222. Confidence and Curly Hair

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 222, Confidence and Curly Hair.

This podcast is for people who know that living an extraordinary life is not easy or comfortable. It’s so much better than that. This is Better Than Happy, and I’m your host, Jody Moore.

What’s happening, 222, isn’t that supposed to mean something when all the numbers line up like that, if you’re superstitious? I don’t know what it means, but I’m excited to be talking with you guys today. Let me give you an update in what’s happening in my life.

At the time I record this, it’s the end of September, so kids are back in school, weather’s getting cold. In fact, it’s supposed to snow this weekend in Spokane. Not sure how I feel about that. Last week, I was in Utah, we did Better Than Happy Live, two days of it. So amazing. I love all of you who were there, thanks for coming.

And then I met with my team for the day. I call them my team, but they’re pretty much all part time contractors, but I just claim them as my own. And we had an amazing day and we have so many fun things that we’re working on for you guys. So stay tuned because we have lots of goodies coming, lots of free classes, lots of kind of fun things that you might want to get in the mail. And all I can say is 2020 is going to be a good year, so stay with me.

Today on the podcast, I want to talk to you about confidence, and I’m going to talk about my curly hair. And here’s why; I get so many requests from you guys to find out about my curly hair because I’ve been wearing it curly for a little while now. And I’ve gotten so many compliments and other curly girls saying, what products do you use, what have you been doing?

And I get it because I was right there just a few months ago trying to figure out how to do it and what products to use and it takes a pretty long time to do that kind of research. So I wanted to do a podcast episode and share my curly girl routine with you all, but I didn’t want to just make it that because it’s not really what I do.

I’m not a fashion blogger or lifestyle person. There’s nothing wrong with being that, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of something else because some of you don’t really care about my curly hair routine. So we’re going to talk about confidence first, and it kind of, for me, fits in well with my whole curly hair journey.

So, let’s talk about confidence. Confidence is amazing. Is there any one of us who would not like to be more confident? I don’t think so. I dare say no, because confidence feels so good.  Confidence is fun, confidence is sort of like what we’re all striving for on a day to day basis. It’s just to feel good about ourselves, just to like ourselves more.

And not only does confidence feel amazing, but it makes you 10 times more effective at anything that you choose to do. So I want you to think about any task, maybe it’s a sort of remedial task like vacuuming. Maybe it’s a more challenging task. Maybe it’s something that you genuinely don’t really like doing most of the time. Maybe it’s something you do like doing. It doesn’t matter.

Any one of those, you add confidence to the mix, you add that you’re feeling good about yourself and you will be more effective and you will enjoy that task more. Okay. So the way I define confidence is that confidence is just embracing all of the parts of yourself.

Now, I think some of us think that confidence is feeling good about ourselves, confidence is telling yourself, “I’m good, I’m strong, I’m positive, I’m righteous.” And believing these positive thoughts and feeling positive about ourselves because we think that we’re doing it right and because we know that we’re enough and because we think that we are good or at least good enough in some way.

And I do think that’s a part of confidence. I think part of it is recognizing that you are good in a lot of ways. But the other part of confidence is recognizing that you’re also sometimes and, in some ways, bad and weak and negative and flawed, and embracing that part as well.

So confidence, again, is embracing all of the parts of yourself, the parts of yourself that you like and appreciate and want to keep and want to grow, and the parts of yourself that you wish were different or that you’re working on or that you recognize are a problem for you or others in some way, and making peace with all of it.

Okay, now, this is true about ourselves in several ways. So I’m going to talk first about the tangible sort of external, what we might call trivial or shallow things that we notice about ourselves. So I’m not saying that the way that you look matters, but I want to acknowledge that most of us do care about the way that we look. We believe that it matters.

So let’s take appearance for just a minute because whatever’s happening in your head with regards to your appearance is probably one of the most obvious things that you’ll be able to notice, and it’s a pattern. If it’s happening about your appearance, it’s probably happening about yourself as a whole.

