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Can you look beautiful? When you look at yourself in a mirror are you happy with what you see? When you look at yourself are you very judgmental? Are you as judgmental with other people as you are yourself? This article will enable you to unpick your thought process and help you to look beautiful naturally every day.

As a teenager I didn’t think I was pretty. Now aged 49, when I look back at photos of myself, I don’t think my view was accurate. I see a beautiful girl. In my 20s and 30s I didn’t like having my photo taken or looking at myself in the mirror. Is this sounding familiar? Do you also avoid looking at yourself in the mirror? How can you look at yourself and be happy with what you see? Let’s journey together and see what we can find to solve this problem. If you are happier with how you look, you will feel happier inside.

What does beautiul mean?

Let’s start with beauty. What do you think is beautiful? You need to understand your idea of beauty is to be able to achieve it. If you don’t, there’s no target, you’re firing all over the place hoping to hit something. Let’s be clear, we are talking about natural beauty, not huge fake eyelashes and thick make up that doesn’t allow your skin to breathe. That’s not natural beauty, it’s fake.

What does beauty look like to you? Can women your age look beautiful? Can women older than you look beautiful? If you answered no to either of these questions, where did you get this view? Was it from magazines and marketing images full of pubescent models? Our society reveres youth and those are the images we see everywhere. Have you been programmed to think that young equates with beautiful without you realising it?

Do you have friends your age that are naturally beautiful women? What is it about them? Are they confident and fun? Do they shine from the inside out? When they laugh do you see their laughter-lines in their face? Does this make them beautiful?

I think older women are beautiful. For a start, we should be celebrate getting to our beautiful older age. We all know of men and women that haven’t lived as long as us. I see beauty in the lines of an older woman’s face, she is wearing her wisdom. But it’s her eyes that sparkle with mischief and fun that give her face beauty. No make up can give you that – it is vibrant and untamed.

How can I be beautiful?

How do I get that natural beauty you ask? That vibrancy comes from inside. Look at yourself in the mirror and noticing all the parts of you that you like. What do you see that is beautiful? Are your eyes beautiful? Do you like the shape of your face, your lips, the colour of your skin? I bet you can list lots of things you aren’t happy with about your appearance. My challenges to you is to find 3 things you like about your face and features, then find another one and another and another…

If you don’t you will be repeating my mistake. I thought I wasn’t beautiful as a teenage, in my 20s and 30s but I look back at old photos of me and a I see a beautiful woman that was unhappy with herself which made her sad. It was a waste of my life. I had bought into cultural stories about how I needed to look subconsciously, and this was making me feel inadequate. It was destroying my self-esteem.

In my 40s I realised that a load of utter crap was going round in my head which made me miserable. I decided to end its hold over me. It was journey in which I reclaimed being beautiful me. You too can do this too if you want.

We started looking at your views about beauty. I hope you have widened your definition of beauty. You will have identified radiant women of your age and older. What do you like about their faces? Do you also have this quality? You are looking for more positive things you like about yourself. It’s time to be loving and compassionate with yourself.

Shine your beauty

When you love yourself, the confidence flows from the inside out. You are more relaxed, life is more fun and you smile more. It’s time to look in the mirror and look yourself in the eyes and say “hey beautiful, you’re looking gorgeous today”. I do this after I get out the shower in the morning. This may seem very un-British, but who cares? You feel great, you are cheering yourself on in life. Give it a go! It might feel award at first, a bit false, but go for it until you really mean it. Love the woman looking back at you. Thank your gorgeous body for being your container in this life. You will look in the mirror, look yourself in the eyes with love and know you look naturally beautiful.

Let me know how you felt about your appearance in the different phases of your life. Email me about how working with the mirror goes via info@explorediscover.me If you need more support in this personal journey reach to me via email or a 20 minute complimentary chat: https://explorediscover.me/free-online-coaching/

Many women have a difficult relationship with their bodies. There isn’t one simple reason. The tapestries of our lives are made from many threads, some that make us feel good and others that make us feel bad about ourselves. In this article, I will explore why and share some ways to reclaim a good relationship with your body.

When you look in the mirror what do you see?

