Motivational Monday: Beautiful Or Average?

Given the option between “Average” and “Beautiful” which description would you choose for yourself?

According to a new worldwide survey conducted by Dove, it revealed that a whooping 96% of women consider themselves to be average, leaving only 4% who believe that they are beautiful.

For their new Choose Beautiful campaign, Dove decided to illustrate the survey results with a video. Across five cities - Shanghai, San Francisco, London, Sao Paulo and Delhi, women were filmed in local shopping areas as they walked up to one of two doors marked with a sign that read “Average” or “Beautiful”. The camera followed the women to see which door they would choose to walk through and then to find out their thought process behind going through their chosen door.

Lets pause here for a moment as I put out a little disclaimer. I am well aware of the controversy behind Unilever and Dove in regards to some of the other products and brands they produce that is in complete contradiction to their message of “building women’s self esteem” and I am not in any way trying to promote Dove.

What I want to focus on is the video itself and the thought process of the women on what “average” and “beautiful” means, as I think it’s a belief that many of us also share.

Watching the video, it was incredible to see how many of the women choose to walk through the average door. It was also interesting to hear them reveal what made them choose that door. Some of the responses included:

1) ‘Am I choosing because of what's constantly bombarded at me and what I'm being told that I  

     should accept? "Or, am I choosing because that's what I really believe?’

2) 'It was confronting to see these signs, and to have to choose, and be self conscious of how you 

    perceive yourself and if it lines up with how the rest of the world perceives you.'

3) 'I regretted my choice because it was different to what I live for and what I live'

4) 'I had rated myself as average and nobody else.'

5) 'Beautiful, to me, is too far out of reach.'

Here is the video

Motivational Monday: Change Your Story

Have you ever felt trapped?

Stuck in a situation or something and feeling like you can’t see the wood for the trees…

Two weeks ago I felt stuck

One week ago I felt stuck

And then a few days ago I made a decision. I realised I had a choice in how this little story ended and just like that I changed my story.

I decided to stop focusing on what I wasn’t happy about and instead turn my focus onto what I wanted.

Has my situation changed? Not yet. But I’m a lot further along than where I was.  

Just by making that decision to change the situation I was in and in realising that I didn’t have to stay where I was.

I have a new lift in my step and a lightness in my heart.

By taking action and moving forward, I know there will be a different ending.

So if you are feeling trapped in anyway, be it in a job, relationship, wanting to loose weight …or whatever it is.

Be encouraged to know that the story doesn’t have to end there; you can always change your story.

Have you ever felt stuck or trapped before? What did you do to get out of the situation? I would love to know in the comments below

Have a fantastic week.

Xx

Motivational Monday: Be Unrealistic

Watching a random youtube video the other day, were a few 5 year olds were asked the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and hearing responses like an astronaut, a scientist, a pilot, a musician, an artist and in one case that had me smiling – to act on peppa pig”

Got me thinking about how amazing it is to be a child. To dream big with no filters or sense of “realism” and to believe whole-heartedly that we can become exactly what we are dreaming of

Fast forward to current day and “normality”, I can’t help but think about how we have lost that ability that children have to simply believe. And how, so often even when we do want to dream big we have people around us, the naysayers who tell us to “be realistic” and to downscale our dreams and not be “so ambitious”.

I don’t blame the naysayers, most of the time they actually think they are helping by directing you to a safe route and they usually want the best for you.

But

I firmly believe that if your dream isn’t a little bit ambitious or doesn’t make you feel a tad bit uncomfortable, then it’s probably because you are playing it safe and limiting yourself. Even stretching a little out of your comfort zone is how you grow and truly live.

Remember that the word “realistic” is relative and most times only relevant to the person who is saying it. Everyone can have a different perspective of exactly how far they can go.

So pause and ask yourself the question. What would I do if I didn’t think I could fail?

And regardless of what you are trying to do, my little encouragement for today is to dream a little harder and go for a little bit more.

Be Unrealistic or in the words of one of my favourite quotes “Be yourself. Unless you can be a unicorn, in that case, you should always be a unicorn.”

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Motivational Monday: You Are Responsible For your Own Happiness

One of my absolute favourite genre of films to watch is a good romcom. I’m a serious romantic and love it when there is a happy ending and the girl gets the guy and they ride off together on a white horse into the sunset.

But over the last week I’ve been mulling over this quote “ You are responsible for your own happiness” and looking at the whole fairytale plot line with fresh eyes.

Why is the girl sitting there waiting for her prince charming to (a) come and save her and (b) do things to make her happy?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still a soppy romantic but I just think that if you need a hero in your life then you need to become one.

