We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aarika Rubio. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aarika below.
Aarika, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
One of the biggest reasons I have been able to overcome and control my PTSD and other mental issues due to childhood trauma and trauma in my adult life is faith, and the therapy I have received. My faith and spirituality has worked hand in hand with the therapy I’ve gotten over the years. I think where one may drop off the other picks up. I have a. good spiritual background, and it’s pretty solid, the coping skills and boundaries is where the therapy helped me out. I know to always have faith that things will be okay and things will be the way they are supposed to be. We don’t necessarily get to have things the way we always want them, but just have faith that for now this is how they are. Maybe there is a lesson to learn, and maybe it’s not for you but someone around you. Knowing this and learning to be patient with the process, coping skills is important. Learning how these two things go together in your life may take awhile to figure our, once you do life is a lot easier to take on. Your expectations are a little easier to meet and you realise that it depends on you more than you think. We make the decisions, and we all have choices. Maybe not the choices we want or not as many as we think we deserve, but we do have some. Choose wisely, take your time and think things through before hand and have faith that no matter how it turns out, that’s how it’s supposed to be.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a hairstylist and have been for the last 23 years! I enjoy every single day of my job, my clients always make my day. All these years I have never had the “same day”, you may perform the same services but it’s never the same. I love that things are different everyday, with routine. I love transforming my clients hair and seeing their genuine reactions to seeing for the first time! I love when a client can’t stop petting their hair because they love the way it looks and feels. This job has fed my soul and my family and continues to do so to the next generation. My oldest daughter decided to join this industry and she does nails in my salon. Full circle, my younger daughter is excellent at makeup however she decided to do the business side of the salon. One of the best thing about working with people in a salon, is all the great people you meet, from all over your city. The relationships I have cultivated with my clients is priceless! It is. very personal thing to have me in your personal space, so I don’t take that lightly. My goal is always to make my clients feel safe and at home. I have been lucky enough to say that I have had most of my clients for over 17 years, so I’m hoping that means they trust me. Being a small salon in a small city in a small state and surviving for this long has been a huge blessing. I love Las Cruces and I love New Mexico and I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else. My logo says it all a Zia symbol made out of bobby pins!! We are hoping to keep our business going as a place for new stylists to grow and to keep feeding our passion for the industry for many more years to come!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Being a hairstylist, you have to learn to adapt to different people and situations. I was lucky to have worked at different mental health places while I was in cosmetology school. I learned a lot of coping skills, patience and understanding people where they are at. We all have different journeys and not all of us get the correct skills to navigate through these journeys. Once you do learn them you should share with other people who you can help navigate their journey better. Learning good coping skills that have a positive impact on your life and situation is a huge quality. When you learn to deal with things without numbing yourself out to them, it becomes your most valuable asset. This will also lead to learning good boundaries. Not just with other people, but for yourself. Knowing your limits and what you’re willing to give and take is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned. Once I knew what I was really capable of and what I was willing to bring to the plate with each different situation, it became easier to manage my life. We don’t have to do everything or be everything for someone else. This is knowing your self worth inside and out, and teaching people how to respect that and you. This is how I learned to build my self confidence. It is still an everyday struggle for me, past trauma is always in the background, I push myself everyday to learn to love myself. Looking in the mirror is the hardest thing to do, ironic because the mirror is a huge tool in my profession! Once you can look inward and really do the work to improve yourself, you will see that the people around you also change. Someone has to start it, someone has to break those old family curses. We can’t let these curses continue in our families, especially with all the knowledge we have at our fingertips, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t try. Be the one to change your curses, fight those feelings of reverting to old habits. Just because they’re familiar and you know how to handle them, does not mean they are good. Growing and learning new things may be uncomfortable, it’s only for a moment. Little growth is still growth, do not knock yourself when you do fail, we all will, it takes more than one try to change a lifetime of bad habits.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
In this industry I will say it is better to be a more well rounded stylist than only focusing on one of your strongest services. This industry is ever-changing and in order to stay in the game you have to stay up with the trends. I love doing hair color and this is one of my strongest services I provide. I did have a time when other services were being asked for and none of my other girls wanted to learn it. So I had to step up to the plate and learn a new service so I wouldn’t have to turn clients away. It became one of my favourite services to provide, and unless I was pliable, and ready to learn I wouldn’t have known that. Now I have new clients and more income coming into the salon! Sometimes when we are in a career or in a situation for a long time, we may grow complacent. Which in turn makes your business stagnant and that’s not good for business. You should always be willing to grow and learn new things, especially if you want your business to thrive!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGfXsnezqI/_Vol4KM_GuVKLUN1jMf0ow/edit
- Instagram: @lcbeautynm
- Facebook: Las Cruces Beauty, llc
Image Credits
All images taken by Aarika Rubio @ Las Cruces Beauty
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
