10 Ways to Find More Time to Practice Henna
Today on the vlog, I’m sharing ten easy ways that YOU can find time to practice your henna skills each and every day!
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+ Read the transcript here
Hey guys! This is Chelsea with Hennapreneur, and today I'm going to be teaching you ten different ways that you can make time to practice your henna!
So the first tip is that you start early. Listen, I'm giving this one to you first because this is what I do. I like to build time in my morning routine to practice my henna technique. Normally, the first thing I do when I get up to start the day is do my hygiene things - get up, brush my teeth, get dressed, get to a place where I'm feeling good about where I am in the day… This is important! I'm mentioning this on purpose. When you take the time to get up, get ready, and feel prepared to take on the day, it makes it much, much it makes for you to move into the tasks that you have on your to-do list. So I get up, I get ready, I make sure that I'm feeling personally prepared to take on the day, and then I take out one of my practice cones from the freezer. I set it on the counter for it to thaw while I'm having breakfast, and then I come and sit down at my desk and I draw. That's when I like to practice henna is first thing in the morning - get it out of the way and then move on with my day.
The second tip is that you might try evening. Listen, I know not all of us are morning people. To be honest, neither am I. But if you are the type of person who prefers to work at night or cif you're the type of person who feels more productive in the evening, then I challenge you to try to set aside time in the evening to practice your henna you can make this you know part of your nightly routine. S you pull out your henna cone as you're starting to get, you know, wound down and ready for bed. You wash your face, you get on your PJs, and by that time your henna cone is thawed. Sit down, practice a little something just to kind of ease and quiet your mind, and then, you use that sort of as a meditation prior to going to bed. This can be very therapeutic. It can be very good even just to help you sleep because you've started to just shut things down in your mind, and getting into that creative space so you can just relax and be…
The third tip is that you can try practicing your henna while you're waiting for your clients. One of the things that I do when I have multiple clients back-to-back or when I know that I have a long work day, I'll take a couple of practice cones with me and in between appointments or prior to that first appointment, depending on just how densely packed my schedule is, I'll sit down and on a napkin or on my practice board I'll doodle - just so that I can get my muscles warmed up. That gives me the opportunity to practice my skill set. I love this one specifically because it does give you the opportunity to get your hands working and get those muscle groups activated, so when you're actually ready to go and work on your client your hands are feeling really engaged and really good prior to going and doing the work.
The fourth way that you might make time is to plan your day around it. If you're anything like me you have a busy lifestyle - I get it. I get it! But a busy lifestyle is not an excuse to not take time to do the thing that's going to help you improve your skill set. So just like how you plan around other things in your day, set aside time within your day that is dedicated to me practicing henna. This doesn't have to be a long time. This can be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes - that's it! But put it on your calendar so you get that reminder, and your day is planned around this block of time where you were going to be focused on building your skills.
The fifth tip that I have is to start the treat this as self-care. You know, some people - when they feel like doing a thing is like a chore - they start to procrastinate and they start to push those things off and just say “I'll do it later,” and then they don't do it at all. I would like to encourage you, if you're one of those people, to reframe the thought of practicing as a type of self-care. This is your time. This is your opportunity to be at peace, in quiet, to focus, to create something with your hands, to be inspired, and to have permission to do whatever it is that you’d like on that board. That is beautiful! It's refreshing and energizing! Treat it as self-care rather than treating it as a must have must do in order to improve.
My sixth tip is: if we just have to, like, make time somewhere - why not over your lunch hour? I'm sure you're not using your whole lunch hour to eat lunch anyway. You're probably on Facebook, or responding to emails, or making phone calls, and that's fine! Bring your practice board with you, bring a practice cone with you, and over your lunch hour practice your designs! Give yourself ten minutes at the end of your lunch break, before you go back to work or before you go back to the kids, or before you go back to whatever task you were doing before, and give yourself the opportunity to just create something from you!
The seventh tip is that I've got for you is that you might actually need to take the time to define exactly what it is you're doing. I have to say that I'm guilty of this. If I sit down and I feel like, “Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm practicing today… I don't have a goal here,” and then I sit there with my board in hand and I just wait - that's when the kids run in or the phone rings or the email comes in or I'm reminded that there's laundry that needs to be done or whatever other thing that could take my time away from practicing. So instead, when I sit down to practice, what I do is: I plan for one thing. “Today I'm going to practice this one thing.” And I don't go crazy, I just do that one thing. I don't even set a time limit - I limit myself only to whatever is in the cone that I picked. So in my freezer, I keep a bag of practice paste, and I reach in there in the morning pull my cone out, and whatever I've got - as much henna is in there - that's how much I'm using and I will practice until that cone is empty. For me it's somewhere between 10 to 15 minutes of practice every day, but know what your goal is. Know what it is that you're going to practice because half of the battle of practicing is knowing what you're about to do. If you don't know, odds are it makes it a lot easier to just bail on the whole idea of practicing to begin with.
Tip number eight is to practice while you’re waiting for dinner! Do this while you're waiting for the water to boil! If you’re making pasta, you know it's going to take 10 minutes for the water to boil - sit down and do henna! While you're waiting for the oven to preheat, or you're waiting for the pasta to boil, or you're waiting for the soup to like, whatever! Whatever it is you're doing in the kitchen, this is a great time. I'll tell you: when I miss my morning practice, this is what I do. While the oven is preheating, I will take my cone out, and I'll sit at the breakfast bar, and I’ll work. So while the oven is preheating, I'll just work there until my cone is finished or until the oven beeps, whatever comes first. So if you're a mom like me, or you're managing a household, and you know the day has caught up with you, but you have these other tasks that you're doing and part of that is going to require you to wait anyway, then take that time and practice.
The ninth tip that I’ve got is for you to do it while you're watching TV. It's so easy to be like, “No, I've got no time in my day! I got no time in my day - there's no way that I can practice! I don't have time.” Except you know that you take time for Netflix, you know that you take time for Hulu, and you know that there's that movie that you've been wanting to watch or that season but you want to catch up on or whatever over on the TV. No shade, no judgment! I am a Netflix fiend! But if you're going to be doing that, that's a very passive activity. Why don't you practice while you're watching? Practice while you’re watching - 10 minutes that's it! When the show starts to slow down - no harm, no foul - you’ve missed nothing, but you still get that practice in.
The tenth thing - and this is just a little bit of tough love - is, listen, we all have time for the things that are priority for us. So if doing henna is a priority to you, if improving your skill-set is a priority to you, if serving your clients best is a priority to you, if correcting and improving and defining and mastering your skill set is important to you, then you will make it a priority to practice. If none of those things matter to you and you're just here for that every so often “I’ll doodle with it a little bit and I'm done,” then maybe practicing isn't a big deal. But if you're serious about your henna business, and if you're serious about growing your skillset, and if you're serious about always wowing your clients, then you need to make time to practice.
So I’ve just given you a bunch of different ideas of how you can find time in your day to practice. What I'd love to hear from you is how you're going to do it? Why don't you leave a comment below and tell me when in the day you commit to giving 10 to 15 minutes of your time to practicing your skill? Leave it in the comments - I want to hear because I want to keep you accountable. With that, go! Grab your board, grab your cone, let's do this! Alright, I'll see you guys next time. Bye!
