We've all had them, right? Those days where your hair doesn't do what you want it to do, or you excitedly prepare it for a style overnight and in the morning it's a disappointing mess. I'm talking bad hair days - and I've had loads since I've been on my journey. But as I get deeper into my journey, my mentality continues to change and my confidence continues to grow, even when I don't feel I'm looking my best.

Let me digress. Before I began properly taking care of my hair, I would straighten it pretty much daily. Yes, daily! And if I was going out in the evening, I'd often run the flat iron over it again. I couldn't imagine leaving the house without straightening my hair or being seen in public with hair that didn't look sleek and perfectly in place.

Since I've been on my journey I've slowly been cutting out the heat. I've cut down to flat ironing once a week on washdays, and I've pledged to ban blowdrying in my quest to achieve armpit length by December 2016. But that's not good enough if I want maximum length retention, so I've been experimenting with heatless styles on air-dried hair - cutting out heat completely (I'll be writing a post about that soon).

Looking back on my previous heat habits, I cringe in horror at my daily flat ironing and weekly blowdrying.  But my straighteners were my armour - they protected me from 'bad hair days'.

For the last few months I've been wearing my heatless pin-curl out style. Because I install the pin-curls at night, I can never be sure how they will turn out until I take them out in the morning. Sometimes they come out great, other times they don't. In the beginning, that was a scary thought but as time goes by, I've learned to just work with what I've got and accept it in the name of healthy hair!

I live in London and it's notorious for its bad weather. As soon as I step outside, my curls become limp and lifeless because of the rain or wind, or my straight hair becomes frizzy. A few years ago I would have wanted to run and hide because a bad hair day meant a bad day.

But the more I just get on with things and the less precious I am about my hair, the more confident I become - even on days when my hair isn't behaving. I've realised that the only person my misbehaving hair bothers is me. Most people don't even know I'm having an off day!

I've always known that hair should not define how we feel about ourselves. But only now am I really believing it for myself. Hair should not be the make or break of my confidence. I've started to embrace the 'bad hair days'. I've learned that there is no excuse to let my hair bring me down, and the more I face the world while not feeling my best, the more confident I become.