26/06/2020 No One Cares About My Grey Hairs!

For some unknown reason I have been hell-bent on trying to show/prove to people just how bad my grey hair is!

This has involved sending close up photos of the top of my head to friends and family, shoving my scalp to the screen during Zoom calls, and lowering my head like a bull prepared to attack to show anyone who is a safe 2 metre distance away.

For someone who currently has 5 headbands in rotation to disguise the mass of grey on top of their head, I am very eager to point out my grey hairs to anyone who cares!

The problem is, no-one does. Literally, no one. Well, apart from me!

I’m not sure if I’m looking for sympathy, empathy or just simply an acknowledgement that it looks bad (which proves I’m right!)

Alas, no-one has been shocked, looked sorry for me or batted an eyelid. No-one’s even taken the opportunity to have a laugh at me.

One friend just said, “Come on Helen, you can’t have everything,” which I guess can’t be taken for anything other than a compliment. And believe me, this wasn’t an attempt to fish for compliments.

I was starting to get sick of hearing “It’s not even that bad,” and 100% believed people were just saying it to be nice.

However, I think I’ve now realised that people just genuinely don’t think it’s that bad and they’ve got bigger issues to worry about than my hair.

So, what have I learnt other than I need to get over myself?!

Well, that we must spend so much time obsessing over our appearance and nit-picking at our looks when, really, no-one else is bothered.

Little things we fuss and agonise over aren’t even noticed by most people.

But why are we bothered about what we think other people are thinking about us?!

Why was I so desperate for someone to confirm my suspicion that people were looking at my hair and thinking it looked bad?!

I think we all like to point out things we see as ‘negative’ about ourselves before others do to kind of protect ourselves. It’s like “you can’t tell me anything about myself I don’t already know, so there!”

Of course, I know that the people in my life like me regardless of the colour of my hair or what I look like. I guess sometimes it’s easy to forget in our image-obsessed world.

Don’t get me wrong, on Tuesday when I got the message saying “do you want a hair appointment on the 10^th of July?” I fist pumped the air with both hands!

But I’ll be going knowing I’m getting my hair dyed for me because I like it dyed. Not because I need to look a certain way to please anyone else or for validation from anyone else.

It’s important to remember –

We should be less self-conscious – we worry about people looking at us and what they might think of us when most of the time they aren’t looking or thinking about us!
We should spend less time caring about what others think about ourselves and more time caring about what we think about ourselves.

I’m not sure if I’m looking for sympathy, empathy or just simply an acknowledgement that it looks bad (which proves I’m right!)

So, what have I learnt other than I need to get over myself?!

But why are we bothered about what we think other people are thinking about us?!

I think we all like to point out things we see as ‘negative’ about ourselves before others do to kind of protect ourselves. It’s like “you can’t tell me anything about myself I don’t already know, so there!”

It’s important to remember –

We should be less self-conscious – we worry about people looking at us and what they might think of us when most of the time they aren’t looking or thinking about us!

We should spend less time caring about what others think about ourselves and more time caring about what we think about ourselves.