Okay, so let’s talk about body love for just a minute. Let’s talk about embracing our bodies as they are. That would make you more confident. If you loved your body exactly as it is, you would be more confident.

So here’s where I think I have made a lot of progress in this area is I was thin as a girl growing up and as a teenager and for a lot of my life, I’ve been relatively thin, you might say. And then, as I’ve aged and had babies and my hormones have changed and my eating habits have changed, I’m not as thin as I used to be.

And I tried for a long time to hide that from myself. I’ve tried to suck it in and wear the Spanx and only take pictures at certain angles so that I could look at myself and still think I’m thin. But that’s not what body love is, right?

Body love isn’t trying to get your body to look different than it is and to believe that if it looked different than it was then it would be better in some way. Body love is, you know, “I kind of gained some weight, I’m a little bit chubbier than I used to be.” Maybe it’s even, “I’m fat, I have cellulite,” maybe it’s even, “I’m unhealthy in these ways.” And it’s embracing all of that.

The question is what do you make it mean that your thighs are bigger than they used to be? What do you make it mean that you have this excess skin on your stomach? Do you make it mean? That you’re not acceptable in some way, that you’re weak, that you’re not what you should be, that something is wrong with you?

Here’s what I think is fascinating to think about; in certain cultures, gaining weight is not viewed as a negative thing like it is in our culture. It’s just an observation that they make.

So I don’t know if you’ve ever worked or know people of a culture like this, and they’ll say things like – I remember, one of our IT guys at work said to me one time, “Whoa, you’ve gained a lot of weight.” And I was like, “You’re not supposed to just say that to someone. It’s not very nice.” And he’s like, “Why?” To him, it was no different than saying, “Oh, you died your hair, your hair is lighter than it used to be… Your body is bigger than it used to be, you gained some weight.”

So it’s only offensive to us because of what we make it mean, because we’ve decided that being thin is better than being chubbier. So this is so good to know because this shows you that it is optional, the way you think about your body.

I was thinking about this the other day too when my daughter Macy said that somebody said to her, “You have really long legs for a short person.” And she said, “Mom, that was sort of a backhanded compliment, you have really long legs for a short person.” And I was like, why? She’s like, “Because he called me short.” And I was like, oh yeah, kids think that being short or calling someone short is an insult, whereas I’m like, that’s not an insult, you are shorter than most of your friends, it’s just an observation. It’s not negative. There’s nothing wrong with being short. But in her mind, that’s an insult.

This is the same thing we do with our bodies. So why do we have such a hard time seeing this? Because it makes sense intellectually, but when I tell people, just love your body exactly as it is, no matter how many pounds are on it or no matter what it looks like, they’re like, how do you do that?

The reason it’s so hard is because of the images and messages that we’ve exposed ourselves to and continue to expose ourselves to on the regular train our brains to believe that bodies should look a certain way and that if they don’t then something is wrong. So you need to pay attention to the images and messages that you’re putting in your head. They are teaching you what you like.

I love to think about this, like, people teach me what I like, people that create magazines and have really pretty Instagram pages, they tell me what my kitchen should look like and what my clothes should look like and what my hair should look like and what my body should look like, and I believe them. This is interesting, right?

So who do you want to follow on Instagram? There’s this whole world on Instagram of what are known is social media influencers, which means a lot of people follow them and then they influence our decisions. They influence what we think and believe, and therefore they’re influencing how we feel.

So just be selective and intentional about who you’re going to follow. Here are some of the people that I follow because I love the messages they put out. I love the reality of what they show, and they help keep my head in the right space of what is normal and good.

One person I follow is Ashley Rose Reeves, and we will link to all these people in the show notes, but her Instagram handle is @ashleyrosereeves. And she teaches body image. And she has a beautiful body and she shows pictures of her body at all different weights.

