Guest article by themailroombarberco.com
If you aren’t on top of your grooming, you start to feel it in your soul. Maybe your hair is too grown out to style, you haven’t kept up with the lines on your beard, or your roots are grown out.
When that starts to happen, you don’t feel like yourself. You lose your self-confidence and you don’t feel too attractive.
Taking a few simple steps towards establishing a grooming routine as part of your self-care process can turn your confidence around and help you feel better overall.
These are three elements of my personal grooming routine that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Visit a barbershop or salon
Getting a haircut, beard trim, or color can be essential for self care. The process of going to a barbershop or salon is therapeutic in nature simply because you’ve taken time out of your busy schedule to treat yourself to a pleasant experience.
After you get your haircut or colored, you feel like a brand new person. When you love the way you look, you start to feel more like yourself overall. Not to mention, when people start complimenting you it gives your self esteem a nice boost.
Another reason visiting a barbershop or salon is good for the soul is because you’re connecting with another human being and other people in the community. Spending time with other people (even for introverts) is such a critical part of taking care of yourself and the casual encounters in a barbershop greatly improve your feeling of social connectedness.
Use natural grooming products
If you use generic or unnatural hair products, you are damaging your hair. Big brand hair products use cheap ingredients to keep costs down and it’s ruining your hair.
Here are just some of the ingredients you need to watch out for:
- Parabens (petroleum)
- Alcohol
- Silicone
- Sulfates
- Fragrance
These ingredients all effect the hair and scalp differently, but these the main problems you’ll face:
- Premature Thinning / balding
- Dandruff
- Dry scalp
- Clogged pores
If this isn’t bad enough, the hair products they sell you not only damage your hair, they don’t even work!
If you want to have your hair looking sharp AND staying healthy, you need to use all natural grooming products with ingredients like jojoba oil, natural waxes, and essential oils. If you do, your hair and scalp will be healthier.
At The Mailroom Barber Co, we are barbers who make all natural grooming products using ethically sourced ingredients that are good for your body and work perfectly so you can look sharp and feel attractive and confident.
Take a bath (in a tub)
Plain fact: Men missed the memo on taking baths in a tub.
Some men got the memo but for the most part American culture has deemed soaking in baths a feminine pastime. Unfortunately, men are discouraged from doing anything remotely “feminine” and that’s a crying shame, but that topic needs its own article so let’s get back to self care before I get on a soap box.
Most women know why baths are the best: they kick your body into full-on chill mode.
This is how it works: Leave the phone in the kitchen, run a steaming hot bath, and soak in the tub until you’re good and pruned. That’s it. You could spice it up with herbal tea and a candle if you feel like taking it to another level.
This is one of my favorite ways to release tension and enter a meditative state, especially after a day of working on my feet. You can feel stress leaving your body as you breathe in the steam and let your body melt in the hot water.
Not only are they relaxing, they also improve your circulation and the health of your immune system.
If you implement these grooming practices into your self-care routines, your body will be healthier and more relaxed and your mind will be more at ease.
Grooming should ultimately help you feel more attractive and confident. If it doesn’t, you might need to switch up some of your routines.