A month ago I had shoulder length hair dyed to somewhat match my daughter’s beautiful copper hair.
My bad dye job and I were up late watching a random documentary on Netflix. In it were interviews with female activists and artists spanning generations. They were all so passionate. They were all so intentional. They were all so fiercely feminine. And a lot of them were rocking buzz cuts.
That's when I decided to choose happiness over hair.
You see, in elementary school I had super short hair. With a perm. On top. Yeah, exactly. I spent all of sixth grade awkwardly trying to grow it out. And once grown out, it went straight into a ponytail where it stayed through high school.
I’ve never really seen the point in spending time and energy styling my hair. It's never been a priority for me.
Cut to me watching this documentary decades later. These gorgeous, passionate women weren’t wasting any of their energy battling hair, but instead were putting it all toward their purpose.
I marched downstairs and told my husband I wanted a buzz cut. He responded with, “When?”
The next night we got out the clippers and said goodbye to my bangs. We said goodbye to my bad dye jobs. We said goodbye to a lifetime of wasted energy battling something that never brought me happiness.
The energy spent battling my hair didn’t make me a better mom. It didn’t make me a better business owner, friend or wife. It didn’t add any happiness into my world. It was wasted energy and served no purpose for the life I am trying to build.
So I said goodbye.
For me, life without curling irons, straighteners and boxes of red hair dye allows me to focus my time and energy for my life’s work – adding happiness into the world.
So I’ve got to ask –
What do you battle regularly that you could do without? How could you finally free your energy from that battle in order to become your better, more intentional you?
Freeing yourself of those battles is where you’ll find more happiness, more love, more grace, more intent and more purpose.
Go forth and be happy, friends. Our world is better because you are in it.
