Stop changing yourself.
Start enhancing yourself.
As an educator, it is my job to enhance every student’s relationship with their craft; there is no doubt about that. I have developed, through rigorous self-study, a revolutionary method to barbering and men’s hairdressing, but as the old saying goes: “you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink”. It is more important, in my job as an educator, to enhance their relationship with themselves as an individual. No matter how in depth the teaching, no matter how informative and helpful you are, if you fail to ignite an individual’s fire inside, then you have failed to educate them.
Education is not about showing students how the method helps you to reach your potential. Education is about helping students to see how the method can help them to reach their own individual potential. As a human being, everything you are ever supposed to be is already there, and students come to us because they’re struggling to find it on their own. Sometimes it’s not about teaching that what you do is the right way, but that what you do can be adapted slightly to suit them. The best students are not the ones who do what the teacher shows them to do perfectly, but those who take what the teacher shows them and turns it into something that suits and enhances them.
We, as educators, should focus on building our students up to enhancing themselves, rather than knocking them down to think they must change. They already have the ability, we just need to help them find it. As an educator and as a human being, I want to see everyone becoming the best version of themselves, not a poorer version of someone they admire.
The only way to true success is to walk your own path no matter where it leads you. Using passion as your fuel, and discipline to keep your eyes open, you will be able to see where the path may turn. Your path is yours and when you trust it above all others, you maintain your most important USP. You. True success does not come in any other form than simply happiness. And so I’ll leave you with two of my favorite quotes I use in my classes.
“We don’t pick up the clippers to change the world. We pick them up to escape it.”
“The energy you put out is the energy you receive. The energy you put into something is the energy it is received with.”
