Today we celebrate International Women’s Day, 8th March. Like every year but this year is different because around a year ago our life has changed upside down and we had to deal with this new situation, reorganise our relationships, routines, priorities and suffered a lot.
In order to honour this and celebrate a year of survival and progress that we all made I am going to share with you a cycle of 4 blogs with affordable tips dedicated to: Physical Health & Beauty, Relationships, Mental Health and Spirituality finishing up with Work, Money and Learning.
I believe they will help you feel more empowered as women, give you more energy and time back in the long term.
This week we start with Physical Health & Beauty, Relationships and below you will find my 7 main ideas on this topic.
- Daily routine
Each of us has certain morning and evening routing, aka set of steps before we start our work and go to bed. If you want to get inspired, in the morning it is very important for me to exercise (warm-up and a little cardio), plan the day in the high-performance planner, read my affirmations and have breakfast. In the evening it is to summarise the day again in the high-performance planner, read my affirmations, do 20 of stretching and meditation. 7 hours of sleep is minimum and has a really rejuvenating effect on my health and skin and 7-8 hours of sleep is recommended in general. Choose a daily routine that will make you stronger and more centered.
TIP: 15min morning reading. If you struggle finding time for reading, listen to an audio book or read a book for 15 min per day. Soon you will realise that you read longer than that and soon you will build up skills or enjoy the story in the book.
- Feminine clothes
Have you noticed how different you feel wearing a skirt and how you feel wearing trousers, jeans or leggings? I would like to encourage you to realise the difference. As women, our feminine symbol is Earth and for men, their masculine symbol is Sun. Wearing a skirt gives us an opportunity to connect with mother nature and get power literally from the earth. Feminine clothes and lingerie is one of the easiest ways to feel like a woman. In the world where we have so much choice, pick a style you like and give a skirt or dress a try. You do not have to reorganise your whole wardrobe, just start with few feminine pieces and you will feel the difference.
TIP: Skirt for sport. I am testing now a sports skirt (similar to what tennis players wear) on my bike and running legging and will keep you posted on how that works.
- Make-up and accessories
This is another way to feel more like a woman. I have not been a fan of make-up for a long time as it was too complicated with all the brushes and colour pallets. Also since I was a teenager I had acne so make-up was a great way for me to “cover my face”. But as soon as I tested and consulted with professionals about what suits my hair and skin I like using make-up to feel better and more beautiful.
TIP: 5 min make-up Apply the foundation on your skin to even the skin tone. Use a brow pencil to enhance your eyebrows with the same colour. Add eye pencil to your lashes, on the whole length on the top lid and from the corner to the middle of your eye. You can use mascara as well, I do not use it because my lashes become too long and it is not very practical under glasses. Add blush to your cheeks, I use powdered blush and the last step is a bit of lipstick to go!
- Massage and face yoga
In order to feel good we need blood circulation to help us with that. So what helped me is dry brushing of my body. The frequency depends on how sensitive your skin is. With all simplicity, it helps to increase flow of your lymph which is responsible for removing toxins from your body and on the surface it removes dry skin cells. Fumiko Takatsu is well known for her Face Yoga Method where she is teaching how to use your muscles on your face and neck to look younger.
TIP: Face yoga exercise for forehead. After you apply your favourite cream, use the knuckles of your index and middle finger on both hands (you form something like “a hook”) and massage it from one end of your forehead to another, with right hand to the left and with left hand to the right. You can do it in between your eyebrows too. This helped me relax muscles on your forehead, especially if you do a lot of thinking like me and you will see that your wrinkles are either gone or at least less visible.
- Embrace yourself
What happens when you pass a mirror? Do you see all your imperfections or do you see an attractive lady? Most people including me, when we pass the mirror we check for the little insecurities that we hold or whether the clothes fit us well. Sometimes we compare ourselves with others and sometimes with the previous version of ourselves. In any case we rarely say or think: “Hmmm, I look good”. I would like to encourage you to be more favourable to yourself and to embrace yourself for what you have done in life and who you have become. And see in a mirror a strong woman full of great character and potential, because it is true because you are.
TIP: “High 5” in the mirror. If you like to learn how to cheer yourself up and make you happier, here is a tip from Mel Robbins: every time you look into the bathroom mirror, give yourself a “high five” to acknowledge yourself. You can also smile if that works better for you. In order to develop a habit, add a post-it note on your mirror for the start.
- Exercise and walk
If we want to look radiant and feel good in our body we need to add “a bit of move” into our lives. I say “walk is not an exercise”. As essential as it is, the major benefit of walking is to speed your heart beat up, activate most of our muscles and in pandemic especially to reconnect with the real world rather than the one behind the screen. I still believe that it does not replace specific types of sport or exercise, where we repeatedly train certain muscles to make them stronger or burn fat. Also exercising in a group or individual, indoors or outdoors help to release the happiness hormones like endorphins and decrease the stress hormones, like cortisol and when done well, it gives us a boost of energy and prepares us for the next challenge that life brings. Many experts confirm that exercising in the morning is the best because not only it decreases stress built-up over the night but because it is more guaranteed that you are going to do it (mornings have the least amount of disruptions or emergencies).
TIP: A short before work and before going to bed. Especially if you are working from home, have a short “around the block” before you start your work day. Also, going for a similar walk after dinner or before you go to bed makes a difference - the change of environment and the air are good for your body and mind.
- Regular self-care
I hear even more often that if we feel more pampered and looked after we also do our work better. And here I am talking about manicure, pedicure, going to a hairdresser, applying masks or any other forms of self-love. Taking time for your self-care is always a good investment we do not want to ignore in our intensive lives . And that’s why if we feel great, we manifest to the world that we are worth it and we deserve to be treated with respect and care (because we give respect and care to ourselves first!).
TIP: Beauty day If you like to make sure that you do not miss on the acts of self-care, schedule it in your calendar on a weekly or regular basis so that you and the world know that this is non-negotiable “me-time”.
These 7 ideas are not final, I can share many more so if you are interested in this topic, send me a message and it can be material for another blog or video. For more resources or individual consultation, please send me a message.
Please check the related video on my channel here: https://youtu.be/WyxE-kDi2x8
