Glow-up Tips That Actually Work From Your Favourite Beauty Girly (me)

you must have a hobby outside of work, school, eating, sleeping, and social media. create, create, create, move your body, enjoy yourself and allow yourself to escape.

Little things you can do to upgrade your life

Sit up straight

Walk confidently

Speak slowly and don’t use slang, incorporate new vocabulary.

Think before you speak. Is that TMI? Is that negative? Words are powerful, use them wisely

When someone gives you a compliment, always accept it with a “thank you” even if you disagree

Compliment strangers

Drink a cup of warm water when you wake. It has the same effect as lemon water but it’s better for your teeth

Aim to drink 2L of water a day.

If you drink 30 min before your meal you will eat less. Don’t drink any liquids while you eat or until 30 min after your meal, it’s better for your digestion

Want a flat stomach? Don’t eat anything 4 hours before bed and only eat the size of your fist in carbs per day

Practice mindfulness, notice when your mind wanders and bring your attention back to the present

Meditate 5 min every morning or in bed at night

Charge your phone in the living room at night so you’re not tempted to look at it before bed or first thing in the morning. Plus, you’ll have to get up to turn the alarm off so you won’t snooze

Make your bed every morning

Clutter is mentally toxic, keep only what you need and keep it tidy

Aim to only clean your home for 5 minutes a day. You’ll probably end up doing more. This trick works for anything you don’t want to do

When shopping, don’t buy things the same day. If you still want them after a few days, go back

Always do your best. Always

Forget motivation. Count from 5 to 1 if you need to do something you don’t want to. It tricks your brain. You can also focus on how you’ll feel once you’ve completed the task instead of thinking of the task itself.

Buy fresh flowers for your home.

Pamper yourself. You can do it yourself at home

Get massages. You can get Groupons

Always have manicured nails and toes. Sèche Vite top coat is a must!

Buy nice pyjamas and lounge wear. Look good for yourself.

Listen to classical music when you study and when you clean your home

Listen to music when you drive. While others will be road raging, you’ll be too busy vibing to notice

Use the 50/30/20 rule for your finances. 50% on living expenses, 30% on entertainment and shopping and 20% in savings

Take advantage of banks offering money to open new accounts

Have an emergency fund: 3-6 months worth of living expenses in a high interest savings account

Celebrate every time you get money whether it’s in interest, pay checks or even money you find on the floor. You can just do a little dance. You’ll attract more wealth.

Leave money around your house. It will be a reminder that money is abundant.

Watch only 1h of TV a day and no reality TV

Don’t read gossip magazines/blogs.

Get a library card and read at least one book a month.

Cut out toxic people. If you can’t, try not to be around them as much

Socialize with loved ones a bit everyday even if it’s just a phone call. It’s good for morale

Treat everyone with respect. If someone disrespects you, know that it’s got nothing to do with you and everything to do with them and don’t get caught up in it, keep your composure, you’re better than that

Take up a hobby or two, you’ll be a more interesting, well-rounded person

Listen to podcasts

Try only changing one thing at a time. 3 months of consistency doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods, but it’s the foundation. Don’t be too hard on yourself when you stray. Habits you’ve had for 20-30-40 years will not be easy to change. Baby steps ;)

The Conditions of Change

When adults seek change, they often focus on the intended result while hurrying through the practice. However, growth requires a bit more than 'just trying something out'. Here are some tips to help bring change upon your life, good luck!

Consistency

Real change, especially as an adult, requires many, many repetitions of a behavior or movement or position. 'Trying hard' is usually counterproductive as it tenses the muscles and the emotions. It is necessary to let the exercise or method work without undue ego participation over time. The practice has to become, for a time, 'just what one does.'

Willingness

The practices that change long standing blocks will usually seem, when presented to an adult learner, to be too subtle, too corny, not relevant, and mostly downright wrong. One must be willing to really try something different if one is at the point where one's own ideas have failed. Of course, discernment cannot be completely disposed of, but if a learner wants what another person has, they must be willing to do what that person did, however unnecessary or stupid it seems.

Sustainability

So often adult learners hurl themselves into an activity, and neglect other aspects of their lives. Soon they end up dropping the practice and rarely get back to it. A good practice must be one that can be 'what one does' for a good while. Immersion approaches exist, for example a 30 day retreat, but then carryover to one's regular life becomes the issue.

First Things First (Urgent Things Second)

In our over-busy, over-booked lives, if we wait for a 'free moment' to practice something, it invariably never arrives. To have consistency with a new practice it is necessary to make it a priority and see that it gets done first, leaving less important things, even if more urgent, to 'scroll off the screen'

The Plateau is Where the Work Starts

All people have latent abilities that come online easily and quickly when they start a practice (often called newbie or 'noob' gains). But once the latent abilities are developed and the participant is working to develop brand new capacities, the going is much much slower. This is where the large majority quit, discouraged, but this is where the work really is beginning.

