Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great week! Me I was so sad as I watched the last episode of my new favorite show: Queer Eye. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is about 5 queers guys who travel across US to do makeovers!

People nominated then are lucky to see their lives completely transformed: their houses are redecorated, their fashion and hair style changed, they learn how to cook new meals and there’s a psychological part where they mostly talk about deconstructing self-limiting beliefs which I love!!! It is all about being your Highest Self (one of my top 5 podcasts to help you grown on your Yogi Journey) and acceptance and I roll for that! But the more I watched it every day, the more I realized it was affecting in the best way my mindset too! If you too feel like you want to make a change in your life, read this article, watch the show and tell me what you think about it in the comment section!

 

Grooming on a daily basis because you are worth it

Personally, I’ve always thought that grooming was only meant for the big days you know. Big events, big meetings, weddings…I thought I had to care about doing the full spa day only at those times and that for, let’s say, 355 days left, I could just not care that much. Although I’ve always have has a passion for cosmetics (I would always buy them impulsively when I was a teen), I never ever wore them because I was lazy and most of the time didn’t even know how to put them on my skin. In fact, I was not even curious of even learning because I had already satisfied my appetite of buying them so…what the hell? And I would seriously buy all Dior, Chanel and Armani cosmetics all the way. What a waste…

Later, I convinced myself that not taking really care of my body was just I being more natural. I was natural because I didn’t put tons of make-up. I was natural because I didn’t spend hours in the bathroom. I was taking care of myself by letting my skin breathe and not putting lots of chemical stuff on my skin. But truth is: I just got lazy over time and felt it wasn’t worth my time. How could that ever happen? I still had great products available (organic, vegan, natural cosmetics) but I brought up excuses over time to do something else. I’d rather watch a series rather than put a mask although I could be doing both at the same time if I had wanted to. Other example, I’d prefer reading rather than brush my hair and over time my hair got messier than ever. And I could go on and on like that.

After seeing what Jonathan Van Ness did by cutting hair and teaching people how to use the cosmetics so that they learn to take care of themselves again made me realize that I was like these people too. I forgot myself over the years.

But every day watching an episode of Queer Eye really planted a seed in me the fact that taking care of yourself is an important act. It is great for the self-esteem and mental health as it is for body’s health. 5 minutes a day is a minimum that we should all take. EVERY. DAY

So for that and for your amazing personality.

Thanks Jonathan.

 

Dressing at your best because you are worth it

Dressing has always been easy for me. Jeans, sneakers, T-shirt and done! Although, I still don’t think it is a bad look when the clothes are nice and smart. But I think that in my case they missed a bit of swag and they haven’t been leveled up for my age. I’m 27 and don’t feel like I’m 40 for sure, but I certainly don’t feel like 17 either and most of the clothes I still have come from that time.

I don’t have Tan France with me to help me on the way but I certainly do remember some of the great tips he gave like: the French tuck (why French by the way?! xD) and most importantly the confidence! I’ve seen while looking at all the heroes (name of the guests in the show) this little sparkle in the eye when they looked themselves in the mirror looking good. Confidence and pride are so important and actually clothes can really make you feel like a different person. So if you have low self-esteem right now, doing yourself a little makeover can be a nice idea!

After seeing Tan in action, all I want to do now is shopping a bit but also take time to dress up properly in the morning. Because I know that if I am confident, the energy that I’ll create will surround myself all day, impacting my mood and other people’s mood. And I love a great vibe! So taking time to dress up properly every day is worth it because you are worth it and people around you are worth of it too.

P.S: I love yoga pants but as I have been wearing them for the past 2 months because it was easy to put it on, I’ve also been dreaming of a great night out dressed properly. Damn, I can’t wait!

 

Decorating nicely your apartment because you are worth it

If you’ve seen Marie Kondo show on Netflix too, you’ll have notice that lot of people keep a looooot of stuff at their place. I used to be the same, but thanks to Marie’s show and minimalism, I’m decluttering every single day a bit more of my own place and thanks to that also a bit more of my own mind. And I love it. It allows me to focus on the important things in my life.

But as much as I care about clutter, having a great decoration in our living place and working place is also vital. I never thought about it before but actually not taking care that much of our environment says a lot about us.

When we don’t care about the mold in our bathroom, it means we don’t care about our health. When we don’t care about repainting our place to make it cleaner, we don’t think we are worth it to live in a great place. But guess what, we are worth it!

I’ve learned with Bobbi that living in a comfortable place, well designed and decorated according to our taste and needs, is important and that we shouldn’t settle for less. It says I want to be happy and create happiness in my space. And it is the same with nature. When we take care of Nature, Nature takes care of us too. So it’s the same if someone throws something away in the woods, it says: ‘You are not worth it’. But truth is, when you don’t feel worth it, do you really want the people and the environment around you to be thriving, reminding you that you are not? I don’t believe so. But we are worth living in a great space and a great environment so let’s do the job for us and others.