So she has a beautiful body, but she has, most of her life, has not been supermodel skinny type body. But she’s so good at embracing her body and she dresses her body well and she owns her body, no matter what size it is. And so when I see examples of that, I think, that’s what it looks like to love yourself with some cellulite on your body. It’s beautiful.

Another account that I love is Kortni Jeane Swimwear. Again, we’ll link this in the show notes, but they sell swimsuits. And what I love about this company is that all of their images show girls with all different body sizes and shapes. And they don’t do tons of editing. It’s very real pictures of real women who look adorable in all of these swimsuits. And I own probably four of their swimsuits because I’m like, that girl looks so good in that suit and my body looks like hers.

When I see a supermodel in a swimsuit I’m like, of course she looks good in that, I would not look like that in that suit. So, Kortni Jean Swimwear, I would highly recommend their Instagram and their swimwear.

And then the third account that I love is Alison Faulkner of The Alison show. So her account that I love – she has several – is just called The Alison Show. She does focus on body image a little bit, but mostly what I love about Alison is that she really just shows the whole continuum. So she has lots of pretty pictures of her with awesome makeup and fancy clothes and beautiful hair. But she also shows images and videos of herself on the days when she didn’t put any makeup on and she didn’t get ready to the same extent. And you see her kids looking adorable and her kids looking just how everyday kids look when they pick out their own clothes and they’re making a mess.

So I love following accounts like this that show the reality because they keep my brain trained in the right way as to what is real. Be conscious about the info you’re feeding your brain because it is shaping your perception.

Now, let’s talk about the other parts of you, not necessarily your physical appearance, but let’s talk about your strengths and your weaknesses. Do you own them is the question I have for you. Do you own all the parts of you? Do you own your strengths, first of all, or do you tell yourself that you shouldn’t brag or that maybe you’re not as good at that as you think you are, or maybe if you own that you’re good at it, somebody else is going to think you’re not and then you’re going to feel stupid?

Do you acknowledge yourself? Are you proud of yourself? Are you grateful to yourself for the things that you do? Or are you negative and judgmental and critical? Do you feel like, no matter what you do and no matter how good you are at something, it’s never enough?

Or do you just neglect yourself and not even pay attention to yourself at all? Are you more concerned about everyone else’s opinion of you than you are of your own opinion of you? Or do you just neglect you? Own your strengths, my friend.

This doesn’t mean that you think that you’re better than anyone else. It just means that you own, like, I’m really good at that. And you tell yourself, good job, me, thanks for showing up in that way. I love what you did there.

And how about your weaknesses? What do you make them mean? Are you ashamed of them? Here’s how you know; if you feel like you always have to hide them and you have this secret fear that people will find out about them, then you’re filled with shame about them and you’re making them mean that something’s wrong with you when the truth is, every one of us has weaknesses, as we are supposed to.

So you’re not embracing all the parts of you. Can you embrace, “Oh yeah I’m terrible at that.” Do you own them and sort of make friends with them? This is how I like to think about my weaknesses. Like, I know they’re there and I’ve just made peace with them. I’ve made friends with them because making friends with them is the best way, you guys, to get leverage over them. It truly is.

So I’m not good at this, and that’s okay. I can be sort of judgmental sometimes, and that’s okay. I dropped the ball today, and I love me anyway.

Now, owning them does not mean that you’re justifying them or making excuses for them, which is what people think I’m saying when I say to own them. That’s not what I’m saying. That’s actually the opposite. Making excuses and justifying is like saying, see, I’m not doing anything wrong because – and then we have our justification. And then we fuel the problem and we never solve for it.

Owning them is the opposite. Owning them is, I did that wrong, or that was not me at my best, that was not who I want to be, now what? Because I am an amazing person. I am a person who is not good at this thing and I’m going to watch it now. I’m going to understand it. I’m going to observe myself with it. I’m going to see where it’s coming from and I’m going to be patient with myself and kind to myself as I work to loosen up this part of me. That is owning all of you, you guys, that is what confidence is.

