Looking after yourself is an upward spiral

Looking after yourself is an upward spiral. In other words it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What do I mean by that?

“When you feel good, you look good. And vice versa: when you look good, you feel good.” Christie Brinkley

It makes sense, but we easily fall into the “why bother as it makes no difference” trap. This feeling of overwhelm can take its toll very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that you don’t realise that you are slipping into bad habits and this becomes a downward spiral. I’ve fallen into this trap a few times. It is only when I’ve been forced by external factors to do something about it that I’ve found that looking after yourself works. The problem is that life tends to get in the way of looking after yourself which is why what we do needs to be easy to implement.

The downward spiral of NOT taking care of yourself

By not taking care of ourselves we can quickly fall into not exercising and eating badly. This is downward spiral that means we put on weight, which makes us feel worse, only the slobby clothes fit etc… You start not to care about how you look to the outside world and you gradually become a hermit.

I’ll give you an example of our first Christmas in Jerez. We had packed what we usually wear here in rural France for our trip. When we arrived, we soon realised that our clothes were rather inappropriate regarding what everyone else was wearing. Everybody was looking smart even if they were just popping out to grab something from corner shop. Also, the traditional promenade in the evening is a dressing up occasion. It was an expensive mistake both financially and in terms of courage as we were forced to brave clothes shopping in Spain.  We had the right stuff in the wardrobe already, but we just hadn’t packed it. The flip side is that we have some nice things to take back to France as a reminder of our trip.

You can read about why we love Jerez here.

Just as an aside, if we lived in a city in France, we would probably not have had this issue. We would still have been in the habit of dressing more smartly. There’s not a lot of call for chain sawing and splitting wood clothes in the city or for getting seriously muddy and dirty.

Looking after yourself doesn’t have to be dramatic or expensive.

Now this way of looking after yourself by looking good/smart making you feel better about yourself is relatively easy. I still like to slob around the house wearing jogging bottoms and fleeces, or shorts and a T-shirt, depending on the weather. My Crocs are almost surgically implanted on my feet I wear them so frequently. However, since the trip to Spain, I have reformed my bad habits. I now get changed to go shopping etc… When I look smarter in public, I feel better. However, I am not as smart as I used to be: it if progress though.

Taking a little more care about yourself and your appearance becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you treat yourself well and pamper/look after yourself, you are more likely to find that you want to treat yourself better. The better you feel the more like you are to eat more healthily or do more exercise. Healthy eating and exercise improves how you look, and how you feel, and the spiral of improvement continues.

Treating/looking after yourself is a great way to start Creating A New Beautiful and Courageous Existence: a whole process of self-improvement that does not have to be difficult to start simply with little steps.

Practice makes perfect

It’s all well and good writing and reading about things in theory: however, we need to start applying what we learn. Today’s activity is to find some of your smarter clothes and wear them shopping: you will feel better about yourself…

To help you keep track of all your work for the daily activities mentioned we have created a monthly diary for you to record your progress. To download your copy of “My January Canbace Diary” please click here.

Be kind to yourself …

In CANBACE friendship!

If anything, I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about. If you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website, please let me know. I will keep your words private.