If I asked you to describe what you see, would you start listing your good points or what you think are the bad ones? Which would be the longer list – good or bad? I’d bet you started with negative statements about yourself. You’re not the only woman who does this. Why are women so nasty to themselves? Where does this behaviour come from?

Cultural influences

If you go to Cuba, the women ooze confidence and self-respect. They are proud of their bodies regardless of their job or how they look. Cuba was isolated from advertising. They weren’t subjected to images of young thin women, marketing telling them what they needed to look different to be liked. These women grew up confident in the natural shape of their bodies. They know they are beautiful and sexy, this is raw confidence.

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

One of the threads that woven into the tapestry of many women’s lives is their bodies are the physical space that has been violated. The #MeToo movement showed the numbers of women that had suffered sexual abuse, but not all victims want to go public. We all know there are many more victims, you may know someone or it maybe you.

There are also the situations where you liked someone, you enjoy being with them, but the swiftness in which they want to have sex, is far too fast for you. You don’t want to be judged negatively, so you go along with it before your body is ready. You put your partners needs above your own. The issue is you didn’t listen to your body, you betrayed yourself.

Many women are walking guilt, shame and pain. They don’t like their bodies as they see a victim in the mirror. They feel broken, not good enough and this is another cultural aspect.

Women’s bodies are beautiful

Recently I saw an incredible calendar created by the artist Kat Shaw. She had drawn women’s bodies that had had ****** cancer. The paintings are done with such love you can see that in every brush stroke. But Kat has taken the Japanese art of Kintsugi where broken things are fixed using gold and applied them to women’s bodies. Adding gold leaf and glitter to the scars, she shows the history of the body. The paintings of these women are even more magnificent. Kat calls them the “Golden Warriors”, I think they are incredibly beautiful.

We each have a choice

This is a journey of realisation. Our perspective of our bodies is everything. Whether we hold our head high with self-love and confidence or believe we aren’t good enough or are broken in some way, it’s our choice. I look at the paintings and see beauty. I look at my body and I see beauty. Kat is helping women to honour and cherish their bodies for the magnificent things they are.

Women reclaiming their bodies

I first came across Kat’s work as she started her series “And Still I Rise”. These were individual paintings of women with natural bodies not photoshop images. Each one had a story of over-coming adversity. “I survived sexual assault as a child… and still I rise” This picture is of a woman who had little regard for herself or her body as a teenager because of the abuse. Kat’s painting shows a strong woman, not a victim, a survivor. Women send pictures of themselves to Kat, who lovingly paints them.

Women are reclaiming their bodies. These beautiful images of women who have survived sexual abuse, a brain tumour, dissociative identity disorder, survived childhood sexual abuse, show their strength and vulnerability. It creates a new narrative in our subconscious. Women’s bodies are beautiful because of the things we have been through. The stretch marks from pregnancy, scars, they all make our unique beauty. This raw and loving artwork allows us to see ourselves as the sexy beauties we are.

How do you want see yourself?

It’s time to stop the self-hate and find the parts of you that you love and celebrate them. Look at yourself in the mirror what words would you use to describe yourself? Majestic, breath-taking, remarkable, precious, noble, divine, radiant, tantalising, magnificent, fabulous, dignified, glorious, luscious. Do this often. Look the woman in the mirror in the eye and love her.

Kat’s works also show women realising how amazing they are, when they see themselves as others see them. It’s time to do this for yourself. Time to stop believing the cultural claptrap created to make you feel bad about yourself, so you’ll buy more stuff. It’s time to get rid of the guilt and shame, pull those threads from your tapestry. Step into the magnificence of who you are, your beauty shines from the inside you. It’s time to radiate your beauty!

Need a little more support on this journey?

If you want more support join me for 4 one-hour online coaching sessions: Love Who You Are.  It’s time to reconnect with your mind, body and soul. Monday 30th November- Thursday 3rd December 7-8pm (London) These are FREE online coaching workshops, my gift. I know how hard it can be and I want to help women feel good about themselves. Please share these powerful workshops with friends, and sign up it’s important to take time to nurture ourselves.

