Glowing Skin, Glowing Heart, Glowing Soul 🌟🍧

Happy Sunday

join me in an sunday reset! let’s get our lives back on track! 🌷

space 🕯

put on a playlist that motivates you!

clear your floor of all clutter and mess

clear off all the surfaces of things that don’t belong there (desk, dresser, nightstand countertops, etc) and give them a good dusting and wipe down

catch up on laundry and fold it all immediately!

change your sheets and make your bed

vacuum and sweep

clean your bathroom really well! don’t forget to mop

remove all the out of date food from your fridge and pantry

do your dishes and clean your sink

reorganize things that tend to get messy during the week - make your space work for you! 💕

body 🌱

put on a cute set and do some movement! a whole work out, a hot girl walk, a dance party, some light yoga from bed - whatever works best for you and your body <3

drink a ton of water! hydrated girlies are happy girlies

have a nourishing meal with loads of fruits, veggies, and protein

get some sunlight

take an everything shower - shave and exfoliate, and don’t forget to moisturize!

do a hair mask

do your full skincare routine and a gentle face mask

do your nails or go get them done

mind ☁️

put your phone away and have some quiet time - maybe read a book, doodle, or meditate! just give your brain a rest from the noisy workweek

journal

set some goals for the upcoming week and think about how you can actually achieve them

organize all your assignments / tasks for the week in a planner - everything will seem less overwhelming when you write it all down!

spend some time with friends or family

do something you love to do!

and finally, go to bed early tonight! you got this, angel! ✨🌸

[tearing at my hair] no love however brief is wasted no love however brief is wasted no love however brief is wasted

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.

how to level up during the winter arc

winter arc ; oct to jan

1. build a strong routine - examples: wake up immediately and journal, don't scroll in the morning, meditate, drink 1 glass of water

2. create realistic goals - be more practical. when we set big goals and they don't happen we brush them off and say 'i'll just do it next week' hence delaying action

3. visualize - visualize how the highest person of yourself looks like

4. be consistent - wake up at the same time, be consistent, and don't scroll when you wake up, just take action everyday ! things don't just happen overnight

5. habit stacking - habit stacking follows a simple formula of "when i do [current habit], i will do [new habit]." for example: "when i drink my coffee in the morning, i will listen to an educational podcast."

6. use habit trackers/to-do lists

7. don't give up when your day isn't perfect - be flexible and understand that not everything has to be checked off, life happens

8. don't go through hardcore restrictions - since it's festival season, there are chances that you might not be able tick off some habits but that's okay !

9. listen to your body - do what you feel is best for you, don't beat yourself up if you aren't able to do something

let go of the feelings you've had in the past year, "i wish i did this" blah blah. don't beat yourself over it. just move forward. why keep waiting for tomorrow when you can start today? show up for yourself. why do i want to achieve this goal? it has to be for you.

just. start. now.

Can’t stop thinking about this look

Live privately!!

social media has really warped our perception of creativity and hobbies. Stop doing things to post them. Just write. Just journal. Just sketch. Just read. Just annotate. Just sing. Just crochet. Just do the thing you’re going to do with the assumption no one will ever see or know you did it. Stop performing. Just enjoy it.

Cozy Christmas ⛄️❄️