Life Updates
We’re in the Full Moon energy, and everything feels so heavy. How are you feeling?
Last week, I wrote a blog post about a very strange encounter with an extremely rude retail person at a store. You can read that story here.
After almost one month of trying to book an eyebrow-shaping appointment at a particular place, I decided to do something new. And that’s where this blog post idea came from.
Attracting Disrespect and Rude Behavior
So last week, I went to a Sephora store with a Benefit Brow Bar. I wanted to book an eyebrow shaping and tinting appointment since the online booking didn’t work.
After reading many positive reviews about their services, I also wanted to try this Brow Bar.
At first, I was shocked by the rudeness of one of the sales staff in the Benefits section. She’s one of the eyebrow experts, too. But I simply booked with another expert for another day.
The weather was bad on the day of my appointment, so I didn’t make it to the appointment. I took this as a sign from the Universe to visit another store, especially since I had a very negative experience with that sales lady and eyebrow expert.
I decided to visit another Sephora store with a Benefit Brow Bar to book another appointment. The lady who took my details explained politely that she was new to the company and still hadn’t done her training.
When I eventually visited that store for my booked appointment, I met a different lady. This time, she was a freelancer who worked for Benefit Cosmetics and other makeup brands. She gave me very contradicting information and said that the eyebrow experts are only available in the afternoon. She also wrote my number and name on a piece of paper and said that the eyebrow expert would call me.
Of course, no one called. The service was very disorganized and unprofessional at this store.
Tolerating Disrespect
The problem with abuse survivors (I’m talking emotional abuse here) is that we tend to tolerate disrespect and rude behavior from others. The reason is that when we were living with abusive caregivers, we had to tolerate their abuse to survive. Sometimes for decades.
Can you believe that even after these horrible incidents, I was still going to call the store in the afternoon to book an appointment for the next day?!
Honestly, I would give them another chance and try to book for another day even though afternoons don’t work for my schedule. I prefer to run errands and visit salons in the mornings.
After some reflection, I realized that this place is not worth my time, money or energy. And that all of their staff seem to be either beyond rude, clueless, disorganized or unprofessional.
How to Break Old Toxic Patterns
After reflecting on the bad incidents, I researched another place to get my eyebrows done.
I spent a couple of hours one-night reading recent articles listing the city’s top places. I check the reviews and then make up my mind about a salon.
Luckily, the salon I chose was located somewhere easy to get to. The eyebrow expert was very kind, thoughtful, friendly, professional, and genuine. And I got an amazing result with my eyebrows!
What I did to break this old toxic pattern was respond differently to abuse and disrespect.
Instead of ignoring my feelings about the first place and how the saleswomen made me feel, I honored these feelings and decided that I didn’t need to tolerate mistreatment or disrespect from anyone.
Trust me, for someone who tolerated an emotionally abusive mother for 29 years, taking this small decision wasn’t easy.
And that’s exactly how you break old toxic patterns and start to attract kindness and support into your life.
The truth is that after doing the deep healing work, you will be tested. And this was one of many tests I’ve had in the past seven months.
If you want to learn more about breaking old patterns and integrating the healing work, read my Bali Move series blog posts. In the next story from this series, I will share about my time in Ubud and how it was crucial to integrating all the healing work I did in the past couple of years.
This is the latest blog post from my Bali move series. You can read it here.
Are you struggling with old toxic patterns? If so, let me know in the comments what you are struggling with, and I will answer in a future blog post.
Love,
Leela
