My personal relationship with my career-Mary Fischer Co-Owner-Can’t Sleep

Personal & Professional Journal Reflection – I can’t sleep tonight, so I choose to write 🙂

Gaia Salonspa is a member of my family and is a reflection of who I am both personally and professionally. When I think back to what I dreamed of being when I grew up, it was not a salon owner.

I graduated from Kansas State University with a B.S in Elementary Education. It was during my student teaching that I realized that I needed to step away and reflect on what it was I really enjoyed about life. I enjoyed teaching but there was this little voice that kept telling me that there was something else out there for me. I knew I enjoyed going to the salon every 4 weeks and just letting my designer do what ever she wanted. It was exciting and made me feel good about who I was- inside and out. I had a very personal relationship with all those who did my hair over the years, but I knew nothing about hair.

It wasn’t until I graduated from KSU and took a small sabbatical and really asked myself “If you could do anything you wanted and it didn’t matter what your friends or family thought, money didn’t matter (now don’t get me wrong at that point in my life it was very important – poor college student) and it doesn’t matter if you don’t know everything about it – what would it be?

I wanted to make people (young and old) feel good about who they were, how they looked-inside and out, I wanted to teach people but wanted no two days to be the same, I wanted to work with people that felt like family and finally, I wanted to know that I had a purpose bigger than myself. Iy dreamed of all of these things but didn’t realize that working in a salon was where I would find all of that and so much more.

After 17 years I am more in love with my career now than I was that first day at cosmetology school. I am truely blessed with a wonderful business partner and team. It was not always an easy journey, but I also was blessed with being around very talented people who taught me about good business foundations. I also surrounded myself with people that shared the same values, both personally and professionally. I learned very quickly to remove “Vampires” from my life. These are people that tend to see the negative first and suck the energy right out from your own breath. It hurts to be around them and can be deadly to your personal health and spirit.
I choose to be positive. I choose to find the good. I choose to choose!! My life is full of choices everyday and I choose to choose instead of reacting.
I choose to lay my head on my pillow, now that it is 1:00 am. A salon owners job is never done – and I love it!!