Slightly Less Sh1t

The decline of my hairline

I lost my hair in my twenties. I tried my best to keep up the pretence until my mum helped me to make an important decision. I'd gone round the parent's house for Sunday dinner. After we'd eaten my mum sidles up to me and says:

Michael. I've noticed that your hair is thinning a quite a lot. I think it's time you started growing it long so that you can comb it over to cover up the bald bit.

I thought she was just joking around, but she was deadly serious. Images of this ridiculous comb over, stuck on my head with brylcreem and flapping in a high breeze came to mind. I thanked my mother for her wise advice and ever since that day I have shaved my head.

Well not me exactly. I'm too tight to go to a barbers, so my lovely wife does it for me in the kitchen. As I got older and hair started sprouting from virtually everywhere but my head, the kitchen service got added to. Luckily my wife is a trained beautician so I have the occasional nose and ear wax and she tidies my eyebrows.

The eyebrows have it

As a beautician, my wife has tidied thousands of pairs of eyebrows on men and women and is always keen to point out that I have the sh1ttest eyebrows that she's had to sort (image included below to illustrate the point - this is the best they get). The usual cue for me to request a tidy is her saying:

your eyebrows are waving at me

A good few years ago, when we had a beauty salon she would delegate my eyebrow tidies to the team. One day I asked their advice on what I could do to improve them and they suggested I shave them off and have them tattooed on. I decided that tattooed eyebrows wouldn't be a look I could carry off, so sh1t eyebrows it is !

Now as eyebrows go, I'm ok with them. My wife's frustration is that every individual hair seems to grow at a random angle so they are impossible to tame. She's waxed and plucked and trimmed and primped, but whatever she does, they never look great. They just look slightly less sh1t than they did before she worked on them.

Sometimes that's a win.

This morning we went through the motions again. Head shaved, wavy eyebrows trimmed, straggly randoms plucked, remaining eyebrows combed with a little eyebrow comb.

Me: How are they looking dear ?

Her: Slightly less sh1t.

Me: Fabulous !

So off I go for a shower and shave to complete the look, happy as Larry with my bald head and my slightly less sh1t eyebrows. I'm happy because that's the best they will ever be and I can't ask for more. Maybe a revolutionary new brow treatment will come on the market that will radically upgrade my eyebrow game ? Who knows ? But in the meantime I'm good as I am.

While I was showering a thought popped into my head:

Slightly less sh1t doesn't sound great, but, if you're in a dark place, slightly less sh1t is a win - a significant step towards the light.

That got me thinking about what this blog is about and what I do with Art of Brilliance. We don't do the jazz hands, positive vibes only, toxic positivity stuff like some people do. We stick to science based, realistically optimistic stuff that we know is proven to work. But when you're having a really hard time, even our stuff might look a bit jazz handsy. If you're feeling a bit down, most of the tips on this site should be doable, but if you're stuck down a hole and really struggling some of the stuff on here might seem to be unattainable.

Baby steps back to the light

So for anyone in a dark place at the moment, where the idea of being happy and joyful seems unachievable, maybe focus on making things slightly less sh1t. When things are really rubbish and hope is fading, slightly less sh1t is a massive win. It's a small but positive step in the right direction. It's the start of moving towards milestones like 'a bit rubbish' then to 'meh' and maybe even 'not so bad'.

Imagine it. If you can make every day slightly less sh1t there will be a day when you wake up and you've achieved 'ok'. When you've got there you can change from 'slightly less sh1t' to something like 'a bit more ok' and from there you might upgrade to ' a bit happier'. It might take a while to get back to being happy, but it's way better than staying in that dark place.

I don't think we'd get many customers for something called:

the art of being slightly less sh1t

but if you are in a dark place, some of the tips in this blog will help you feel slightly less sh1t than you did yesterday. And if today is slightly less sh1t than yesterday, it's a significant and important step in the right direction.

Mike xx