When did it become okay to be just okay?

Hello my sparkly friends!!! 

  I just found this post i had written a few years ago on my makeup artist website.  I thought it would fit nicely into Sparkle Mining, so here it is... bear in mind it was written to makeup artists and artists in training, but i think it applies to us all!

It is REALLY LONG, but worth it I think.

I am adding some pink pictures for Pink Saturday!

Take the word "Okay" completely out of your vocabulary 

unless you are enthusiastically responding to someone's request!

When did it become "okay" to just be ok?  We think of the word Okay as being positive, but if you take a long hard look at it, it really means "Bare minimum".  If you just finished a job, would you feel complimented if the photographer described your work as "Okay"?  

Would you feel 

great if you overheard your man describing your 

relationship as "Okay"?  

If you fall down the stairs and someone runs up to ask you if you are "Okay" he really means is it really serious- should I call an ambulance?"  I think you may be starting to get the picture.

So why is it that we let ourselves do an "Okay" job when we don't think we are being paid enough or that the job might give us something of value in the future?  Think about it dear ones.

 We are all aware of how broken our economy is right now.  Politically, everyone seems to have a group at which to point the finger of blame. 

  It dawned on me the other day that the state of our economy is the fault of nobody but ourselves! 

 We have become lazy, 

spoiled children full of expectations and self 

importance but not wanting to put any effort in!

   We live in a society that has been blessed with the freedom to create anything we desire.  As both mom and dad are now in the workplace, the need for conveniences to help us multi task resulted in a lot of really wonderful things- like the IPhone with an "App" for anything, the ability to rent newly released movies from your couch instead of going to the video store, and someone who will cut your lawn once a week so you can come home to a beautifully manicured yard without having to force your kid to do it.

My realization of all of this came simply from looking in my local "Pennysaver" for a landscaper to do a spring cleanup aka "Rake all the leaves in our big back yard that my husband has promised to do since last November but never got around to doing."

One ad in particular caught my eye:  

"Bla Bla Bla Landscaping...We Show Up!"

"WHAT???  Are you kidding me?"  I thought to myself.  "No wonder this economy is where it is!"

Think about it-  

when did it become ok to list 

"Showing Up"

  as a job skill and reason for me to hire 

someone?? 

If I hire this guy, should I be happy to pay him for just pulling up to my curb? Can you imagine making a business card that says

 "Tobi Britton Makeup Artist... I Show Up!"

Or

 "Take a class with Tobi- she will show up."

Are you laughing or crying yet?

The last time I checked, "showing up" was the only way you could do a job. 

I mean, it goes without saying that if you are not there, you can't work!   Thinking a bit more on this topic, 

I began to wonder when as a society did we decide

 it is ok that such little effort was alright? 

  Just think- there will be plenty of people that will actually CALL this 
 misguided man because they probably had other landscapers not show up. 

  I will bet anything that those landscapers that had a problem showing up for jobs
 will have 
 NO PROBLEM showing up on the unemployment line!

Is this really the message we want to send to our 

kids as well as to ourselves?  

I know that landscaping has nothing to do with makeup, but the same type of apathy and laziness shows up in our industry as well, and many of us are guilty of it on some level or another!  I have seen a lot of it in aspiring makeup artists who expect to take a class and instantly become a makeup artist without investing any time or work.  I have called past students to give them an opportunity to observe a real shoot and the first question is "How much will I get paid"! 
 You KNOW I never called them again!

I have seen fledgling makeup artists with a little experience under their belt actually think to themselves while assisting an established makeup artist 
"This isn't so hard, I could do this easy, no problem- she's not so great".

What they fail to understand is that the reason the shoot runs so smoothly and seems effortless, is that the established artist has paid his/her dues by working on anything and everything they could get their hands on and built up the experience to quickly know how to handle any situation.  

So who's fault is this lazy way of thinking?

It is ours- by trying to make it easy for our kids, we have made it harder by not teaching them that anything worth having is worth working for.  

If you are "One of those kids now grown" then the best thing you can do for 
yourself is to stop taking stuff for granted and 

Instead if asking "What am I getting"  ask "What can I do" "What can I contribute- what can I give?"

What that means you have to start viewing opportunities that come your way as gifts to make you a better artist or person.

You have to take a brutally honest look at where and how you have been lazy, or expected something you didn't deserve because you didn't make an honest effort to obtain it.

We as a nation have to retrain ourselves to stop expecting someone to "fix it " for us and start fixing things ourselves.  That is how we can make things right again.

So my dear artist, let's start to retrain ourselves.  

SET BIG GOALS for yourself, and learn to enjoy the work needed to obtain those goals.  

You will soon find that in this economy, which by the way I believe is part of a big plan, that it is no longer Okay to be just OK.

Let's stop looking for the easy way, the silver bullet.

BECOME the Silver Bullet~

In Light and Love,

Tobi Britton