Certain times of the year naturally lend themselves to self reflection and the new year is a nearly universal time to contemplate goals and habits.
Coming out of the happy chaos of Christmas vacation time coupled with the general slowdown of life that happens with holidays allows for time to actually slow down and reassess.
One category that I naturally love to contemplate habits and routines is around beauty and wellness. What we do daily (or most days at least!) makes a massive difference in our overall appearance and general sense of wellbeing. An intensive facial once a month but then not washing your face daily at bedtime? Doesn’t make sense! Exposing our skin repeatedly and intentionally to the sun in order to get “some colour”, but then spending time and money on expensive laser treatments and anti-wrinkles creams in an attempt to reverse sun damage? Just doesn’t add up logically. However, we’re all human and logic isn’t always front and center where our actions are concerned. But, this is where it’s helpful to step back periodically and really try to take a good look at what habits and routines we have in place. Maybe we can spot some of our own illogical patterns and do our best to course correct.
The idea with habits and routines is that over the long haul they move the needle in meaningful ways.
Incrementally day by day the impact of your efforts may seem inconsequential, pointless even, but the days and weeks accumulate into months and then years and that’s where the real changes become obvious.
Beauty and wellness habits are definitely no stranger to this logic. Do something once you’re not likely to see much, if any, result. Do something repeatedly over a much longer period of time, helpful or harmful, the results will start to reveal themselves.
This of course is where we can also find ourselves dabbling in more extreme beauty treatments in a desire for more immediate results.
Or perhaps because there truly is no way to gradually earn those same results through other more moderate efforts. Botox and fillers are two of the more popular options here in this category, alongside somewhat more relatively minor cosmetic surgeries such as eye lifts. I think though it’s helpful to know you’ve done everything you feel you can from a place of moderation and gradual, consistent effort before deciding these amped up options are the only way to go. This will support confidence in decisions reached knowing they came from a place of thoughtfulness not random impulse.
One beauty goal I recently decided to commit to in a spirit of experimentation and a general attitude of “well, let’s just see how this goes” is taking collagen supplements.
After polling my smart, well researched health advisors around me I settled on Organika Enhanced Collagen Peptides Protein Powder For Healthy Hair, Skin, Nails, Joints - Hydrolyzed. It’s a powder, which proclaims to be tasteless and you can just “stir it into water”. I quickly determined that no, in fact this powder is far from tasteless and in fact nearly made me nauseous the first few times I attempted to take the recommended 10g (two scoop) daily dose in water or juice (I have an admittedly fairly weak stomach). After a few days of experimenting and mixing it into a variety of different foods and drinks some manageable options surfaced. Here’s the secret; strong tasting foods and drinks to mask it as much as possible and split it over two separate servings.
But then a thought quickly dawned on me.
If I’m going to this much effort (and added expense at approximately $30/month) hoping to receive some barely detectable difference in my skin, hair, nails and joints, what are some other daily habits I have that would likely move the needle way further? Barely skipping a heartbeat my wise inner voice shouted out loud and clear “Sugar! And smushing your face into a pillow for 8 hours a night!!”
So now, not in an effort to raise the bar impossibly high,
but more from a spirit of attempting to be logical, I have found myself embarking upon a small collection of what, at least seem to me, to be interconnected new beauty habits. Daily hydrolyzed peptide collagen powder, mindfully pulling back on added sugars in my foods and likely the biggest hurdle of all, sleeping on my back throughout the entire night.
It’s relatively easy to look for things to add to our beauty routines; a powder, a cream, a new lipstick. It’s a wildly different beast to take a serious look at our lifestyle habits and contemplate big changes that we know with fairly good confidence, if committed to, would bring solid benefit. But these benefits come slowly, over time… ugh…. And they require us to change…. major ugh.
It’s kind of surprising how often the conversation of habit formation comes up when speaking with makeup clients.
Yes, we also spend plenty of time discussing makeup products, shade choices and application techniques. But at the heart of actual nitty gritty results, it almost all comes down to actually doing the darn thing, it’s about habits. The big players for beauty habits in regards to makeup? Consistent effort put into taking care of your skin so the makeup goes on well and everything looks as good as it possibly can. And then actually doing makeup; dedicating the necessary time to learning and to then applying it, hopefully with enough skill and confidence to be happy with your results.
Some beauty habit questions for you to ponder for yourself:
- What routines help you feel beautiful? Maybe it’s doing your nails consistently, staying on top of your hair colour or cut, a contemplative skincare routine that helps you wind down your day peacefully, spending 5 minutes most mornings on makeup, getting to the gym for a good sweat a few times a week.
- Examine what beauty routines are solidly in place that help you emotionally and mentally feel like you’re taking good care of your appearance. Take a look at how you’ve been successful in establishing those routines, how could you take the same approach to other beauty habits you’d like to form? Is it pre scheduling your appointments? Is it having things out in plain sight to remind you? Is it having a set time of day you do certain activities? The same logic that backs any other habit formation applies exactly the same to beauty habits.
- How can you break a new desired beauty habit or goal into its tiniest possible step so it is as easy as possible to do and commit to? I often find it helpful to think in terms of the duration of time I commit to doing something with the intention of building up time slowly week over week. So maybe for example you’re wanting to start wearing a little more makeup in your daily life. Start by telling yourself you’ll commit to just 1 minute in the morning and then see what you can pull off in that 1 minute. The next week it’s 2 minutes of time, the following week 3 and so on.
What beauty habits are you playing around with these days?
Any questions relating to makeup skills reach out, we’re here to help with everyday makeup lessons and beauty products. And the beauty team at Prête Studio is ready and waiting to help you out with your manicures, pedicures, brows and skincare facials.
