What Does Headwraps Have To Do With Decisions and Confidence?

Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive. I'm your host Nikita Williams, and this show is for all the ladies who are making and creating things that they love. You will hear conversations about the real everyday struggles of juggling life and business while trying to maintain passion and harmony. As women, we have the skill of getting things done, but sometimes we get in our own way. It's here where you'll see that you're not alone. You'll discover that success does not mean perfection. Fear and negative Thoughts and challenges are all a part of the journey. And on this podcast, you'll find the inspiration and tools you need to have a life and business that thrives. Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive. I'm so excited that you're here. If you're new, please hop on over to my Instagram @craftedtothrive to say hello and tell me where you're from, who you are, or shoot me an email at info@craftedtothrive. I'd love to hear from you. My name is Nikita Williams and I am your host. I'm a business coach for female creative entrepreneurs and I love to help women who are feeling stuck, stressed, and overwhelmed, or even uncertain in their business. And I love to help them get clear on what they want, who they want to serve, and how to get to where they want to go. It's something that I love to do. Well, I am so excited that you guys are here and I am sorry I missed you guys last week. Honestly, I was just needing a mental break last week. I had just finished an amazing challenge in my Facebook group, and I also wasn't feeling that well. Me and my husband last week weren't feeling well. We had some weird symptoms, and obviously with COVID-19 going on, you can't help but think that that's what's going on. So we went and got tested. Thankfully, we are negative. But yeah, it's, it's, you know, that's the world we live in. You know, when you have a chronic illness, things just weigh on your mind. On, like, just weigh on your mind. You think the worst possible sometimes, and I am no different than all of you. One cough, one sniffle, one fever, you're like, oh my gosh, I have it. So better safe than sorry. But I am so thankful that we don't. We are still being very vigilant. We've been at home pretty much for the most part, except for my husband going out really to grab some of the essential things that we couldn't order on Instacart, and sometimes picking up some food from, you know, restaurants and things like that. So I hope you guys are being safe and wearing masks. Yes, I'm saying that because for people like me and even other people who are young who have autoimmune, autoimmune diseases, it could mean their life, literally. We've had several friends who have lost people to COVID-19. And so if you happen to be one of those people and you listen, I am so sorry. Please know that my heart goes out to you, um, and if there's anything I can do, please let me know. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, please shoot me an email, um, or check out my website to get some more contact information at sheescrafted.com. And yeah, let's, you know, let's connect. So this episode, I wanted to share with you an experience that happened to me a while ago that with all the things that are going on in the world kind of has come to my mind. It's so interesting, um, things that you don't think about until you think about them, or things that you recognize affect, um, your beliefs and your, your ability to do something. And so the last month or so, I've really been working with a coach, um, myself, um, in my business to be a better coach as a business coach. And I've been very reflective, very, you know, just thinking about things, and I think that's just kind of spurred on. I've always been that kind of person, but even more so lately. And I was trying to figure out why I stopped wearing head wraps. Um, if you follow me on Instagram, I wear head wraps often on Instagram, especially nowadays, because one, I miss my hairdresser. Um, two, it makes it so much more convenient for me not to have to do my hair every single day, and it's a fun way to show my personality and brighten my sometimes because the colors on head wraps are amazing. Um, so it's human nature for us to see the negative, um, in everything, even in ourselves. We're our worst critics. We've heard this. We even look at ourselves, we see the worst parts of ourselves, and other people tend to find the things about us that we don't like. Um, and in general, we have to work really hard to be positive thinkers. We have to work really hard to, um, look past negativity and see positivity and possibilities and opportunities. So it's a really active state of thinking. It's not a thought that we just have. It's something we actually actively have to work at. And as a coach, that's something that I'm constantly, you know, working on with my clients and with myself. And so I recently was trying to figure out, well, why wasn't I wearing my head wraps often? And I realized it was because of an an experience or several experiences that I had while wearing a head wrap. And I started to think about how our experiences in our past can truly affect the decisions that we make on a day-to-day basis in our life and in our business, and, um, how they can also, you know, create the— this feeling of not being confident and being insecure because of experiences that we've had. So, um, I went to my Instagram. Um, if you guys aren't following me there, please do, because I talk about all the random things that you randomly hear about