More Than Hair

The beauty of a visit to Taylor and York Salon in Washington DC is that it involves more than hair. The vibe is intoxicating with beautiful art work, prolific plant life and inspiring conversations. One can’t help but feel at home in this oasis in the city. So, sit back, relax and kick your feet up as we share some wisdom imparted by salon owner and dear friend, Ashleigh Taylor.

Love Yourself More

One of the most impressive things shared by Ashleigh is her unapologetic love of self. She openly loves herself more than anyone else, in turn increasing her capacity to love others. Because of this self-love, she is able to create and maintain boundaries amongst her client base and staff. Self-love isn’t always easy; it takes practice and repetition. But that is the first step I want you to take away from this:

What – In order to set and maintain your boundaries you have to love yourself more.
Why – A font of positive self-regard will discourage the habit of folding and compromising your beliefs or needs.
How – You can bolster self-love by being kind to, trusting, and respecting yourself. Use daily affirmations and practice gratitude for how wonderful you are. The more you do it the more you will believe it; the more you will understand why you deserve to enforce your boundaries.
This skill will make the below suggestions easier to implement.

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection.” - Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart

Say “No”

Saying no can be hard if you’re not in the practice of it. But practiced or not, the ability to say no can make or break the integrity of your boundaries. Ashleigh’s real-world example was one I’m sure we’ve all run into. You really need a hair appointment after a few sweat inducing workouts and a formal meeting is placed on your calendar at the last minute at work for Monday.. For you, this is about the health of your hair and maybe your appearance as well, and getting it maintained is urgent. But the stylist says they can’t fit you in this weekend, no matter how you explain it. Maybe you ask yourself “don’t they know this is important? They used to do last minute appointments before, what’s changed?”.

For the hairstylist, the integrity of your hair is important, and so is the appearance. But their mental health is more important. Booking a last-minute client, or creating a spot when there are no spots, would have a snowball effect on the rest of their day: rushed service, lower than usual quality of service, missed meal breaks, later closing time, losing quality time with their family, work-life imbalance. So, they say no when they need to, not out of disregard for the client’s needs, but with respect for their own needs.

You can say “no” for the same reason: to respect your needs. You need time to yourself. You need the quality of your work to not be negatively impacted due to overloading yourself by saying yes too often. These 10 tips from the Harvard Business Review can help:

Know your no – Is what’s being requested of you more important that what you originally wanted?
Be appreciative – Even though it won’t lead to a yes, see the positives in the fact that the activity is being requested of you.
Say no to the request, not the person – You’re not burning bridges. Maybe the person making a bid for your time is someone you respect. Or you would usually like to do the activity being offered. But now is not a time when you can connect or say yes.
Explain why – While you shouldn’t tell them all your business, be honest about why you have to say no. It might be as simple as you being too busy.
Be as resolute as they are pushy – Your boundaries won’t always be respected right away but if you hold firm, they will be and you’ll be respected as well.
Practice – Imagine a scenario and practice saying no out loud. Practice different ways to phrase your no.

Establish a pre-emptive no – Set expectations with your habitual requesters ahead of time and then refer back to previous conversations or posted rules when the request is posed.
Be prepared to miss out – It might be money or an experience or connection, but you will always be missing out on something. Remember to always prioritize you and ignore the fomo.
Gather your courage – It's ok to be afraid to say no and feel that there might be negative repercussions. But remember that there is nothing more important than your sanity and mental health.

Schedule Far in Advance & Limit Availability

A trend I’ve been personally victimized by, but, nevertheless, happy to see being put into practice, is that of needing to schedule way in advance for hair services. Due to the changing landscape of hair care offerings, salons like Ashleigh’s are offering less appointment spots in a day and getting in with your favorite stylist is now a competitive feat. Jokes aside, this opens up the opportunity for stylists to take dedicated time outside of the salon to stretch, rest, and have a long meal. Another benefit is that those stylists are able to focus all of their skill and creative energy on fewer clients. The impact is that they feel fresh and challenged, but not overworked, so they can create beautiful results and provide quality service for each person who sits in their chair.

