Let me take you back to fall of 2014. I had just recently moved to Calgary, after selling my home and my salon in another province, the only person I knew was my boyfriend.

I was two weeks into running my home-salon in my basement. I was pretty excited to be getting new clients booking in.

On this fateful Wednesday, I had one client I had previously seen in my chair finishing up, with another one (a new client) sitting patiently on my pink couch waiting for their appointment.

**CW: Talk of abuse, suicide, divorce and assault**

I’m so excited to be bringing you this episode of The Anxious Creative. I’ve got a super special guest for you, Mark Peyton. He’s a barbershop owner, mental health advocate and fellow Canadian from Nova Scotia.

It’s been a long time coming, but I think the Anxious Creative has waited long enough for a barber to come on to the show. He’s got such a heart of gold and I can’t wait for you to dive into this episode.

I’ve always been good at making things more difficult than they need to be.

• Need to update a photo on my website? Well, gotta redo the whole page then.

• Nick’s wondering what I want for dinner? Well, I guess I have to weigh all the options and reference the stars.

• Simple task I need to complete? Let me over-complicate it!

Honestly, a lot of it is imposter syndrome. Thinking that I need to be more or have it more together. That there’s no way I deserve the success and opportunity coming to me.

I’m throwing it back to a classic episode of The Anxious Creative. This is one of the all-time favourite episode of my podcast and I’m really happy that we’re bringing it back.

‘Cause let’s be honest, you’re struggling with boundaries.

And I get it, I used to be the exact same way, I lived most of my life not even knowing what boundaries were. If someone asked something of me, I had to say “yes”.

I honestly didn’t think “no” was an option.

“Here’s my card, I’m a hairstylist and I’d love to do your hair sometime!”

(It all came out so quickly it probably sounded more like “heresmahcardimmahairstylistandidlovetodoyourhairsometime”) The grocery store clerk raised her eyebrow and awkwardly took the card from my hand.

“Uh… thanks…” she smiled and continued to ring my groceries through the till.

That’s how I got my start talking to strangers.

I used to stress about my brunette balayage clients, you know the ones, the ones who love their brunette locks and don’t actually want to look like a blonde.

I don’t even want to try to count the amount of times I accidentally over-highlighted someone’s hair…

You see, before I learned the rule of percentages, I used to think that I had to fit as many highlights as I possibly could onto someone’s head, ‘cause that’s what they were paying me for, right??