on here. I went to my Instagram to ask the tribe, ask the people that are following me, you know, had they ever experienced something where they had worn something or experienced something that they kind of shoved into the corner and was just like, wow, I didn't— that's crazy. And you didn't really know how it affected you until someone asked you or until you faced it or until you realized it. Or maybe you were working with a therapist or maybe you were working with a coach or maybe Maybe you just started having like how I've been having, like really thinking about things and seeing how, you know, it's shown up in your life. And I got so many responses, some really deep ones, um, about how the experiences that may have felt, that have made us feel uncomfortable or shameful just by our appearance or just by something that we wore made us, you know, feel unconfident and feel unsure of ourselves. And so that is kind of what happened with me at first wearing head wraps. When I first started wearing them, trust me, it wasn't like the first time I've heard of head wraps. I mean, I'm an African American woman. We see head wraps all the time and there are beautiful women wearing them. I just never thought I could be one of those people. So I always thought my head was too big to wear it. So I never like— it took me some time to really get into it until a good friend, she's like, girl, you can do this, you can rock this. And so I started to do it a little bit and then I really embraced it when we moved to St. Pete, Florida. And so when we moved there, um, and I, you know, at some point I think within a year or two started wearing them even more, I started getting really bad experiences. Like, people would be super rude to me. Um, I would have people follow me in retail stores, like, watching me. Like, you know, it's not like the first time that's happened, but like more often. And I had remembered telling my husband, it's like, you know what, when I wear head wraps, I feel more Black. And I know that sounds crazy. He's like, what? I was like, I just feel like I draw more attention to myself when I wear head wraps, and I don't like that feeling. I don't like feeling like I'm making myself be seen more, even though it's out of, you know, just me wearing them to be, one, share my personality, two, to not have to deal with my hair, and three, be cute with my hair at some times. And so he's like, I don't know, I mean, maybe it's just your feeling. And I was like, yeah, maybe it's just my experience, but it happened a couple other times. And so from that moment I now look back and see that I started to not wear them as much. I mean, I even, when, um, I was showing up on Instagram a lot when I first started wearing them, I even had people say things to me on Instagram about it. So it was obviously something that maybe people just weren't, you know, used to seeing me wearing it, but it just made me feel like this negative connotation to wearing them. And it kind of dampened my excitement to, to do that. And to me, that was a really authentic experience. Experience to even get comfortable with wearing them out. Because if you could only imagine me having conversations with my girlfriends, like how to wrap the knot on my head and how to make it look cute, and me spending, you know, several hours looking on YouTube of how to wrap a head wrap on my head so that it wouldn't look funky and weird. It really did affect my decision-making on like when to wear, or if I were ever to wear it again. So recently, obviously we're at home and I have these head wraps and I, you know, we— I'm not getting my hair did, um, and I've been doing, you know, new cute little things with it. So I'm like, oh, I miss when I used to wear my head wrap. So I started wearing them again and I was like, man, why did I stop? Why did I— why did I stop? And I think as, as, as people, we sometimes stop things in our lives that made us feel good or that we liked and we don't actually think about why we stopped until we do. And for me, that is what happened. I was like, why did I stop? And it was like, well, I felt really uncomfortable. I always felt like people saw me differently. But then working through that, I realized, well, that's not my problem. Like, that's not my problem. That's people saw me differently because I wore a head wrap on my head. That's like saying if I wore a cap on my head, people saw me differently, or if I decided to only wear yellow, I don't know, whatever other craziness people have a problem with, I can't control that. Now it's different if it was like something like from a— I don't even know right now, but the point is I allowed that experience to color my belief and tamper with my self-confidence. And so the reason why I'm talking to you guys about this is because in running a business, self-confidence is so important. Sometimes we get so hung up on the fear and the not knowing what's going to happen and what everybody else is doing and how it looks when they're doing it that we, you know, we allow those things. And mostly we actually honestly are allowing our own personal experiences to hold us back from seeing the positive or even growing from a situation. And so, as I was mentioning earlier, it's such human nature to see negativity and to ignore and almost be blinded not to see positive things. And so I challenge myself, and I challenge you guys too, to look at the whole picture. If you're doing something in your business and you got one negative review, but then you have like 20 or 50 other positive comments and things, keep doing that thing. Maybe tweak it to