Life is made up of many challenges, at first, it’s learning to walk, talk and feed ourselves. As we move through life, we have experiences, learning new skills. These shape the person we become. No two people are the same, our combination of knowledge, skills and experiences are unique. Have you wondered how some people seem to bounce back from problems easier than others? In this blog, I will discuss how you can become more resilient in life. This is something we all need now.

Let’s be honest, no-one is happy all the time. You go through challenging experiences that develop your inner strength and resilience. Inner strength is important, it helps you withstand life’s earthquakes. I use the term earthquakes because that is what they feel like when they hit. They shake you to the core and you may crumble. Events such as the death of a loved one, redundancy, serious illness, the break-up of your relationship, they all send shock waves through you. This is a time of re-evaluation. Who am I? Why is this happening? What is life all about? Am I living my best life?

These seismic moments in your life, hit you hardest, when you are out of alignment with your truth. They are knocking you back on to your path.

Self-development = taking charge of your life

Everything is evolving around you. Your life is about learning and evolving. Sit with that for a couple of breaths. What are you doing to support your own learning and evolution? Do you invest in your own development? I ask this because there will be times in your life, which are like being hit by an earthquake and I wonder are you evolving to meet the challenge?

Life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain. This beautifully illustrates that our perception is everything. Is it a storm or dancing in the rain? The same event, but different experiences created from two completely different perspectives created by different belief systems.

Are you a pessimist?

What do you say to yourself? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about life? How you experience the world is defined by your belief system. Are you feeling scared or anxious about the future? You can choose to think a different way if you want. At one point in my life, my optimism slipped into negative thinking. I was faced with redundancy for the second time in a brief period. This was the second earthquake going through my life. I was no longer positive about the outcome and this drained my vitality. This incident taught me the importance of changing my old beliefs.

How are you coping during the pandemic?

As someone that has walked this path, I’m showing you the map. It’s much easier to turn things round before they get out of control. What are your beliefs? Are they up to date or just old baggage you collected as a child? Have you spent any time looking at the belief systems that run your life? Are they flexible or ridged?

You may have the “it won’t happen to me attitude”. I’ll cope. I’ll manage somehow when it happens. Having been through that painful learning process, I have a different attitude now.

What is self-development?

If you can imagine life is a process of evolution, a bit like walking to the top of a mountain. There are different ways to get up the mountain, you choose your path. You can keep going along the same easy level for ages and then you’ll find yourself at a cliff face, you can’t go round you have to get over it. This is a crisis; you need to change and upgrade dramatically to move forward in your life. You may be stuck at that point for month as you work out what needs to change for you to be able to move forward.

Self-development can help you find the map of the journey. You can choose to walk gradually up hill on the easier gradient. All the time you are learning, emptying unwanted beliefs out of your backpack and making your journey easier. The way I see it, when I invest in self-development, I’m investing in myself and my future. It’s my risk assessment and I’m taking action to make my life easier in the long run. What do you think?

• How do you cope with a big life changing event?
• How have you coped during the pandemic?
• How could you learn to cope better?

What can we learn from places that have earthquakes?

Japan is earthquake prone. In this film you see a 41m pagoda that has stood for hundreds of years, when other smaller buildings have been demolished by earthquakes. Why are our modern concrete structures, the symbol of strength, being destroyed by the earthquake? How is this huge pagoda managing to stay upright?

In the center of the pagoda is a pillar structure, the shinbashira made out of straight trunks of Japanese cypress. The pillar runs the entire length of the pagoda. The wooden joints of the pagoda aren’t fixed, they can move and flex. The building is adaptable, it can flex and flow. It is not ridged and fixed and so it remains standing after the earthquake.

What can I do?

You need a grounding and centering technique. This is your pillar. You are connected deep into the ground and out the top of your head. When you are grounded, you are present. You are in the current moment, not the past, not the future. From this space of the now you have options, and you have choice. I teach people how to do this for themselves. This gives you your roots.