Stop waiting for something else, someone else to bring joy into your life. It’s too much of a responsibility to put onto anyone, be it your friend, boyfriend, husband, family etc.

If you are unhappy or simply need or want certain things in life then you need to go out and get them yourself. By waiting for others to do things for your happiness, you are transferring all the power and responsibility for how you live your life over to them.

Understand that if you really want your life to be different, you can’t sit there and complain or wait for someone else, you need to realise that are the only person that can really make the change to your life.

So chase your happiness, get rid of things that are making you unhappy and take back the power over your life.

Have a fantastic week ahead.

Segun. x

Motivational Monday: Start Where You Are

Good morning Monday, Good morning February, Good morning lovely readers.

As we move into the second month of the year, I find the need to make a confession.

Shhhh….come closer, it’s a secret.

My confession is, that I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

And if you are anything like me, this means that you sometimes get so bogged down with the details and in trying to make something look “just right” that you don’t get started at all.

Case in point is my lack of blog posts over the month of January, I was trying to switch things up so much, and felt I needed to have a certain things in place that nothing actually happened.

The key, I’ve found is to simply start, take what you have and start. Don’t wait until you have the whole thing figured out or you have everything in its perfect place, otherwise you will find that it will never be perfect and months down the line you will still be waiting to start!

So the idea is to bring what you have to the table and keep on moving forward from there.

Have a great week ahead

Segun. x

Are you a bit of a perfectionist as well? Or do you get so caught up in the details that you miss what you need to do? I would love to know in the comments below. Also let me know, what you are going to stop waiting for and start doing instead?

Monday Motivational posts are posted every other Monday.

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Motivational Monday: Reflections on Lessons from 2014

Hey lovelies

Hope you’ve had a fantastic start to the year.

I had a bit of a lazy start, and decided to take it easy over the last few weeks and just relax with friends and family. But I’m now rearing to go and to can’t wait for everything this year is going to bring.

I just have a really good feeling that it’s going to be an amazing year J

Saying that, as I continue to plan for 2015, I find myself reflecting on the lessons I learned in 2014 and thinking about the quote: “You can't know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been” which is also a variant of the quote “Those who are unaware of history are destined to repeat it”.

To be honest 2014 was a bit of a mixed bag for me with a few big wins and a number of disappointments, but on a whole it was a year that taught me a few things about how I want to move forward for this year.

1) 

To start doing things to make my own dreams come true as opposed to working on someone else’s dream. This was a tough lesson to learn as I'm someone who likes to give and help but time and time again I found out that I was being used by people to fulfil their own dreams whilst I was left standing on the sidelines. This year is about me moving forward on all the amazing things I would like to do with focus and discipline. It’s was a painful lesson to learn but one that has helped to shape my mindset for this year.

Motivational Monday: How to deal with disappointments

I like to think that I'm a positive, glass half full kind of person. But every now and again, there is a situation (or in my case set of situations) so stressful, so frustrating, so disappointing that I found myself facing a bout of disheartenment, complete with a woe is me attitude.

Frankly I felt quite melancholic (Ok probably not quite as dramatic but I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence J

So I did what was needed at the time, I shut down and completely switched off. Sadly my blog bore some of the brunt of this. I’m sorry guys, but I needed some time off just to feel sorry for myself, lick my wounds and eat lots of ice cream!

Thankfully about a month ago, I had the opportunity to go away for a couple of weeks and whilst I was there, I had the opportunity to people watch for a while and just observe.

I saw people who live in some extremely poor and terrible conditions and in situations that you wouldn’t even want to imagine. But the beauty of it was the spirit of the people, they didn’t feel sorry for themselves, instead they seemed to have a high level of pride in who they are, an attitude of I can do anything and I am going to live life and enjoy what I do have.

I found myself completely humbled by the experience. It was exactly the experience I needed to bounce back, to realise that yes I might have been extremely disappointed and frustrated but that I literally had the whole world in front of me should I choose to go for it.

I also realised that some of the very disappointments I was sad about were actually a complete blessing in disguise.

As I thought about it some more, this is what I l have learnt and would love to share

1      1) Disappointment is not rational, it’s emotional, which is why when others try to talk you out of         whatever mood you have fallen into, it’s so difficult to see the sun in the rain

       2) Take some time out to scream, eat ice cream, cry etc. whatever you need, but put a time limit and don’t linger in your disappointment. There is so much of life in front of you and until you take your eyes off your disappointment, and stop living in your past hurts, you won’t be able to see anything else or start the next chapter of your life.