maybe, maybe address something that your audience has said, but keep doing that thing. Don't stop doing it because of one thing. Or if you have a negative experience, um, on the other end of that where you're like, man, that was really negative, I would never ever want to do that— well, maybe that experience was negative, but maybe the, the output or the outcome could have been differently if the experience wasn't negative. So I encourage and challenge all of us to not always see the negative, but also analyze if there is an opportunity for, for positivity and for, for growth. Try to be honest with yourself and what, how you really felt and what things are going on and make adjustments. And if you find that difficult to do, and this is why the power of coaching in a business is so important, is because we help you challenge the beliefs that you have based on those experiences. You know, a good coach is not really telling you what to do. A good coach is asking you questions so that you can reevaluate whether or not your belief is really based on something that makes sense to you. Um, and so as a coach and being coached, I have learned so much from that aspect of things. I'm constantly asking questions. It's some— it's so funny, as kids we ask a lot of questions. We ask mom, why? Why not? And then they say, because of this. And then, but why? But why? It's always a question. And I feel like as we become adults, we lose that ability of asking questions, and then we get afraid of what those answers might be, and then we get afraid of making the decisions that we need to make because we haven't asked the questions. We haven't looked at the whole picture as much as possible to find out what we need to do. So if you are having an issue with self-confidence, ask yourself why. Ask if there's an experience or something that you've gone through that really colors your opinion of yourself or your opinion of your business. If you haven't— having difficulty with making decisions, maybe it's the, the thought of you need to know all of the things because one time you made a decision and it wasn't technically right and someone like pinpointed to you and it's like, that was so wrong. Here's the thing about decisions. Decisions require two things, really: humility and audacity. It requires a sense of being being bold and being humble. Like, you have to recognize, we all have to recognize that we don't know the answers to everything and we can't possibly know the answers to everything, and that we can find out the answers. And then we also have to be excited and courageous enough to find out what those answers is or what the option is. And so that's a way of thinking about making decisions. It's not knowing and not being perfect, but more or less having the ability to experience and learn from the decisions that we make, especially in our businesses. So yeah, that's really what I wanted to share with you. I hope this story made sense. I couldn't really think of how to tell the story in a way that you guys would connect with, but I hope you guys hear what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that don't, um, not take time to look at your experiences and analyze them so that you can, one, um, learn from them, address the things that may have made you feel a certain way and release it and let it go because that's not what is going to be every single time. And also recognize that some experiences have nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the other person. Like, like me wearing a head wrap had nothing to do with me having fun wearing a head wrap. It had everything to do with the fact that someone else was uncomfortable with me wearing a head wrap, or they had other beliefs or circumstances that made them feel uneasy about that. So that, that's on them. So don't allow that, that to color your decision of being authentic in your marketing, authentic in how you show up for your business. So even one negative nally can be on your, your Instagram or your Facebook or on your website review, but then you have tons of other amazing positive things. You know, I just, I say find balance in the negativity and find balance in the positivity. Find a place where you can take your experiences, learn from them and grow from them, as well as those that come to you, like the things that people say to you. To not allow it to smolder your confidence in your ability to grow. So that's my spiel for this solo cast. I hope that this was something that connects with you. Next episode will be with an amazing psychologist and boss babe and coach, Kate Carrico. And I'm sure I'm saying that wrong. I think it's Kate Carrico. Um, but she is going to be on the show on Friday next week. I'm so excited. She has a book called Thinking Like a Boss. Um, it's great. It's about lies that we tell ourselves. This month is all about mindset. Um, so I hope you guys, um, stay tuned and share with your friends. Um, if you would like to be a part of an amazing community of women who are trying to create and craft a business and life that they love, please join me over at Craft Your Clarity Collective on Facebook. Um, the link is in my show notes and probably in the description, um, of this episode. That's where I'll be hanging out second most to Instagram. Um, so I can't wait to see you guys here, and I can't wait to hear your feedback from this episode. And tell me, have you ever experienced something that's made you feel, or maybe color the decisions you made for yourself or in your business? All right, as I always say, and I truly believe, remember that yes, you are crafted to thrive.