“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”

Dolly Parton

You need to resource yourself. Within the Grounding aspect of Discover Your Truth there are different aspects: stillness, home, embodiment, health, wealth, emotions, stability and freedom. If we take the pagoda analogy, each topic is a joint on the ground floor. These are the topics that everything else in your life are built on. You need good foundations for anything above it to withstand the crisis. It is often a lack of good foundations that brings you to your knees. Life points out where you need to improve yourself. The pandemic has shown every individual where they need to evolve.

Become more flexible

A pagoda joint is a refined piece of work, it isn’t basic and rough, its carefully created. Take time and invest in your learning, upskill to enable yourself to be able to react more elegantly to the challenges of life. Instead of just having one way of doing things, you now have several that you can choose from. You understand what works at a particular time. Having only one way of doing things, is like the concrete buildings in Japan, you can’t withstand the force of the impact as you have no flexibility.

Investing in yourself is the best thing you can do in your life. You create the pagoda’s flexible joints in your life. Changing your perspective, increasing your skills and knowledge allow you to flex and move in an earthquake, allowing you to stay standing. You’re adaptable, but you are grounded in what’s right for you, rather than following someone else’s path.

How can I be safe and resilient?

If we think about these Grounding topics: stillness, home, embodiment, health, wealth, emotions, stability and freedom, they are the ground floor of the pagoda. All of them, used in the correct combination, will enable you to have firm footings.

Each facet of us, is another level in the pagoda: passion, power, love, communication, vision and illumination. Each of these levels has many aspects which are the joints. For example, the joints on the Power level include strength, confidence, magnetism, courage, presence, leadership and coherence.

What does this mean in everyday life?

The joints in the pagoda symbolise the different aspects of yourself. If we take courage, there are different aspects to courage we can unpack and refine in ourselves. This allows you to draw on your courage and not be ruled by fear. Our courage is accessible in a healthy way enabling us the live the life of our dreams. We can access it with clarity, and know it comes from a grounded place not a knee-jerk reactive place.

What difference does it make?

This is growth, personal evolution and it transforms your life. No longer are you aren’t stuck with only one way of doing things. Maybe you only have a hammer for every job, instead you can develop a more flexile tool kit. The result is your life is full of better outcomes. Life is easier (you’re not trying to do everything with a hammer) and you have more vitality. You flow and flex with life. You’re no longer the ridged structure that falls when too much pressure is exerted.

Do you flow and flex with life? Do you find yourself anxious when things don’t go the way you wanted them to go?

You can find out more about how Discover Your Truth can help you to evolve and achieve more in your life. Give yourself time to be calm, creative and evolve. It is the easier path. Each month you look in the backpack of your life and find the things that you need to let go of.

Do share this article. If you have a thought you’d like to share about your own experiences in life or about this blog, leave a comment below.

 

These are powerful emotions. Some might view them as challenging emotions. My society taught me it’s unacceptable for a woman to be angry. Unconsciously, I took on this teaching, being the “good girl” and bottling up my anger. Now I realise this is toxic and I’m no longer willing to do it. I have found old anger, stored in my body from past injustices that I have released. After I felt lighter and calm. My body feels more alive.

Your anger is the part of you that knows the mistreatment of you is unacceptable. Your anger knows you deserve to be treated well and with kindness. Your anger is a pert of you that LOVES you.

Holy rage: taking back our power and life force energy

When I do this work, I put a couple of cushions one on top of the other on the ground or a little chair. I kneel and I pound the cushions with my fists and forearms. I roar, I let the anger come out of my body, it’s not from my mind. I use the whole of my body to put power into beating the cushions.

 

Doing conscious anger work.

If you’re not used to letting yourself be angry, you may need to give yourself permission to express your emotions. Make sure you are in space where you won’t be disturbed, no matter what noises you are making. You need to feel safe to be able to express your truth.

 

You can do conscious anger work in a parked car. You just need somewhere that you feel safe and you won’t be disturbed. You can pound the steering wheel and roar. Be careful not to hurt yourself and make sure you avoid the horn and air bag!

When you read this do you sense an internal terror?

What have you supressed?

Are you uncomfortable with identifying as being angry/enraged?

We have a lot to learn from the goddess of holy rage: Sekmeth (Isis loyal companion who protected her).