So many of the things that you’re rejecting about you are truly neutral. And others of them are things that maybe you don’t want to view as neutral. Maybe you want to keep the thought that yelling at your kids is not your best mothering. But if you just yelled at them, then the question is, now what are we going to think? What are we going to make it mean?

Are we going to make it mean that you’re a human being and that this is figureoutable and you probably had a good reason and you did your best and let’s keep up-leveling what our best is? Or are you going to berate yourself and yell at you so that now we’ve doubled up on the yelling at people?

Because the same reasons you don’t want to yell at your kids are the reasons not to yell at yourself, because of the effects that it can have, the damage that it can do. The same reasons you think that you shouldn’t be doing that to your kids are reasons I want to argue you shouldn’t be doing that to you. And here’s the thing, my friends; if you can stop yelling at you, you can stop getting mad at you and you can have more patience with you, then doing all of those things for your kids will be the easy part. Just love all of you. I give you permission today. Please take me up on it.

Now, here’s the part where I’m going to share my curly hair secrets. Are you ready? So I’ve got to begin by telling you a little bit of my story. So I’ve had naturally curly hair my entire life. And other than a few years maybe in elementary school due to hormonal things – but as a young girl, I had very curly hair, and then again by junior high when I started going through puberty, very curly hair again, and pretty much ever since.

And when I was little, I sort of wore it in this awkward way, as you do when you’re little, and I always just wished my hair looked like the other girls’ at school. I was telling someone this the other day because I grew up in the 80s and 90s, when perming your hair was a popular thing. But people would perm their hair and then the perm would start to grow out.

And so it was always straight on the top and then curly on the bottom. And so I remember trying to pull my curly hair into the tightest ponytail I could to make it straight on the top, straight at the roots and then curly at the bottom, because that’s what it was supposed to look like. That’s what everybody else’s hair looked like.

Of course, it didn’t really work very well, but that was what I tried to do. I really fought it. And then, as I got older and I discovered curling irons and heating products, I learned to basically straighten, or at least relax my curl or pull out the natural curl in the name of artificial curl with a curling iron and pretty much haven’t turned back since until just recently.

Now, here’s what I told myself. So, I have two daughters who have very curly hair. And people would say, where did your girls get their curly hair from? And I’d say, well, from me. But they were like, what, because I was so straightening and processing my hair that you couldn’t really tell that it was curly.

Now, my husband has some natural curl too. So they got some of it from him. But my mom has beautiful curls and lots of curl on my side of the family. So what I told people was, yeah, I have natural curl, but it’s not pretty. It’s not pretty like my daughters’. It’s not even. It’s really curly in some places and then just really frizzy and damaged in others.

And it’s not nice curl like some people have. So all of you with curl in your hair, listen to me, I know you think that that’s just true. You think that your hair, that your curl, is just not pretty curl. And I’m telling you that’s not true, you just haven’t known how to take care of it as I didn’t, okay.

So if you’re like, well, the top and the front aren’t as curly as the back, then guess what, welcome, that’s true for every single one of us because the top and front of your hair gets the most wind and weather and attention from you and processing, and so it’s the most damaged. But that’s okay, stay with me. I’m going to teach you how to bring back your curls.

So that was my story. And then last year, I want to say, I kind of got to a low point with the condition of my hair. And by the way, I have the most amazing stylist ever, and so she was making my hair look good. But it was a struggle because it was damaged and breaking and really we were having a hard time getting the top layers to grow out.

At one point, she was like, I don’t know what’s going on with your hair but it shouldn’t be this broken. And I knew, it’s because I’m over-processing it. I’m straightening it every day and bleaching it and I was just way too hard on it.

