C'est La Vie

I’m a big believer in thinking positive and that we can all achieve anything that we set our minds to.  I believe that our minds have powers that are beyond our comprehension.  I believe that we inadvertently or for those who have discovered “the secret” as it’s often called (the power of positive thinking) purposefully shape our own destinies.

I think I was always a positive person and that I always kind of had this sense that I could “make” things happen.  A lot of my positive thinking was just visualizing, visualizing my life in my head – aka day dreaming.  I would very distinctly imagine my future.  On the first day my best friend and I hung out we wrote down and planned out our future and I’d say quite a lot of it came true or what we had thought about and wanted when we were younger came true although of course as we grew older we always wanted more and more. I also wrote a lot so besides day dreaming I would write about my life and what I wanted and believed would happen.  I would sometimes write in a future tense and act as if I was already a famous journalist or hot shot what have you.

Then there came a time when I wasn’t so positive.  I was so immersed in sadness and negative thinking that I often couldn’t breathe.  I’d throw up randomly (not knowing why (at the time)), I was not able to sleep well, I would wander the streets, I was pretty much constantly crying – at work, on the bus, on the skytrain, waiting for the bus, walking, in my room, in the bathroom, when watching a movie (you get the point) or hyperventilating to the point where I thought I needed to call 911.  I remember an episode where I was in my room and suddenly couldn’t breathe and thus far I had tried hiding it from my family but they found out this time and suddenly EVERYONE in my family was in front of me (including my dad, omgah poor guy), freaked out and scared and trying to help me.  It was a surreal moment and my sister told me that my lips or tongue started turning purple.  The power of positive thinking helped me.

After watching The Secret and meeting people in my life who were positive and really changing their mindset consciously I too changed my mindset.  I believe that if you clearly visualize yourself in the image that you want to be (a successful lawyer for example) and you FEEL that image, you feel the happiness, the power etc you will gravitate towards that and the powers of the universe will conspire to get you where you want to be.  It’s a very, very conscious effort.  It’s not easy to do this and you’ll find yourself slipping and thinking “one day” or thinking negatively.  You can’t imagine that you will be something “one day” you have to feel it NOW or you will forever be that person “one day”.   Create a vision board where you showcase things in a present tense.  “Your car” should not be the car you have now but the car you want and the more you look at that board and believe that that life is yours, the better for you.   I stopped dwelling on anything negative, I used to get so upset at little things.  I used to call up a friend and vent and moan about things and now I literally don’t tell anyone anything.  I may feel bad about something, write it on a piece of paper and rip it up and then I never think about that again.  I only allow myself to be upset for a few minutes and then I’m like ok .. time to move on.  It’s ok to rant and vent every so often as long as it’s not something you’re doing all the time and it’s not affecting your mental health.

It’s not easy being positive and lately I’ve been feeling that the future I once saw so clearly in my head has slipped and it’s getting more and more difficult to imagine that I will actually do what I said I would - so this post is about me trying to get back to the power of positive thinking and saying that I will once again make time for ME, for being positive, thinking happy thoughts, writing powerful quotes and speeches to myself to motivate me and working on my future as if it’s a reality.  I hope you will do the same and please do share with me if you try to think positive – what you do to stay positive – if you’ve slipped on this.  I READ ALLLLL OF YOUR COMMENTS via twitter/facebook and on this blog itself!!!!!!!!!!!  Sometimes your comments are just awesomeness so I just post it and don’t reply because there’s nothing to say cuz you’re right!!  But I do read them all!

I think I’ll write another post later on how to actually feel better and be more positive.  So watch out for that :D

**Side note** You can’t just sit there and think that thinking positive alone will change your life, it is meant to be a catalyst for positive ACTION. 

Now get out there and KICK SOME BUTT PEOPLES!! :D :D

I really hope Miranda Kerr is wearing sunscreen! 

There are literally UV rays from everywhere.  It doesn’t matter if you have full sleeves on or if you’re sitting under a giant umbrella.  It doesn’t matter if it’s cloudy, if you’re sitting in your car, if you’re indoors or if you’re on the beach, if it’s winter or summer – you can seriously harm yourself if you do not not protect your skin from UV rays.  Remember, there are UV rays everywhere and they can bounce from the pavement to pretty little you sitting under your umbrella thinking you’re all protected.

Did you know that a two hour shopping spree in a store like Walmart with fluorescent lights everywhere is equivalent to a full hour in the sun?  Sure you won’t get sunburnt but you are still exposed to those UV rays!