Can’t you do the same? Friends, family, clients, and colleagues should all be comfortable with the fact that you are busy, popular, and need time to plan. Instead of driving all day to keep up with your engagements, cooking every weekend for a new batch of visitors, or having back-to-back meetings, give yourself some breathing room. Prioritize quality over quantity when planning time to connect with your community. Some of the things that I do to keep my calendar booked but manageable:

Set recurring dates with family and friends – Because of the strength of our relationship, I’m able to hang out with my best friend only once a month and it barely seems like any time has passed
Utilize tools like zoom and skype to supplement infrequent in-person time with quick and quality video check ins – even though we work in the same building, I can’t always meet with my work team as often as I would like, so we flex scheduled zoom stand up meetings to keep up to date on each other’s work and since they are recurring more frequently than in-person meetings, we are able to keep them nice and short.
Pre-schedule at the end of each interaction – Is brunch with your friend coming to an end but you want to do it again soon? Before you both say goodby put another brunch date on both your calendars. This will minimize last minute bids for connection.

Set expectations – if people know ahead of time that you’re usually booked early in the season they will put in the work to get on your calendar far in advance

Set Hard Stops & Stick to Your Plan

Taylor & York Salon closes early on the weekends so that employees are able to enjoy their time with friends and family as well. They have a hard and fast last appointment slot and they don’t stay any later than the time needed to complete it while providing warm and efficient service. This can be a hard skill for perfectionists and those with poor boundaries to adapt. In this case, the person who has to respect your boundaries is you. And, it’s easy to forgive yourself for overstepping because you’re doing something that is important to you and seemingly worth the time. But even though it’s you, it’s still a violation of your boundaries and a violation of your trust. How many times have you stayed longer at work or an event only to get home to a disappointed family member or to lose valuable sleep? How often have you had to cross other things off your list or cancel plans because you didn’t stick to your plan. Those were things that had been important to you and that should have been prioritized over the task you opted for instead. You can always come back to your work report or catch the next happy hour but you can’t gain hours back.

I’m not without my own habits. I will go down the rabbit hole of work because I can just get it done now and I also don’t like turning in less than perfect final products. But this will often be at the expense of me going to the grocery store and making dinner. Now I have to order food and pile on the negative financial impact of frequently eating out to the self-disrespect of not sticking to a promise I made to myself. So, I’ve adopted the following:

Using an alarm to remind me that my time is up – I'll usually set one 30 minutes before I have to leave, so I can re-prioritize the work that’s most urgent. Then I have a final alarm that tells me it’s time to close my laptop.

Designating an accountability partner – This person makes sure to hold me accountable to my original intention by reminding me it’s time to wrap up.
Creating a work prioritization sandwich – I will sometimes put my longest and most involved tasks at the middle of my to-do list. I put the easiest, least pressing, and quickest tasks at the very beginning and end of my day. That way I feel motivated at the beginning of the day because of how quicky I can knock tasks out. At the end of the day, it’s easier for me to find a stopping place because the tasks are lower priority and usually take no time to complete at all.

Demonstrate Boundary Setting to Others

The beautiful thing about the structure of Ashleigh’s salon is that all of these core habits are demonstrated from the top down. There’s nothing the employees are expected to do that Ashley doesn’t do herself. This applies to boundary setting as well. For Ashleigh, boundary setting is relatively easy. She’s always been confident in herself and resolute about her beliefs, so enforcing her boundaries was never a challenge. But for some of her stylists, it was a challenge and all of the common roadblocks to setting and maintaining their boundaries were apparent. This is where having a strong leader and advocate is important. By setting her boundaries and maintaining visibility amongst her team, Ashleigh has been able to set an amazing real-time example for her salon. This emboldened her employees to follow in her footsteps and enforce their boundaries (both set by the salon and personal) as well. She glowed as she explained the feeling of pride she now has when seeing her team stand their ground. The compound effects of having the team learn from and emulate that behavior makes the client experience more consistent and also reinforces expectations that the entire team will always stick to their policies.

The same goes for us. Others will feel more comfortable setting boundaries because they see you doing it consistently. And as people begin to get into the work of self-love and boundary setting, they will understand the amount of work that is necessary to maintain them. Them putting boundaries into practice will also increase their level of respect for you and your boundaries because they will understand what goes into that work.