First Impressions

It's amazing how quickly we decide who someone is... sometimes before we've even given them a chance to introduce themselves.

A client admitted something to me a while back that has stayed with me ever since.

She told me she'd put off sending her mother to me for years.

Not because she doubted my work.

Quite the opposite.

She was worried her mother might accidentally hurt my feelings.

Her mama came from a different generation.

Strong in her faith.

The kind of woman who said exactly what she was thinking.

No filter.

She worried her mother would take one look at my tattoos and decide I wasn't the hairstylist for her.

Or worse...

She'd say it out loud.

She wasn't trying to protect her mother.

She was trying to protect both of us from what she thought might be an uncomfortable situation.

The Conversation That Almost Never Happened

Eventually, her mother ended up in my chair anyway.

And do you know what happened?

Nothing.

Well... nothing except a haircut, a lot of laughter, and the beginning of a friendship I never expected.

The woman everyone worried wouldn't like me became someone I genuinely looked forward to seeing.

We talked about life.

We laughed.

We swapped stories.

She shared pieces of her world with me, and without even realizing it, she taught me things I'll carry with me long after she was gone.

All those years of worrying...

For nothing.

We Decide Too Quickly

It made me realize how often we do this.

Not just with people.

With places.

With opportunities.

Even with ourselves.

This morning I read a comment from someone talking about one of my favorite local places. They said they'd only been there once, but it felt too "yuppie."

Maybe that was their honest experience.

Or maybe they walked into a room full of strangers and decided, before anyone had the chance to prove them wrong, that they didn't belong.

It made me wonder how many good people, good places, and good conversations we miss because we make up our minds too quickly.

We decide we won't fit in.

We decide they won't understand us.

We decide they're too different.

Too young.

Too old.

Too tattooed.

Too polished.

Too outspoken.

Too quiet.

Sometimes we're right.

But I wonder how often we're wrong.

What We Almost Miss

If that first appointment had never happened, I would've missed hearing her stories.

I would've missed learning from a woman whose life looked nothing like mine.

I would've missed a friendship that never should have been questioned in the first place.

And she might have missed realizing that the tattooed hairstylist she wasn't so sure about wasn't all that different after all.

It makes me wonder how many friendships, mentors, favorite places, or opportunities never happen because someone decides the story before the first chapter is even written.

Pull Up a Chair

One of my favorite things about this job is that strangers sit in my chair every day.

Most of them leave feeling a little less like strangers.

That's what conversations do.

They remind us that people are almost always more interesting than our first impression of them.

So the next time you catch yourself deciding someone isn't your kind of person...

Or convincing yourself you don't belong...

Stay a little longer.

Ask one more question.

Have one more conversation.

You might discover that the person—or the place—you almost walked away from becomes one of your favorites.

Love, Bawsey