The ART of self Acknowledgement

You know you were tired when you awake and it’s pass 10am on a Monday. For me that’s extremely late and I always like to get the blog done before 7am but okay things happen. It’s good to acknowledge things to that you know, you know?

Yesterday I attended the 12th annual Hair Oscars at the Aloft Hotel in Mt Laurel, NJ. The show was conducted by a good friend of mines Tai The Universal Stylist and i attended in support of my mother who’s a senior hairstylist at his salon Tai Couture. I sat front row VIP from the shows beginning to end and I was very pleased with that accommodation. The shows programming was very impressive but it was great to be in attendance of legendary hair stylist Glynn Jackson receiving a lifetime achievement award. If you’re anybody in the hair styling world you know who he is and seeing as though my mother has been doing hair for almost 20 years I’m very familiar with Mr Jackson. Upon him receiving his award I could not help but hear how well he spoke and one of the things he focused on was acknowledgement and how the African-American community does not do it enough. He went on to speak about how the hair business is a 9 billion dollar business and Blacks are the only community that do not capitalize on the business and that’s because of the lack of acknowledgement and uplifting.

Listening to that sent me back to all the moments of disappointment in my life. All those times when I know I worked extremely hard at something and it had gone unnoticed. Sometimes we look for things and we never receive them. When you love something and take pride in it, accolades are great, financial acknowledgement is even better but really all you want to hear is “great job.” When you feel like you’ve done so much and sacrificed time effort and energy is that too much to ask for? Should we warrant praise and appreciate on ourselves or should we get it from others? When we don’t receive the “something” we looked for in our efforts of work does that mean failure? I’d have to say that when you’re sure of the job you did then you have to grant praise and give it all to yourself. If others take notice then that simply means that you were just that good. Never make a mistake to think that you’re entitled to a pat on your back because if that’s what you’re in it for then you may never understand success. Acknowledgement is something you should give more often to others as well as yourself and hopefully it’ll spread beyond to the point that we could all be happy for each other.

You did good!

Hands On by Ericka/ http://www.myspace.com/457054693

http://www.hairoscars.com/