The problem of having too much to do and too little time to do it is about as universal as breathing. And all that running around can really take a toll on your body and mind. If you’re anything like me, you probably look as frazzled as you feel some days (eye emojis at you, Mondays). In this post, I’d like to share 4 tips that make me feel beautiful inside and out.
Full Quote Citation
Water Every Day
Everyone knows the old “8 x 8 rule” where you drink 8 ounces of water 8 times a day to achieve the perfect hydrated harmony. While it’s not backed up by hard evidence, it is a great rule of thumb for going about your day to day life and ensuring you body can function effectively.
When you drink plenty of water, it does wonders for your skin. Likewise, when you’re dehydrated you can appear more dry or wrinkled than you are. With water fortifying your skin (and moisturizer locking that water in), you can maintain your hydration levels.
Also, it feels good to drink water. Have you ever just drank a glass of water and felt, as that sip went down your throat, appreciation what you were doing for yourself and gratitude for having it available to you at leisure? Even if you aren’t sold on the physical benefits of water (you know, like, living), there’s always the psychological benefits of knowing that you’re doing something very good for yourself.
Posture and Poise
Good posture, while some would say is its own reward, is such a necessary step to take in looking and feeling beautiful. When you stand or sit tall, you inspire a “presence” and confidence in the mind of onlookers.
Good posture begins with practice and continues with persistence. It’s hard to sit up when you’re bored and it’s easy to slouch when… well, the perfect time to slouch is all the time. But I digress: Your back and body will thank you for it later.
In addition to doing things like walking upright and sitting up straight, you can adopt what Amy Cuddy of Harvard University calls “power poses”, or body stances that are supposed to make you feel more powerful and in charge.
As you can see in the image above, some ways of standing and sitting project confidence, a known component of beauty, while others show apprehension and timidity. To contextualize it all, here’s the TEDTalk of the woman who conducted the study, Amy Cuddy:
Not everyone is on board though:
As with all research, replication was needed to check the validity of the results. An attempt at replication using additional controls, published recently in Psychological Science, found no behavioral or hormonal effects of “power poses,” although they did result in a boost in subjective perception of power. In other words, the original research did not hold up.
That said, even if there are no hormonal changes after doing power posing, it at least makes you feel powerful, which might make all the difference in your day to day interactions. At the end of the day, even if you decide that power poses aren’t for you, don’t sleep on good posture in general.
Meditation
I can’t stop talking about the benefits of meditation because I can literally recall a day I’ve meditated and contrast it with a day I haven’t and the difference is night and day.
Among the many physical benefits like lowering high blood pressure and improving the immune system, it has many sought after mental benefits:
- Anxiety decreases
- Emotional stability improves
- Creativity increases
- Happiness increases
- Intuition develops
- Problems become smaller
On days with the similar workloads, I have found that meditating early in the morning (from between ten to twenty minutes) increases my patience and ability to deal with any problem I find myself in. A lot of my troubles don’t come from the work itself, but from my anxious reaction to it. With meditation, I’ve been able to put things into perspective. And while it won’t make all your troubles go away or fix your problems, it will allow you to rest more easily and think more clearly–maybe even come up with a creative solution you didn’t see before because you were worrying so much.
Be Prepared
Time management among humans is so bad that even after creating the concept of “time” to measure the distance between events and better orient ourselves, we still manage to f*ck it up. This is the one tip that everyone knows they need to do in their heart of hearts but only a fraction of us actually do.
We know we should prepare the night before, but we don’t. We know we shouldn’t procrastinate, but we do. And it’s a shame because there’s so much wasted potential in how being prepared can make us feel better about everything.
Tomes have been written about time management and preparedness, and they’ll keep being written (and making bank off us unprepared saps) unless we smarten up and just do it.
And now for the people who want to be held accountable to their new promise I just made on your behalf, I dare you to tweet it:
Conclusion
Beauty is a state of mind that expresses itself in our actions and appearance. The better we nourish and take care of ourselves, the more radiant we become. If you have any other tips on how to be beautiful, leave them in the comments below! We would love to hear and share! 🙂