And so I finally decided, listen, I just want my hair to be a little bit healthier. I want to be able to grow it a little bit longer. I’ve got to stop beating it up like I have been. And that’s when I thought, maybe I should try wearing it curly. And I was like, what, I can never do that. I don’t like it curly. I told myself all of that, right? But I just decided to dive in and start exploring the curly girl hair world.

I was really inspired by other people’s stories. One of the people who inspired me the most, go look up her Instagram account, is Rumer Willis. She’s the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. And she also has natural curl that she’d been straightening her whole life and decided to own her curls. And they’re gorgeous and look so good on her.

And there are many other people with similar stories who talk about owning their curls. So I started exposing myself to that. Notice how I’m starting to retrain my brain by the way, in the process of this. I then discovered Loraine Massey. So, some of you probably know about Loraine Massey, but she is the author of a book I read called Curly Girl, the Handbook, which I highly recommend. Go get it if you have curly hair.

This book, first of all, teaches you the process. I’m going to give you the short version, but if you want the detailed version, go get the book. But also, she has stories throughout the book of women embracing their curls and pictures of their amazing curly hair. So again, the training of your brain is an important part.

Now, here’s what I’ve loved about this journey. I love the evolution that I’ve seen in myself. This is about way more than just hair. Hair is trivial and not important. And yet, we’re very emotionally tied to our hair.

So going through this process of watching myself and watching my thoughts about my hair and watching my hair change at the same time has been so much fun. And it’s helped me to embrace the parts of me. Like, I’m a curly girl. I got some curly hair. Let’s embrace it.

What else about me do I want to embrace? Now, I’m not embracing all the parts of me. I still get fake eyelashes, I still put on makeup. I still don’t always say exactly what I want to say at any given time. I hold it back. And I’m not saying that you have to do that, but is there an opportunity to embrace some of you in some way that could serve you?

So like I said, get the book because it will teach you about curl type and porosity and all of the other details. There’s also a lot of people that have made YouTube videos if you look up curly girl or curly girl method, you’ll find Loraine Massey has videos on there that go with the book and just lots of people helping.

You’re going to have to be willing to experiment too because there is no one right way. Everybody’s hair is slightly different and the products that your hair responds to and the methods are going to be different, but I am going to tell you all the products and exactly what my process is. Be patient with is because as you apply what I’m going to teach you here, your curls start to regain their life.

They’re like a flower garden that starts blooming again if you’re going to follow what I’m going to give you here, but it does take a little bit of time for that to happen.

So, the first thing that you’ve got to know is you need to change up the hair products, most likely, that you’re using because curly hair needs a lot of moisture. And a lot of the products that we use in our hair strip away the moisture, especially the shampoo that we use strips way too much moisture out of curly hair. And so even, I’m going to tell you again what I use, but even the products that you use, the styling products, need to be the right kind of products so that you don’t have to use harsh shampoos in order to prevent the buildup of those products on your hair.

So the general rule is that you don’t want your hair care products to have silicone, sulphate, or alcohol. This includes in your shampoos, in your conditioners, in your gels or mouse or creams or whatever you like to put in your hair. Read the labels because I was really surprised. Some products that I thought for sure wouldn’t have any of those things, that are even designed for curly hair, when you read the labels, actually have some of those really harmful chemical products in them.

So be careful because silicone is one of the main ones I’ve found is in a lot of things, and it’s not always called silicone. It might be called something else with cone on the end, dimethicone or some other version of cone is probably silicone. So I always, if I wasn’t sure, would just go Google it and sure enough that was always a form of silicone. So cutting out silicone, sulphate, and alcohol is a really important first step. Frizz is just curl with not enough moisture.

So then what do we use? Alright, so first of all, if you’re going to shampoo your hair – and I’ll talk to you about why you might not want to, but I do still shampoo my hair. So there are two different shampoo products that I recommend. The first one is by a company called Monat.

This is a product that is sold in a direct sales type organization and I want to recommend that you go to my girl Christiana Krogh. Go to her Instagram account.  I’m going to link to it here in the show notes. And she will hook you up with the right Monat hair products because Monat, I have been really happy with them. They are free of all those toxic chemicals that I’m trying to avoid, and she’ll talk to you about what are your goals with your hair, what are the problems, what are you trying to achieve, and then she even put the whole order together for me. All I had to was click and order it. And Christiana, who I love, was one of my Laurels a few years ago in California, so I really want to support her.

If you want to try Monat, go check her out. I love the shampoo and I also love – DevaCurl makes a shampoo that’s called No Poo because it doesn’t have the poo part in it. DevaCurl’s entire product line was created by Loraine Massey, who is the author of the Curly Girl book. So you know anything in the DevaCurl line is going to be safe for your curly hair. And they have a shampoo that I like.

Now, here’s the thing about shampoos that don’t have silicone in them is that they don’t suds up. So the first time you wash your hair, you’re going to think, is this even working? Because for some reason, we associate suds and bubbles with clean. But I promise you, it’s still doing the job because the only reason to wash your hair, if you have curly hair and you’re using the right products in them, is to clean your scalp.

Really, shampooing is about scalp care and getting the grease off of your scalp and the dirt and grime that gets in there. Your hair products will rinse out with just water. Or you can use a little bit of a conditioner.

So some curly girls don’t use shampoo at all. They just use their conditioner and they kind of rub or scrub their scalp and get the scalp clean and condition the hair and that’s enough. So it’s up to you if you want to use a shampoo or not. For sure, you’re going to want to use a conditioner.

So again, Monat makes great conditioners that are safe to use. I use their conditioner, but I alternate it also with a conditioner also by Oribe. Oribe conditioner is a little bit more expensive, but I really like it. It’s a really tick cream conditioner. The one I use the Gold Lust Repair and Restore conditioner, and I alternate, like I said, that with the Monat.

If you want to also use a deep conditioner on occasion, that’s optional, it’s up to you. I haven’t honestly done that very consistently, but if you feel like your curls are really damaged, you might want to consider that. And then I really only wash my hair every four to six days.

So again, washing could be with the shampoo or it could be just with a conditioner where you’re in the shower getting it completely wet, scrubbing your scalp really well, and cleaning the hair. You don’t need to do it more often. Your hair needs those natural oils.

Now, let me tell you about the process on those days when I have a wash day. So, I get in the shower and wash with my shampoo, and then I put the conditioner in. I use a lot of conditioner. And you guys know, my hair is actually pretty short. So for those of you with long hair, you’re going to be using even more. But I fill up the palm of my hand with quite a bit of conditioner and then I sort of flip my hair over my head and I clump that conditioner into my hair.

So in other words, I rub it all in my head, but them I’m like squishing my hair up towards my scalp and squeezing it in my palm. So you should be able to hear like a squishing sound in the palm of your hand as you’re doing this. And if you have enough conditioner, you’ll know because you’ll hear it squish in the palms of your hands as you squeeze it.

I squish it up like that all over my head because I want to make sure that every hair on my head is getting really absorbed with conditioner as much as possible. And I want to sort of retrain my curls to spring back up. So I’ll do this for as long as I can in the shower. I’ll keep my head leaned over, or at least to the side, and squish the curls up with the conditioner in them.

This has been a method that I found really helps my curls a lot. And again, if you go to YouTube and you look for hair clumping, you can see people doing this in videos.

Then, when it’s time to rinse the conditioner out, I might leave it in for a little bit, shave my legs, whatever else I need to do in the shower, clean my body. I don’t rinse all of it out. I rinse a good portion of it out, but I leave even a little bit of conditioner in the hair.

The next thing I do, while still in the shower, is I do that same clumping motion with gel. Now, I’ve got to talk to you guys about gel for a minute. I used to think, I don’t like gel because I don’t want my hair to be crunchy. But that’s because I didn’t know how to use gel the right way. So I’m going to teach you, but stay with me.

The gel that like the most is called Curly Magic, and again, I will link to it.  You can get it on Amazon. The company that makes it is called Uncle Funky’s Daughter. How awesome is that? And it’s Curly Magic and I put lots of gel in my hair, again, when I’m still in the shower and my hair is soaking wet. I clump it in by squeezing it into my hair and squeezing my curls all the way up to the roots of my hair, all over my head, just like I did with the conditioner.

Then, when I get out of the shower, I wrap my body in a towel, a regular towel, but I do not put a terry cloth towel on my hair ever. I use a microfiber towel only because a terry cloth towel is not good for your hair. It pulls at the hair and it just does not help curly hair anyway.

So I use a small microfiber towel. You can find microfiber in a lot of places. The one that I use was, again, made by DevaCurl specifically for curly hair. I’ll link to that one here. But get a microfiber towel.

The other thing you can use that works just as well, if you don’t have a microfiber towel, is just a T-shirt. And I’ve done that before, if I’m traveling and I didn’t remember my microfiber towel, I’ll just use a T-shirt. But you want to dry your hair with that.

And as I’m drying my hair, I’m sort of using the towel to squish my hair up again and so a good portion of that gel, probably, is coming out as I dry my hair onto the towel. But that’s okay because now I have the gel really evenly distributed in all of my hair.

Sometimes I’ll even wrap the towel and keep it on my head while I get dressed for a little bit and then squish and dry everything out as much as I can, absorb as much of the water as I can, with that microfiber towel.

The next part is I don’t comb my hair ever. My hair is short enough that it won’t get tangled, but even if your hair is long, you can pull the tangles out with your fingers while you have it conditioned because I don’t want to separate the curls. I want to keep them clumped together. And I try to let my curls fall into what is the most natural part for them, not to force it into any certain shape or part.

After I do this, I will sometimes add, on top of the gel, a little bit of curl cream. So there’s a lot of different curl creams out there, so you can experiment. Again, make sure they don’t have sulphate, alcohol, or silicone in them. But the curl cream I use is also made by the same company that makes the gel and it’s called Extra Butter, and I will link to that.

I put a little bit of that in now on top of the gel, and then I just sort of try to clump my curls up and arrange them in a way that I like. And then here’s the key; don’t touch your hair after this. You’ve got to let your hair dry with that gel in there because the way gel works, you guys, is it’s creating what we call a gel-cast. So that is designed to hold your curls sort of clumped together and to keep them curled nicely. While they dry, they sit in that gel cast. That is why your hair sort of feels crunchy once it’s dry, is because it’s that cast holding your curls together.

Now, Curly Girl really recommends that you don’t use a hairdryer. I try to air dry my hair as much as possible, but if you do need to blow dry it a little bit, you’ve got to make sure you have a good diffuser on there. So I do diffuse a little bit because it takes all day otherwise for my hair to dry, especially in the winter. But get a good hairdryer. The more you pay for your hairdryer, the better it probably is for your hair.

I just purchased the Dyson hairdryer, which is a very expensive hairdryer. And you don’t have to have that. You can just get a hairdryer with a diffuser. But if you can afford it or you’re looking to ask for a nice Christmas gift, get the Dyson, it is amazing.

Okay, so I’ll diffuse a little bit, air dry as much as possible. Once my hair is completely dry, or at least I should say mostly dry, and I’m ready to move on, then it’s all crispy, right, then you go and you crunch your hair up and you break that gel cast out.

So again, through every hair, I’m squeezing it in my hand or even rubbing it together with both hands without messing it up too much. I’m crunching out the gel and now you’re left with these big soft gorgeous curls. It’s so fun.

I never knew that’s how gel was supposed to be used.  You’ve got to crunch out that gel cast and it just falls away and leaves your curls looking amazing.

Now, the last product that I put in my hair – it’s one of my most favorites that I’ve been using for years, is called Blue Magic. It’s a coconut oil conditioner. I just put a little bit of it on my fingertips and I sort of smooth down my hair. It just adds a little bit of shine and moisture to my hair. It’s like $4 for a huge tub off it that will last you two or three years. You get it at the grocery store. You can also get it on Amazon. I will link to it.

I don’t know if it’s bad for me, but it doesn’t have any of those products in it that I was told not to use, so I still use it and I love it. It just kind of adds a little shine. It sort of tames your fly-aways and it sort of acts as a pomade.

Okay, so that’s the general process. Now, that’s a lot, right? It actually goes fast. I just wanted to give you all the detail.  But here are the few other things that you need to know.

I don’t do that every day. I do that once or twice a week. I also sleep on a silky pillowcase. That made a huge difference. Before I started doing that, I would wake up in the morning and my curly short hair was, like, so crazy. I had to get it completely wet and start over. But since I started sleeping on a silky pillowcase, it’s not so bad.

I wake up in the morning and I can just do a morning refresh. So what I do is I have a spray bottle that is what they call a Flairosol. You can get it on Amazon. It’s like $10. And it’s almost like aerosol the way it sprays water out in a really fine mist, except there are no chemicals, it’s just water.

So I love that spray bottle. So does everyone in my family. They think it’s super fun. But I highly recommend that. And I just sort of mist my hair with that and my curls come back to life.

If it’s feeling dry, I might put a little bit of leave-in conditioner on top of that or a little bit of a curl cream, but that’s pretty much all I do in the morning when I need to refresh. Maybe I’ll add a little bit of Blue magic if I need that.

Now, here’s the other thing that I do on occasion, which is against the Curly Girl rules, but I’ve decided that I’m 90% following Curly Girl and then there’s always that 10% where I do whatever I want. Like I might occasionally straighten my hair if I want to.

But this definitely falls in that category, where I get my curling iron and I curl just like three to five pieces. There’s always just a few pieces that are damaged enough that they’re not curling up very well. But I’m not putting a lot of heat. Like I said, it’s three to five pieces that I sort of freshen up and then I leave the rest. What are you going to do? That’s what I do.

The other things I do is I take a vitamin. So I was taking Biotin for a long time. I’m now taking this vitamin called Pure Encapsulations for hair skin and nails. I’ll link to it in the show notes. I’m not a doctor, so check with somebody if you’re not sure about taking that, but I take a vitamin that is supposed to promote hair growth, which I do feel like helps.

And then I look at pictures of girls with cute curly hair and I just decide to like my hair right now. I used to think, once it gets longer, then I’m going to love it. But that’s not true. I’m not going to be like, it’s an inch longer, now I love it. Or it’s not going to be, hate it at this length, hate it next month, hate it the month after, hate it for eight months and then suddenly love it. That’s not how it works, right?

I was like, I’ve got to love it right now. And as I’ve learned to love it, I’ve learned to take care of it better and I’ve learned how to do it the way I like. So there you go, that’s my Curly Girl story. If you want to see my curly hair right now, we’re going to use a photo of it for the show notes, for the artwork for this episode.

So you’ve got to go to my website. The podcasts on my website have unique artwork for each episode. If you’re just on a podcast app or something, it’s going to have the same artwork every week. So go to jodymoor.com/podcast and you can see the picture of my curls right now.

Thanks for joining me today, you guys. All my curly girls, send me your photos. Join me on this journey.  It’s super fun, you guys. Once you get the hang of it, it’s so much easier. Alright, I love you so much and I’ll see you next week. Take care.

If you have a question about something you’ve heard me talk about on this podcast or anything else going on in your life, I want to invite you to a free public call, Ask Jody Anything. I will teach you the main coaching tool I use with all of my clients and the way to solve any problem in your life, and we will plug in real life examples.

Come to the call and ask me a question anonymously or just listen in. Go to jodymoore.com/askjody and register before you miss it. I’ll see you there.