Finding your voice, power and vitality

The pounding and roaring releases suppressed anger and rage. You find your voice again your sense of personal power (lost to systems, the patriarchy or even people in my childhood and growing up). Under the anger you may feel sadness or another emotion. Be kind to yourself and allow yourself to express these emotions. If these emotions come from your younger self, show her the love and compassion she needs to feel safe. Getting rid of these emotions allows more life energy, chi, and creative force, which basically are two sides of the same coin to flow round your body.

 

Are you vulnerable to predators?

I wonder if we as women and our lost instincts, boundaries, and learned “nice, kind, good girl” behaviour has also left us unprotected in many ways and caused a lot of wounding.

Were you sent into this world with healthy boundaries or unprotected? Are you/ were you vulnerable to predators?

 

Predators can be anything- a demanding boss and work-life that expects more and more from you, and you continue saying yes. Partners, relationships that are not good for you, people who take advantage of your kindness and lack of boundaries.

 

I think we all need our own Sekmeth to protect us: OUR HOLY RAGE!

 

Connect with your personal power

Releasing my anger and rage, I found not only is my personal power coming back, but also my creativity. Without our creativity we feel numb, passive and always receiving instead of being an active force ourselves, bringing forth new life, new ideas into this world instead of absorbing something from the outside all the time, and being invaded by other people’s opinions and ideas of what we should be and should be doing.

 

Befriending rage is a process, the first time I could barely make a sound, and just kept hitting. Eventually everything became more embodied and at some point, my voice didn’t sound human anymore but more like a primordial rage. I knew then that this was touching the roots of ancestral rage, of the primal rage of the centuries, and of the deepest goldmine of personal healing.

 

Befriend your rage

I personally believe that befriending our rage and doing conscious anger work will set us free. As women, we have been told for centuries that anger is unacceptable.  We have been trained to fade into the background – the realm of anger and aggression has always been the realm of men. Homemaking, sewing, childcare etc were “womanly” tasks.   Phrases like “nice girl”, “good wife” can be translated to mean women that are non-emotional, compliant, subservient.  Women that freely display strong emotions are called “mad”, “crazy”, “unstable” or even “manly”.

 

Rage as an emotion does not arrive without a reason.

Something is causing that rage, whether an underlying emotional situation, a true pathology, or a primal urge (such as the urge to protect and defend).  Rage is the messenger that a LIFE ISSUE needs to be addressed and that transformation of self or the situation must take place.

Honour your anger by giving a voice to it. Reclaim your emotions. Express your rage through conscious anger work. Roar, move, punch a cushion, dance, whatever works for you, this is a reclaiming of lost power, lost voice, of mending the heart. You are reclaiming life energy, healing, becoming whole and unwounded.

You always have a divine right to draw a sacred circle around you. The protection you invoke for yourself and others helps you move from feeling helpless to taking loving action.

We all need to roar! Here’s a link to Katy Perry’s Roar

If you want to delve into Emotions further, this topic is explored along with many others in my programme: Discover Your Truth. You will peal back the layers of conditioning to find out who you are. You will claim your power, your confidence and your truth.

I’m a gardener and love to grow trees, flowers and vegetables. Whatever you grow, the principles are the same – to thrive they need sun, water and soil/nutrients. When I think about the future, I know a new world is going to be created. There’s no going back to how it was. We will co-create the future, our choices and actions will decide what sort of future it will be.

I don’t know exactly how things will look in the future, but I know what is needed to create a better future. Each and every one of us can create it using these three ingredients:

Kindness, Balance (doing what is right for the long-term) and Quality.

If these principles for each and every action are adopted as we build a new future, these foundations will look after us as individuals, communities and the wellbeing of the planet. If we individually and corporately look at every step we are taking, checking it against these three guiding principles, we will make better decision for the long-term and our health and future generation’s health will benefit. We need to be bold, break with tradition and carve a visionary future. It’s time to live by our values and create a better future for everyone and everything on the planet.

Mental Health Awareness Week (18 – 24 May) is encouraging us to share our ideas on how we could build a kinder society. What are the principles you would like to build the future on?