Thinking Ahead: The Thoughts of a Barber

Our moms always tell us, “watch your words.” We ignore her after beating ourselves up when we lose that qualifying game during the last 10 seconds. We push them into the back of our mind when we are back having that conversation with that one teacher that has told us we’ll amount to nothing: our dreams aren’t for someone like us. We’ve stuffed them away as we watch the face of our first customer drop after seeing their new haircut. But, as we get older, we hear people in positions we want to be in, talk about the power of words; the necessity to speak life into the projects and ideas you’re working on. So we think back, to that one time, when someone pulled us aside and reminded us that what we’ve spoken into the world shapes our reality in it. And our mothers words come crashing into the foreground: Watch your words. 

In the world of barbering, we talk a lot about Barbers Eye. The concept focuses on seeing the details of a given canvas— but how can we see what we have not yet assumed can be true? As barbers, the fundamental nature of our work is to take something at face value and transform it into something else. It is actualizing the imaginary. Our thoughts about our work and our ability as barbers is limitless; our thoughts are the proactive measure of manifestation— and so, are extremely important. Transforming  our thinking is the initial step to elevating ourselves as barbers; we only walk the roads that we ourselves can see. 

We often tell younger barbers to visualize their cuts— look at the canvas and decide where they’re going to start. We need to take this same approach as we look at our own paths as barbers. Where do we see ourselves in the next month? Next year? Next five years? We need to look at the canvas of our career, and reimagine the path in the way that we want to find success for ourselves. Think about it like carving out a sculpture; you have to visualize where you’re going to go so you know what steps to take to get there. 

It is often that we hear stories of others' success and don’t believe that we’ll get there using their methods. However, watching your words, or rather, being deliberate about what words you use to manifest your journey, tells us to verbalize that this is a possibility. Changing our thoughts allow us to create an environment of success- and sometimes this developing vision of success might start by looking at another barber's path of excellence. By allowing ourselves to see someone else pursuing something they’ve dreamed and then executed, we can use this information to begin to craft something for ourselves. And then, we can reimagine the frame and mold it to something that works for us. 

In order to speak something into existence we can’t see, we need to challenge our mindset about how we’re going to get there, but more importantly, believe the idea that we can. Moving forward in barbering begins with one core concept: thinking ahead. 

What thoughts will lead you?

Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels