‘When I was 24, I was a stylist. I had just graduated from London’s Central Saint Martin’s and I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to open a nail salon? It turned out that my nail salon – WAH Nails – ended up being a global pioneer. We had a hyper-successful brand, we flew all over the world to do pop up nail bars, everywhere from Russia to Japan. It was an amazing time. But I was 24 and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had a baby when I was 26 and I was just running on adrenaline, saying yes to everything. I would like to think I did everything well, but I’m not sure that if I did everything with sincerity and with true heart. I had my first existential crisis when I was 28 and that’s when I learned about Saturn’s Return. I didn’t know the word for it at the time, but it was triggered by a series of panic attacks, but 12 years ago, nobody was using that language around mental health, certainly not within the Black community, and that was the first time that I thought, okay, let me try a new method. I’m going to try isolating the muscle which triggers the crushing pain, causing the panic attack – which was in my back under my shoulder blade. And I’m going to try and meditate on it and relax on it. And then from there I’m going to control how my body is feeling, even if my mind is elsewhere. And it worked.
From there I was like, oh, if that was a method that worked, what other methods can I try? I tried eating whole foods and making a five-year plan and self-empowerment and generally taking back the control – the intention – of my life. These methodologies became my first book, New Methods for Women, which is 49 essays – each an actual life experiment that I tried. The first one is around knowing yourself. The second one is around knowing your body, because I believe that these are the first two things you need to understand. Your body will always be the first to know when things aren’t right. But then I brought in more career-related data, like how to use less words to clarify what you want to say in a presentation. And how to be more direct about what you are asking for. Another experiment was complete silence: in the absence of being able to go on a full retreat, what would it look like to not interact with anyone for a week and just be with your inner thoughts?
“Intuition isn’t intangible; it’s a diagnostic tool honed over millions of years to guide us to the right path.”
“Intuition isn’t intangible; it’s a diagnostic tool honed over millions of years to guide us to the right path.”
One of the most profoundly important essays is about trusting your intuition, because what I realised in my 30s was that I had basically spent my 20s collecting data to develop my intuition. And the way that I define my intuition – and this comes from the very logical part of my brain – is as a diagnostic tool to help me define the direction that I should be going in my life. I don’t think of it as something intangible or esoteric. I think about intuition as a perhaps the most powerful and evolutionarily developed sense that we have, honed over millions of years to guide us to the right path. And if we can just find the courage to shut out the outside noise and really listen to what our core being is telling us – isolating that innate data that’s already inside us – we will find a new plateau of courage and empowerment that we never knew existed.’
Sharmadean Reid’s debut book, New Methods for Women. Photo: Indira Birnie
‘When I was 24, I was a stylist. I had just graduated from London’s Central Saint Martin’s and I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to open a nail salon? It turned out that my nail salon – WAH Nails – ended up being a global pioneer. We had a hyper-successful brand, we flew all over the world to do pop up nail bars, everywhere from Russia to Japan. It was an amazing time. But I was 24 and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had a baby when I was 26 and I was just running on adrenaline, saying yes to everything. I would like to think I did everything well, but I’m not sure that if I did everything with sincerity and with true heart. I had my first existential crisis when I was 28 and that’s when I learned about Saturn’s Return. I didn’t know the word for it at the time, but it was triggered by a series of panic attacks, but 12 years ago, nobody was using that language around mental health, certainly not within the Black community, and that was the first time that I thought, okay, let me try a new method. I’m going to try isolating the muscle which triggers the crushing pain, causing the panic attack – which was in my back under my shoulder blade. And I’m going to try and meditate on it and relax on it. And then from there I’m going to control how my body is feeling, even if my mind is elsewhere. And it worked.
From there I was like, oh, if that was a method that worked, what other methods can I try? I tried eating whole foods and making a five-year plan and self-empowerment and generally taking back the control – the intention – of my life. These methodologies became my first book, New Methods for Women, which is 49 essays – each an actual life experiment that I tried. The first one is around knowing yourself. The second one is around knowing your body, because I believe that these are the first two things you need to understand. Your body will always be the first to know when things aren’t right. But then I brought in more career-related data, like how to use less words to clarify what you want to say in a presentation. And how to be more direct about what you are asking for. Another experiment was complete silence: in the absence of being able to go on a full retreat, what would it look like to not interact with anyone for a week and just be with your inner thoughts?
“Intuition isn’t intangible; it’s a diagnostic tool honed over millions of years to guide us to the right path.”
“Intuition isn’t intangible; it’s a diagnostic tool honed over millions of years to guide us to the right path.”
One of the most profoundly important essays is about trusting your intuition, because what I realised in my 30s was that I had basically spent my 20s collecting data to develop my intuition. And the way that I define my intuition – and this comes from the very logical part of my brain – is as a diagnostic tool to help me define the direction that I should be going in my life. I don’t think of it as something intangible or esoteric. I think about intuition as a perhaps the most powerful and evolutionarily developed sense that we have, honed over millions of years to guide us to the right path. And if we can just find the courage to shut out the outside noise and really listen to what our core being is telling us – isolating that innate data that’s already inside us – we will find a new plateau of courage and empowerment that we never knew existed.’
Sharmadean Reid’s debut book, New Methods for Women. Photo: Indira Birnie
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