Anticipate Anxiety

Real change even in small amounts will cause anxiety, which can be insidious and hard to attribute to the new practice. In an uncanny way, impulses to start something incompatible with the new practice, or new worries, confusion, or minor injuries will threaten to derail the change process. Barring gross demonstrable harm, the need is to 'stay the course!'

Don't Look to Validation or Approval

If another person is the reason to do something, in a moment they can become the reason not to. When a practice is undertaken to please someone (and yes this can be unconscious or semi-conscious) there are two big barriers: 1) effort gets substituted for the fruits of the practice, and the practice gets or stays sloppy because even sloppy practice shows effort, and 2) the instinct for autonomy (buried itself in some measure in the unconscious) will cause resistance

Frequent self-measurement is unhelpful

When one has undergone real change others will point it out, don't worry. Trying to get one's inner judge to validate oneself takes attention off the practice, apart from any concern that self-measurement will not be accurate.

The Placebo Effect is Not the Effect

Whenever one takes on a new promising practice there is going to be an immediate sense of elation. There is nothing wrong with enjoying this, but know that 1) it wears out in two to six weeks, 2) the real beneficial effect of the practice will be much more subtle at first then this elation, and take months or years to manifest. Many believe that when the elation stops, it means the practice has stopped working.

Understand the Difference Between Almost Nothing Happening and Actually Nothing Happening

When a ten-year-old wakes up in the morning no one notices a change in size from the night before, but actually there is, and over the course of years, that becomes very apparent. Real growth is like that, in that, almost nothing is happening. But with any practice, participants may worry that they are following a dead end. While some discernment and critical thinking may be needed in selecting a practice, once started attention should be focused on the actually practice, with some faith that results will come.

Work With Others

When working alone, long-standing defensive patterns can undermine the intended practice or even turn it into its opposite. Not that any growth practice is like an Olympic sport calling for perfect performance--one is simply seeking to stay in the 'stretch zone' or 'edge'. Other people, either peers or coaches can help with that by supplying explicit or implicit feedback. Not because they are know everything, but because they have gone or are going down the same path, and are more objective about you ('a different set of eyes').

Find Where You Are and Work From There

Don't try to work from where you want to be, that will be slower not quicker. This is about acceptance, a prerequisite for change

The Tightrope is an Illusion

When in new experiential territory, it can seem that the practice being encouraged will either quickly fall into a pitfall at one end, or into the opposite pitfall. There is no happy middle envisionable. This is just a lack of experience. For an experienced aerialist, the rope has come to appear like a sidewalk.

Don't Get Stuck in Inspiration

Inspiration, such as from most self-improvement materials and forums provides temporary elation by itself and therefore can become a habit. But nothing changes from inspiration. Slightly more important is turning inspiration into intention, definitely more important is turning intention into action, and absolutely more important is turning action into consistency.

There is No Such Thing as 'Ready'

Change is made by starting to work where you are with the tools at hand. In time, other tools will come to hand. The feeling of 'ready' does happen in life, but it has to do with situations already mastered. Also where aggression, anger, or desire is mobilized, the feeling of ready is not relevant.

Change is More About Unlearning than Learning

Here is what often happens: a man or woman wants to change a pattern so they focus directly on it and have initial success doing something different. Then they focus on other things, thinking the change is in the bag. The unwanted pattern comes back! The learner despairs that they cannot learn. Actually, the unwanted pattern was never gone (yet) it was just suppressed. It takes a longish trail of resuppression and practicing new habits until new practices become dominant.

Don't Make Effort the Focus

Many adolescent and adult learners have grown up in invalidating, emotionally treacherous environments where they could never be sure that their choices and criticisms wouldn't be attacked. This can lead to a over-emphasis of effort as a universally defensible good--remember the saying "You can't blame a guy for trying." But effort, increases arousal and tightens muscles, and strongly undermines some areas of change like breathing, relaxation, meditation, flexibility, and social skills. Of course with 'zero effort' nothing will change but effort should not be the focus.

Make Distractions and Irritants Part of the Practice

Everyone has had an experience of finding a quiet place, preparing to meditate or stretch, and BAM!, a loud sound like a leaf lower erupts. Or for nice guys they might have guilt at doing something 'selfish'. There is a temptation to wait to a better time, which often becomes never. Our ego fears we will do something badly! But the truth is, anything that cultivates growth will be done, at best, badly (really just imperfectly). Doing something even less perfectly is just as good, or greater an opportunity for self awareness as doing something just imperfectly. Awareness, attention, and mindfulness is increased.

The Rubber Band Effect

When we push against a homeostatic system, even one with a unhappy 'set-point', the system pushes back. To succeed, of course consistency and perseverance is necessary, but on occasion, several interventions need to be brought to bear simultaneously to reach a threshhold where the homeostatic set point is 'flipped', or reset.

I treat myself like a princess because I am one.🎀🍰