The Hair Color Trap
I don’t consider myself a vain person. Sure I’m adorable, but that’s not the same. But one thing I am vain about is my hair. It comes from years of compliments and people wanting to play with it. And lately, a lot of compliments are about the color.
Secret Confession: These Auburn locks aren’t natural. First from a salon and then from a box, for the last 5-6 years I have been routinely dying my hair. At first, I just wanted a change; something simple and new. But then I started getting more compliments on how natural my color looked and how well it suited me. I still do. And so a temporary change became routine.
It’s the hair color trap: Once you start dying your hair, it becomes hard to stop. If you stop your roots will show, people have gotten used to you looking this way, and you don’t want to disappoint your hair stylist. It becomes more daunting to stop than to just continue on dying your hair. The change becomes the status quo. And all of a sudden you are exactly where you used to be.
Does that scenario sound familiar? It should. How often do we affect change in our organizations in an effort to improve some outdated process only to have that process itself become outdated? But by then we have so much of ourselves and our time in the new process that we find it difficult to try something else. Even if the change was and is great, change always has an expiration date. It’s important to remember that and be ready to move forward when the time comes.
Personally, I have decided to stop dying my hair for a time and go back to the natural color. It wasn’t so different. A little lighter brown, with blonde highlights instead of red that got bigger in the summer when I spent too much time outside. I kind of miss it. I’m not sure how long until I want a change again, but I hope I spend less time agonizing over it than I did this time. It’s only hair after all.