Cooking for your health because you are worth it

Antoni….Antoni…I could talk about Antoni for more than 2 hours. He is my sexy crush of the cast (although I love them all) and also the food & wine expert on the show. He is helping people to find joy in cooking again. So often I realize from my own experience and heroes on the show that we forgot to love cooking. It is an essential thing in our lives that we practice multiple times daily and we often don’t like it that much. Why?

It is the time of the day that we can get creative, be really mindful about what Mother Nature provides for us and our survival and therefore, we prefer reheat a prepared and fake meal in the microwave that will have no taste and will be potentially bad for our bodies as it won’t bring any nutrients and so on, rather than cooking fresh and healthy food that would be great for us.

In a past life (ok 3 years ago xD), I used to order meals on Uber Eats every single day at work because I was lazy to cook and didn’t have nor the inspiration or the envy to cook at home at night for the next day. It’s been only few months now that I’ve start being mindful about what I eat and it changed my health. My reflux has completely stopped since I stopped processed food. Eating no more sugary snacks gave me more energy. And I’m very happy that I was able to be more mindful of what I put in my body (it is still a daily challenge as temptation is everywhere!).

But actually one quote really changed my vision about food and it is: When you eat something, think about if it’s going to nourish your body and make it feel better. If it is, it will add more prana, more energy and life force into your body, mind and spirit. But if it is not, if it’s going to take prana out of you, it will leaves you unsatisfied and malnourished and who wants that?

But watching Queer Eye and Antoni now (aaaah…) made me realize that there was also another dimension to food that I haven’t seen before and it is: emotion. Food can bring you emotion, it can remind you great memories from your childhood, from an important moment in your life, everything! And it can also create emotion. The taste, the texture, the person you are eating it with can bring new sensations and create new memories.

And we are worth these great cooking or eating moment. Alone or with people, we are worth it to enjoy food and have a great time. We are worth it of natural and organic food that our body will love because our body is worth it too.

Answering that email can wait. People can wait but our health can’t wait.

 

Acting on your mental health because you are worth it

This part led by Karamo Brown is the most challenging one to me. Dealing with self-limiting beliefs is so important and can look so frightening. Every time I just think about self-limiting beliefs I think about my Yoga Teacher Training and it brings up a lot of memories, good and bad. As Karamo says, it is important to feel better on the inside to have some external change but most of the time it is the internal change that will bring external changes that will endure in time.

Acting on mental health isn’t something that should be taken care of in 15 minutes every day, like grooming, dressing, cooking, cleaning. Mental health is something we are dealing with every. Tiny. Seconds. In our lives. So it’s a constant work and it is the most important work as it sustains everything. Practicing a positive mindset literally affects everything in our lives. It is so much worth the time and energy, trust me!

The funny thing is we all have more or less the same limiting beliefs: we are not good looking enough, not perfect enough, not belonging enough, but guess what? We are not alone feeling that way and it’s our life mission to practice self-care and mental-self-care in order to feel good and worth it and to find people who remind us that we are worth it too.

We can’t do this alone.

 

Now, I’ll tell you my key takeaway from this show is:

 

GET HELP

 

I realized from this experience and how I’ve processed it how getting advice from a professional is valuable. We all think we don’t need them, that looking at some videos on Youtube and read articles on the Net will make us ‘qualified’ to judge us, but it’s not true. Having an external person telling you what’s wrong and what’s good in your style, at your place, in your mindset…is the best because you won’t take it (too) personally! Sure it’s hurting if your friend is telling you that your place is shitty and you look bad. Some might say it to really hurt you (leave them) but some with great intentions just may want to raise awareness about you because they want the best for you. They may not have the language to say it and you to understand it but it may be a sign that you need some help. And it’s really funny to see in the episodes that some of the closest people around the heroes were expected the changes since a long time, maybe they tried to help them, maybe not. But you can really tell watching the heroes that they needed someone exterior to help them because it was less judgmental for them. They were less afraid of being authentic too, admitting that they sometimes just didn’t know how to do the things or that their mental health has been down but they were afraid to acknowledge it. I wish we could have mentors like that for life, external people to keep us on track or to give us advice in our lifetime because I’m sure it will help us all a lot. But as most of us don’t I believe, our family, close friends and professionals around us are the ones we need to rely on. We all think that people are judging us all the time for our acts and behaviours and some may actually but it’s nothing compared to our own thoughts.

 

People may judge us but we judge ourselves even more.

 

And it’s not healthy. Reaching out for help, even if we think we can handle it, is the best thing we can do because it’s an amazing growth experience. It’s leaving a bit on the side the negative part of the ego and opening us even more to kindness and gratitude.

And you, what did you think of the show? What are your takeaways?