Besides CANCER - UV rays and sun damage can also wreak havoc on your skin.  A ten dollar bottle of sunscreen now will save you hundreds in laser treatments later on in life.  I say this because people often don’t care that they could get cancer – they figure meh that will be when I’m old and gray, but I’d rather look tan and hot now!  Aargh.

To be properly covered from the sun you HAVE to cover your skin with enough sun screen (think frosting on a cupcake) and make sure that you REAPPLY every 2-3 hours.  The amount of sunscreen you should be applying (everywhere – including your neck, backs of ears, hands, face etc) is quite simple if you think of yourself as a cake and the sunscreen as frosting - - a nice thick layer of sunscreen.  That does NOT mean a quarter sized amount for one arm.  Don’t cheap out – layer it on.  If you have a moisturizer that has sun screen of SPF 15 that’s great, but still make sure that you wear a sunscreen with a higher spf AS WELL as your moisturizer.

The sun can damage your skin in many ways:

1. Sun spots, freckles and brown spots

2. Uneven skin colour

3. Freckles

4. Age Spots

5. Rosacea

6. Wrinkles

7. Broken capillaries

8. Enlarged pore size

9. Sagging skin

This is not pretty:

Ok dammit it is but this look can be achieved through spray tanning or instant bronzers that are available in cans – not tanning beds.  THIS is not pretty:

Do you really want your boobs and neck to look like this?

Squamous cell carcinoma – a skin cancer:

This is a cutaneous horn.  Yes that’s right, a horn growing out of the side of your friggin face.  It’s not pretty.  It’s not cancer but it can also lead to cancer.

  It’s from a condition called Actinic Keratosis and is most common in people with:

• Fair skin.
• Hair color is naturally blond or red.
• Eyes are naturally blue, green, or hazel.
• Skin freckles or burns when in the sun. 

Lifted straight off a website:

What causes AKs?

Ultraviolet (UV) rays cause AKs. Most people get exposed to UV rays from being outside during the day or using tanning beds. You can prevent AKs by protecting your skin from the sun and never using tanning beds or sun lamps.

I have heard those three words uttered countless times.  If those words have never crossed your lips then I bet you’ve heard them said by a co-worker or friend.  Women similar to the three women in the above picture have probably said those three words irrespective of the fact that they have three vastly different body types. 

Newsflash people: FAT IS NOT A FEELING!

Emotions have the following parts: subjective feelings, physiological (body) responses, and expressive behaviour. If fat was a feeling it would have some kind of expressive behaviour.  Think about this: if you had to act out the feeling/emotion of sadness it would be easy.  You would maybe have some tears streaming down your face and your head down with an upside down smile. Now act out surprised: Eyes open, mouth open, eyebrows raised and hands to face. Now act out “fat”. All you may be able to do is puff out your cheeks or some other PHYSICAL interpretation/depiction of what being fat is but there is no emotion that is being expressed.  Be conscious of how you feel not how you look.  Looks are not everything!

When you Google: define: fat there is not one definition that includes a feeling or emotion.  So why do so many people say those words?  Am I suggesting that people should listen to this picture below instead?

No! The above picture is also a horrendous outlook to life.  Pretty is not an emotion.  Fat is not an emotion.  People really need to take a step back and realize that how they feel does not need to be directly related to how they think they look.  All “skinny” girls do not have awesome lives; likewise all “pretty” girls do not have perfect lives.  There is no guarantee that being thin or being gorgeous translates into happiness.  Instead of uttering the words “I feel fat”, I would like you to accurately assess your feelings because only then can you address the problem.  The problem is not your weight or your health, the problem is that you are possibly unhappy.  You may feel sad or lonely or depressed that you have gained weight or think you look bigger than you normally do, but you cannot “feel fat”. 

Too many people think that changing the way they look physically will change their lives and that they will become happier.  Do you really believe people who say: “I will be happy if only I had bigger breasts” actually become happy forever after surgery?  There will always be points in life when you feel that your body or face is not what you would want it to be, but it takes a change in attitude, not surgery to become truly happy.  I’m not saying I am opposed to surgery.  I’m saying that one should not depend on surgery or physical alterations to their body to change how they feel about themselves or to feel happier.  If you were truly overweight, your weight is not what leads you to be happy one minute and “feeling fat” the next.  Your weight is also not the root of your problem, just like the fact that credit cards and malls exist are not the root problem for a compulsive shopper.  The problem with “feeling fat” is the inner emotional state that the person is experiencing such as unhappiness, loneliness, anger, or depression; not the literal fatness.

I feel that it can only be a good thing when people begin to be conscious of the way they FEEL rather than directly relating how they feel to their LOOKS and physical appearance.  Next time, try not to “feel” a physical characteristic and actually state an emotion, you owe yourself that much!