Your Personal Appearance

For the month of March, we’ll be zeroing in on personal health and wellness. In this week’s unit, we’ll start scheduling all the appointments, focusing in today on your personal appearance appointments.

​A few years ago a friend asked me if I wanted to go with her…. to get her eyebrows done. Obviously I did, because I had no idea what this meant. I watched, mesmerized, as things were trimmed, plucked, and gooped up. We talked and we laughed, and she came away with the most gorgeous eyebrows I have ever seen.
I know that beauty appointments are like, a thing for women. They never really have been for me. I also know that men’s establishments are jumping on board, with places now offering high end whiskeys—ladies, can we get on that trend for our services, please? But all of this to be said, I have never wanted to spend the time or money on getting my hair or nails done before a few years ago, because time and money. What I didn’t realize was that this form of self-care was, for me, more about connection and community than about what I looked like.
And don’t get me wrong—I love walking away from an appointment looking like a million bucks now. But I also know that I can do a lot of things at home really well and walk away feeling like I still have a million bucks. But, especially bearing the pandemic in mind, it’s sometimes hard to find time to connect with other people as an adult over anything other than food. This, for me, is where mani-pedis came in. I very rarely am like, “Oh let me maintain my nails perfectly,” and am more thinking, “I really need an uninterrupted hour and a half to talk with my friend.” I had an AMAZING hair magician—because that’s precisely what she was—in Denver who I consistently went to not for her phenomenal coloring skills, but because she was a great person and challenged me in conversation. I respected her and the fact that she turned off the TV, took away the magazines, and connected with me. She actually turned me around once and said, “I’m going to make you talk to me while this sets.” That’s really good for me as an introvert.
The other reason that I want you to consider personal appearance care as a means of health and wellness, is for rest. I already said I don’t want to waste time—but I have come to realize that I need to sometimes have a two hour color session and be forced to sit in a chair and do NOTHING ELSE during that time. It’s really good for me to have that space to turn off my brain and just talk to another human without any agenda. I bet it would be good for you too.
So, I really encourage you to think about why you might want to get your hair done or your nails done or hell, your eyebrows done and see if a friend would want to make that happen together. It doesn’t have to be at a salon—this can be an appointment in your backyards, too. But having something on the books dedicated to nothing more than connecting with others and with yourself is a surprisingly powerful form of wellness that I’m now a big fan of.
All right, tomorrow, we’re talking Financial appointments for wellness. Make sure you check out yesterday’s episode about THER-A-PY, THER-A-PY, if you missed that.
If you’ve resonated with any episodes lately, I would love for you to share about it on Instagram or Twitter and tag the show @nowthatimnotyourteacher. And finally, if you haven’t left a rating and review on your podcasting app, I would really appreciate your taking two minutes to go to Apple podcasts and do just that. In fact, you can do it while your toes dry.
You can do it, I can help. I’ll be back here tomorrow to talk with you about an unexpected wellness appointment that I think everyone needs—financial planning.