in your empty, quiet, closed up clinic space wondering what the next step is going to be, that is courageous.

Waking up each day not knowing what each hour will bring, that, my friend is courageous and I know that you are going to make it!

I see you.

Despite facing the biggest challenges many of us have ever felt or been through, the internal optimist in me will always find a silver lining, a lesson, something that make even just a little bit of this all make sense.

And what I’ve seen, and you’ve probably felt it too, is that this experience has bought us beyond superficial chats and into a space of real conversations. Even in a world encouraging deep ravines of disconnect, I have seen and felt deeper yet more simplified human connections and the ‘cosmetic enhancements’ we once placed over our feeling and emotions as a buffer have all come away and we are left with raw, unfiltered, truth.

I’ve noticed as an industry overall, the way we speak to our clients is more honest, more steeped in human-ness than ever before. Even the bigger beauty businesses have become less of an overall faceless brand and more a collective of personalities, people and passion. We’ve been able to speak from the heart and less from the marketing department, the message becoming more personal and connected.

This has only got to be a good thing moving forward.

So, hang in there my friend! Even though most of the time you probably don’t feel like it, you’re going to be ok. You’re doing better than you know and no matter what you are going through, you’re only going THROUGH it! You won’t be there forever.

Robyn McAlpine is the @expert_skin_therapist

Contact: robyn@skintifix.com

www.skintifix.com