I Was Never Cool

Growing up, I was never cool. Maybe not uncool, but I didn’t look anything like the collective consciousness of the time called cool. I practiced what every cool boy had down pat a lot: the removing sunglasses while letting wind tossed hair move around, to no avail. Nope, I was just average, nothing extraordinary. And, what a gift average turned out to be.

My bro-friends say that good-looking girls hang together. Could be, because we ordinary people certainly do. And, we go to salons for a buzz and good vibe, and with that magic touch we then proceed to do extraordinary things. The world is filled with ordinary people doing extraordinary things who just left a salon. ;-)

It was an ordinary person who first told me that the extraordinary is nothing more than doing the ordinary extremely well. You see, he said, it’s all about doing extraordinary things that benefit others that will make you happy. Now, that’s cool.

It was an ordinary person, my friend Gustavo, who in a 1974 Mexico reassured the extraordinary for me. “Going to beauty school is not just for girls,” he said, “it will be OK.” An ordinary mother and father paved the way for me to move to London. My training consisted of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Suddenly, I had forgotten that I was not cool, that I was ordinary, because I fell in love with the extraordinary, and it didn’t matter where I stood, I just wanted to do it.

Today I am sitting in a salon waiting for my haircut. I am on my way to Vegas to deliver a seminar to beauty schools across the country on being Fabulous. Who would have thought? An ordinary boy now lectures on how to be Fabulous? How does he do it?

Easy. You forgot your “fabulocity” and you need to be reminded. You see, you might have been told you are ordinary, but you were born Fabulous. You were created, and designed, to be Fabulous. What made you change your mind? Change it back, because the world will continue to define who you are, until you tell the world who you are, and you are Fabulous.

As I look around the salon, serious looking, stressed, and tired looking clients wait to be reminded that they are Fabulous. Clients leaving pay with a smile and renewed energy. They walk away taking stronger strides and feeling like winners. What just happened, I ask myself? Not once, but over and over? I clearly see what we salon professionals do for a living.

Rick, who as an ordinary student, thirty years ago, went with me on tour all over Mexico wrapping extraordinary design perms for Roux de Mexico, finishes cutting my hair. He spins me around, and my ordinary looking head of hair now looks like a GQ cover.
“You look so cool,” he says.

“Cool” I say.

Carlos Valenzuela is President of Carlos Valenzuela Resources, LLC, a consultant, speaker, stylist, licensed beauty instructor and author of i-Fabulous Life Skills. For additional insights visit www.i-fabulous.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/IFabulousLifeSkills.