Beauty and the Bartender: A tale as old as time.
Now, pour me another and let's make some questionable life decisions...
I was dating a lovable bartender meets trainwreck, as one does at 22.
You know the story: boy meets girl, day turns to night, and suddenly, bad decisions and hella good times are sponsored by free tequila shots.
We were a disaster: him, emotionally unavailable with a bit of a whiskey problem, and me, rebounding from a traumatizing marriage. Predictably, we couldn't get enough of each other. A tale as old as time.
Meanwhile, I was grappling with my next career move. I had hit a plateau in my current role as a Sales and Education Manager for a well-known skincare brand, a role I had fought hard to get. I had my sights set now on becoming a beauty buyer, once I figured out what a beauty buyer did exactly...a minor detail.
One thing was clear: it meant starting over. As a single mom who had just clawed her way from minimum wage to some stability, I found myself at a crossroads.
This was back in 2010, when the economic world was still reeling from the aftershocks of the 2008 downfall. The idea of starting over didn't seem smart, and frankly, it didn't sound appealing either. I felt stuck.
Over dinner one night, I poured out my frustrations to the bartender. Emotional intelligence wasn't his forte, but he could read me like a book. He paused, looked me straight in the eye, and hit me with a question that stopped me in my tracks: "So, you don't believe in yourself?"
"What? Yes, I do," I replied defensively.
“No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be scared to start over.”
Fucker. He was right.
Ahh—limiting beliefs. I don’t see your name on the list for the party, but here you are at the door, none-the-less.
Somewhere along my career path, I had developed the belief that any success I had was somehow just lucky, and that I wouldn’t be able to replicate this success again. Despite the black and white evidence that this is in fact not luck, one of the beauties of sales-centric roles where numbers don’t lie, I still doubted myself.
And, starting over after a taste of success? Well, that was a sure-fire way to send my fragile ego into a spiral at the tender age of 22.
Limiting beliefs? Check. Imposter Syndrome? Check. Ego? Check. Gang’s all here! A dream-killing trifecta plaguing people across the globe, yet sometimes, all it takes a bold, maybe even a theatrical move to break through them to prove yourself wrong.
I developed a late-in-life love of history, and in the midst of my conundrum, I came across a story about Cleopatra that still makes me laugh as I write this. Allow me to set the scene for you...
The year was 48 BC, and Cleopatra was having a bit of a political squabble with her brother Ptolemy XIII. You know how siblings can be, always fighting over who gets to rule the kingdom. So, Cleopatra decided to take matters into her own hands...or rather, her own carpet.
Cleopatra, being the resourceful queen that she was, knew that Julius Caesar was in town and might be able to help her out. But how to get an audience with the great man? Simple, really. She would roll herself up in a rug, have her servant Apollodorus carry her into Caesar's chambers, and then unroll the rug to reveal herself in all her royal glory.
Now, you might be thinking, "Why the hell would she do that?" Well, my dear friend, Cleopatra was nothing if not dramatic. She knew that this stunt would not only get Caesar's attention but also show him that she was a woman of action, not just another pretty face.
So, off she went, wrapped up like a royal burrito, and presented herself to Caesar as a gift from the gods. And you know what? It worked! Caesar was so impressed by her audacity (and probably a little amused by the whole rug thing) that he decided to help her out and also make her the mother of his child, but I digress.
In the end, Cleopatra got her kingdom back, and Caesar got a new ally and a lover. And the world got a hilarious story about a queen who was willing to literally roll out the royal carpet to get what she wanted.
Like Cleopatra, who ingeniously turned a desperate situation into a triumphant return to power, I realized that sometimes, you need to wrap yourself in your own metaphorical rug—embrace your capabilities and present yourself unabashedly to the opportunities that await.
This realization dawned on me as I sat across from someone who reminded me of the potential I have that I had started to doubt. At this point, I remember who the fuck I am—and, just as importantly, who I am not. I may be scared, I may be uncertain, but I am no coward and I never play it safe. So, I guess I’m going for it.
"Okay, then. Should we get another bottle of wine, or do you want to get out of here so I can do that thing that makes your eyes roll in the back of your head?" he said through his smirk. Asshole.
The next day, I opened my laptop and started typing into Google: "How to be a beauty buyer."
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