I was reminded of a valuable lesson in positive thinking this morning and thought I’d share it with you all!
About a month ago, I rocked up to a beauty clinic for a deluxe facial I had booked in. It was one of these Living Social deals where I was promised $550 worth of treatments (LED light therapy, microdermabrasion, a Pomegranate peel, some thick gel-like cream that was to be infused into my skin, a partridge in a pear tree, etc) for $85. Not cheap compared to a lot of those deals, but it seemed like good value to me nonetheless.
Anyway, I had a flat out Saturday ahead so when I arrived at 9am for my appointment and was told there would be a 20 minute wait I thought, sweet, that’s cool, I’ll probably just have to skip one part of the treatment so I can make it to my next appointment in time. Not ideal, but definitely not the end of the world.
I was eventually taken into one of the rooms, set up on the bed and told that someone would be with me shortly. Fortunately (or unfortunately), there was a big clock on the wall in front of me and as I lay there watching the big hand move further and further around until it reached 10am, my annoyance grew, to the point where I had to get up and tell the receptionist I’d need to rebook as I had another appointment to race off to. And I left.
As far as first impressions go, after waiting for an hour with no explanation, my opinion of the clinic wasn’t particularly high.
Anyway, my winter skin was still in desperate need of a facial so I rebooked again for this morning. During the week I was thinking about cancelling – getting a facial is all about feeling comfortable and relaxed and good vibin’ out the wazoo, and I wasn’t feeling the love for this clinic at all. What to do? I battled a bit more in my head and thoughts of bright, smooth, glowy skin won out in the end, so I got out of bed early this morning and trotted off to the 7am spin class at my gym to kill some time and some calories beforehand. Bring on the endorphins, I thought.
Now this is the embarrassing part. For at least the first 10 minutes of the class, a selection (ok, all) of the below ran through my head (in sync with the beat of Voodoo People by the Prodigy):
“If they make me wait again, I’m asking for my money back. I’ve got so much to do today and who has time to sit around waiting? Ra Ra RA!”
“The treatment will probably suck anyway.”
“Can’t believe they didn’t follow up or apologise after I had to leave last time!”
“There goes an hour and a half of my morning. GOOOOONE. See ya!”
Certainly not proud of those thoughts, but based on my first encounter with these people, I’d etched a pretty definite set of conclusions into my psyche about how things would play out. Basically, I was setting myself up for a bad experience.
Not good. But also incredibly good, because by the end of Voodoo People, I had a minor epiphany (either that, or the optimism receptor in my brain finally woke up).
The experience could go exactly the way I wanted it to if I set the intention. In other words, if I expected it to be good, it would be.
I was after a luxurious facial that would leave me all gooey and dreamy, so that’s what I started thinking about. I imagined the therapist being happy to see me. I pictured myself drifiting off into dreamy dreamland with a big smile on my face. I pictured the whole thing running exactly to time and me walking out feeling rejuvenated and pampered. I’d flick my hair over my shoulders and flash my pearly whites, and people would cheer and there’d be streamers and fireworks and… oh, wait.
Anyway, the facial was beautiful. I had a great chat to the beautician, who was very friendly, and I totally forgot about last time. Erased, gone from my mind. My pre-conceived notions dropped away as the gel infused deep into my dermis. Or something. By reframing the negative thoughts I’d conjured up in my head about how it was going to play out and deciding that I wanted the morning to unfold perfectly, it did.
I walked out feeling awesome and on the drive home, two things kept playing over in my mind:
1. We create our experiences. What we focus on we attract. Positivity is a choice.
2. Everyone has bad days. The beautician was having one last time, and I was having a shocker by focusing on the negatives. Letting go feels tre-men-dous.
What a morning!
+ What about you? Have you ever gone into something expecting it to suck/ expecting to fail/ expecting to be disappointed and that’s what’s happened? Do you think you’ll try this little positivity trick?
Images: 1. Ache 2. Good Golly Holly
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