Hello, this is Jenna and welcome to the Elevate Yourself podcast where we can talk about beauty and self care without judgement.

Jenna: Thanks for joining me on another episode of Elevate Yourself Podcast. Today I wanted to talk to you about how to set reasonable expectations in your self care appointments. 

It's really important that you're able to set reasonable expectations because obviously, if you set the bar way too high, and it's never achievable, you're just never going to be happy. And you're also not going to make progress in your journey. You're going to feel really frustrated and you're likely not going to follow through with finding the things that are really going to enrich your life and make you feel good. 

So my number one tip for setting reasonable expectations is to seek progress, not perfection. If you're always seeking perfection, especially in one appointment, or the first time you've tried something, you were just likely setting yourself up for disappointment. And then you're not gonna leave feeling inspired to continue on this path or build a deeper understanding of the path that you need to take to get the result that you are looking for to be doing the things that will make you feel better. So always seek progress, not perfection, especially when booking yourself care appointments.

Usually, progress is developed over time as you develop a relationship not only with your technician, but with yourself. You will develop this relationship of what you want and as you try things and that will change and evolve over time and also with after care application to your daily routine etc. It's always about progress, not perfection. 

Next tip I would recommend researching before booking. If you don't research before you book your appointment you're pretty much also just setting yourself up for disappointment. You're the only person who can really tell what you want and what you need. And if you don't do any research beforehand, then you're leaving things to chance. And it's maybe not the best use of your financial resources or your time so to make the best of your appointment, make sure that your expectations match the appointment that you've booked. I would definitely recommend researching through the website, Instagram, reaching out through DMS or email before you book that appointment so that you know which one is going to make you happiest also really important to review and respect all policies and professional boundaries of studios. Know that these policies have been thoughtfully created to promote customer satisfaction and safety. They will be unique to each studio and reflect a curated experience that the studio is trying to provide to uphold your satisfaction and safety. Not only your satisfaction, but the satisfaction of all of our clients. And especially when you're booking into a busy studio or with a busy artist. There will be more boundaries and policies likely to just ensure that everything runs smoothly for your appointment and for the whole studio and the clientele in general.

Also really important not to compare an apple to an orange your journey for self care appointments and your results are going to be unique just like your lifestyle. So everything that you experience is not going to be the same as your friend. What's right for your friend might not be what's right for you. And it's really important to really take that into consideration when you're looking for pictures on Instagram of like before and afters that would be similar to yours - to someone with similar features so that you could possibly gain the same result. And if you have any questions always ask, DM or interact in some way with the studios so that we can customize your journey.

Also, please consider trusting the advice of the professional that you are seeking advice from. There's a reason we didn't get our training through Google. And I know that it is the number one search engine and there's a lot of information on there. Some of it is valuable. Some of it isn't but the truth is the professional that you've seeked out is probably really well trained in a certain technique that they are an expert on and the advice that they're giving you is tailored towards their style or their perspective of what it would be right for you.

If you don't trust the advice of that professional that you're seeking. Then maybe you want to get a second opinion from another professional but I would really recommend not going through the Google rabbit hole because it's only going to lead you into a spiral of conflicting questions, because there is just so much information out there and it's not all good. So please refrain from googling every answer. Trust the advice from the professional that you're interested in seeing so that you can calibrate those reasonable expectations unique to that professional or studio and don't rely on Google for your information or to fact check or to get a second opinion please. Remember that your beauty enhancements are there to make your life better not make it more stressful. Nothing lasts forever.

So instead of obsessing over every chip in your nail polish or lash that falls out, focus on making after care of routine and a priority in your life and then live your life to the fullest. Instead of obsessing over every little thing that might be wrong with your enhancements or everything that does go wrong. Use your next appointment to communicate with your lash or nail professional and get their advice on how you could maybe modify your after care so that your enhancements last longer, but don't limit your life and obsess over it.

 If you're constantly obsessing over things but not focusing on after care and things you can do to actually change the outcome of your enhancements, you're just never going to be happy and you're going to create a really unreasonable expectation for yourself. So as a beauty professional as well, I just have to touch on it. This is the number one thing that I think it took a little while for me to learn this because in the beginning of your experience as a beauty artist, you really take on a lot. You are always criticizing yourself and as a beauty professional, you're usually a perfectionist. So you do come down on yourself really hard. You create some unrealistic expectations for yourself as well, which sometimes transfer onto your client and the more experienced you get, the more you create boundaries of what's possible and what's not possible. Just experience tells you what is going to work and what's not going to work and you learn that over time. And then you're also able to communicate that to your client so that you can help them adjust their expectations and end up with a more like satisfied happy outcome or develop like evolve their service into something that is going to be more beneficial for them. 

For example, if you start out with like a gel polish manicure and you come back and it's chipped right away a very good sign that you might need to have a sculpted gel a little bit of a more durable nail under there and same thing with like if you go classic lashes and you have zero retention when you come back for your appointment, you probably need to dial in your aftercare but you might also need to change your styling so as a lash artist or nail artist, any kind of beauty professional you really do learn this over time and that is what really takes things to the next level when you can effectively communicate and set these boundaries and like reasonable expectations with your client because once they set reasonable expectations from the appointment and your relationship that you're establishing together, you can really create a magical situation where there is just a continued evolution of better and progress and you get to a really sweet spot where that client is spending less money to achieve the results that they really want and they're doing the habits that they need to do for the aftercare but it's not running their life like on a low maintenance routine of just being happy with the enhancements that they have. And then they are lasting longer for them as well. 

So this is so important from the client side but it's also super important as an artist as well. So I would just encourage both clients and also artist to take a look at this and if there's anything in here that can help you maybe reflect on maybe some more research you could be doing or more communication you can be giving to your client to really set them up for success or set yourself up for success. Do you have any questions about this? At our studio, we have set up a bunch of quizzes for our clients. So when they come in the first because a lot more about themselves and the services and what would match best for them. So feel free to check out our website, elevatelash.ca and head to those quizzes if you want to. You can recreate them for your clients yourself. And if you are not sure about what services would be best for you, you can also help yourself to those free quizzes and take advantage of that as well. If you have any more detailed questions feel free to DM me or reach out through email at Elevatelash.ca or Jenna@elevatelash.ca And I would love to talk to you and help you with this if this is something you think would help improve your self care experience. 

Love this episode head over to iTunes to subscribe rate and leave a review. Don't forget to join us next week for another episode. Thanks for listening!