“I work my life around my personality”

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Welcome back to The Anxious Creative! I am so excited to introduce you to our special guest. I’ve been following this hairstylist from afar for literal years. And I’ve always had an internal narrative that “I’m probably not cool enough to hang out with her”. 

She’s a kick-ass hairstylist, she’s an educator and I’m so excited for you to get connected with her in this episode. 

Her story is amazing. If you relate to being an anxious creative, you’re going to get so much out of this episode. 

Buckle up friend, get ready for a wild ride with Mish Jolie. 

The Spiritual Stylist

Mish grew up in Connecticut, where she became a hairstylist, salon owner, educator and most recently she’s added on coaching to her resume. She likes to refer to herself as an “indie-educator” because she does it all herself. 

Mish has coined the term “spiritual stylist” for herself as she’s always been really into the magical side of the world. She is a pisces and enjoys to live with her head in the clouds. 

She’s a lover of crystals, self-love, yoga and meditation. The spiritual stylist stems from her working on herself and finding different ways to cope in the real world. Through self-help and self-improvement she found so many ways to be a better person through spirituality. 

She now owns her own salon with her friend and business partner, Meg Moran where they are both educators as well. 

The Saturn Return

Mish really loves astrology and she has openly stated that she will be an astrologer in the future (it’s in your hands now, universe). So it’s only fitting that we talked about her “Saturn return”. 

According to Mish, this is a moment in time when your whole life gets turned upside down and then it gets better right after. 

For Mish, her Saturn return happened when she was 30 and everything blew up in her life. 

Let’s give a little bit of back story…

She had started working in a salon straight out of graduating hair school. She was working, learning a lot and she became fully booked pretty quickly. She even had her own assistant because she was so busy. But she wasn’t feeling happy and she didn’t feel like she could be herself at all at this salon. 

Although we often celebrate “finding your tribe” nowadays, back in the day, it was about finding a job that paid the bills. 

Mish is very open that she’s struggled with depression since her teenage years and she’s not shy to admit that she was very depressed at this job.  

Her employer at the time was a very “intense” person (to put it nicely) and they were really hard on Mish. She was always trying to be someone that she’s not and she felt bad about herself as though she wasn’t good enough. 

It’s important to note that Mish was also in a toxic relationship at this time as well. So toxic workplace and toxic personal relationship (not a good mix). 

Fast forward to New Year’s Eve 5 years ago, Mish was finishing up her shift at the salon, looking forward to some celebrations when her boss tells her they need to “talk to her” (cue the immediate anxiety). 

So Mish sits down with her boss and they open a letter with all the reasons why Mish is a toxic person, why her coworkers don’t like her and why she won’t be successful. And Mish sat there wondering “Am I though…? I’ve always tried to be a good person…”

If you didn’t guess, Mish did not go out celebrating that New Year’s Eve, instead she went home and cried, wondering if this is really how she was ringing in the new year. 

Mish’s story resonates so much with me and is very similar to my own journey with toxic relationships. I know that I purposefully sought out toxic relationships and workplaces because it confirmed the feeling that I thought I was no good. 

Mish’s lack of self worth was hindering her success. She puts it best: “when you act small, then you are small”. 

“I’m Done”

When Mish woke up the next morning, to a brand new year she said “I am f*cking done.” She told the universe that was it, send the new path her way because she can’t work at this salon anymore. 

Mish was terrified to leave because she had a non-compete clause in her contract. Connecticut is a small place and the non-compete made her feel like she was stuck. 

But after Mish made the conscious decision that she was done and she wanted to start a new path, the universe started working in mysterious ways. 

She ended up working at the salon through January and then February came, her birthday. She went out for her birthday and then ended up getting dumped by her toxic relationship the very next day. 

Once he was gone, everything else that was bad in her life started to slip away. 

Everything that Mish knew was ripped away and opportunities started to drop by themselves, that’s actually how she found her next job as a balayage specialist.

She then ended up becoming an educator and travelled around the whole country teaching. From there she went off on her own with Meg, found her husband later that year. 

Now she’s happily married, has her own successful business and she’s an educator and a coach. 

Mish discovered that a positive mindset works and she vowed to never go back to a permanently negative mindset. 

We often keep ourselves in that depressed/negative mindset because it’s comfortable. It’s what we know. 

If Mish could go back and tell her younger self anything it would be this:

“Do not live because you need the money, your happiness is worth more than the money”

Find What Works For You

I’ve often been told that I am:

• Lazy

• Scattered

• Unorganized

• Messy

• And more…

And I internalized all of those things and it held me back, made me think I wasn’t good enough and made me believe that I couldn’t achieve my dreams. 

Mish has been told the same things and she’s often felt bad about not being “normal” because she was living a life where she didn’t fit in. 

Her therapist stumped her when asked: “Why do you have to be a morning person? Why do you have to be a neat and tidy person?”

Mish saw the hugest change come with she hired Brittney Carmichael as her business coach. Brittney actually told her, “Mish, you’re changing your schedule. You’re your own boss now and you’re not working until noon.” When Mish responded, “I can do that??” Brittney told her: “You can do anything you want”. 

You don’t have to be the person in a box, who’s a morning person, who wakes up and has this completely other life that Mish doesn’t have. Mish is over that life and now she focuses on working her life around her personality. 

For Mish, a good morning routine isn’t waking up at the crack of dawn and going for a run, for her, it’s about doing something for her mind, body and soul. 

She doesn’t want to put herself into a box and she can’t commit to anything anyway. But the most important part is satisfaction. 

Mish learned that she’s not the type of person who can just work, work, work. That type of lifestyle burns her out so quickly. 

She was recently attending a business conscious summit where they were talking about workflow. Mish asked how do you create a workflow when you have such high highs and low lows, particularly the times where she’s feeling extremely low energy. 

And she got some really awesome advice back:

“Do not feel shameful for being this way,” (how validating is that??) “when you have those highs and you have that flow going, first, try to recognize what you did to give you that energy, but also take full advantage of the energy that you have.”

I love that so much. Work with what you have. 

And for both Mish and myself, sometimes that means staying up until the wee hours of the morning finishing up our websites. 

Take it where you can get it and it’s totally okay to have low energy days. 

Both Mish and I have learned that body doubling really helps our productivity. Body doubling is when you have another person around when you need to get something done. There’s actually a room on Clubhouse that’s just for people who need a body double! There’s just music but you can see that there are hundreds of other people who are working at the same time as you. It’s freakin’ awesome. 

Mish and I definitely might start hopping on zoom calls with each other when we need a little body doubling help!

Okay, I think Mish is my new best friend (although she might not know it yet). But holy cow, what an inspirational person!

I love how she talked about going with the flow and I feel like so many of us with anxiety, depression, ADHD, you know, the anxious creative people, feel like we need to fix into a box of what’s “normal”. 

Let’s find our own flow, let’s find what honours us. Isn’t that really what being creative is all about? Let’s break the box that others and ourselves have put around us. 

If you were inspired by Mish go ahead and shoot her a DM over on Instagram @mishjolie or check out her website to see what amazing stuff she’s getting up to. 

I hope you enjoyed this one! Can’t wait to see ya in the next episode. 

Go on, binge the latest posts (you know you wanna)…