I wanted to share with you two of my
favourite new resources for feeling chic, super motivated, living in a
high-frequency way and generally being happy and excited about creating a
fabulous life every day. I have
certainly been enjoying the buoyancy that one gets when you come across
something fresh and new.
Firstly, a funny story about how I came
across one of these inspirational sources: I was browsing Amazon, as I do
often, trying not to buy too many Kindle books to add to my already huge amount
that I have on my to-read list, and I clicked on this one: ‘French Lessons, The
Art of Living and Loving Well’. It had some good reviews and some
bad. The cover wasn’t that inspiring and I was about to download a sample
(which I likely wouldn’t have read anyway) and I accidently clicked on the ‘buy
with 1-click’ button instead of the ‘download sample’ button.
‘Oh no!’ I thought to myself, but then ‘Oh
well, I may as well read it, it is a French Chic book and I like those’. This is the first time I’ve ever accidentally bought a book in all my years
as an Amazon customer, so the fact that it's taken me that long is probably a minor miracle. But I
started reading the book straight away and loved it.
I finished French Lessons and just knew I
would re-read it again many times, and can’t help but think my ‘accidental’
purchase was divinely guided. I loved it and think you might too. It’s a brief sort of novel/slice-of-life in
which the main character, a woman who has escaped a broken heart by going to
stay in Paris, meets an older lady who shows her around while imparting French-style
wisdom on various topics such as love, forgiveness, charm etc.
The way each short chapter is written is charming in itself,
and it carries a very gentle, inclusive, warm, wise and inspiring air about it. And then, at the end, the author has
summarised each chapter with journal questions to ask of yourself. I am so excited about diving into these journal
questions!
You can see 'French Lessons' here.
Secondly, Gina DeVee has a new daily (weekday) talk show
video series out on YouTube and it’s so
good. If you don’t know of Gina, she
is a spiritual business coach I guess you could say. She’s over-the-top and fabulous, and while
she is way more rah rah than I am about things, I love her enthusiasm and she inspires
me to loosen up a little bit. I can use
that sometimes :) And she always stirs
in me the desire to add a little bit more glamour into my life.
You can see her videos here on YouTube.
I love that she talks about being queenly in how you do things,
and that the queen archetype is a 'masterful blend of the feminine and the
masculine'. I take that to mean feminine
in how I comport myself, mystique, elegant, refined, soft and kind etc, and
then masculine in actually getting things done and being a capable person.
As I mentioned in one of my queen topic blog posts here (and another one here), the
queen isn’t all helpless sitting around.
No, she rules the land and rolls up her sleeves if need be, but at the
same time she lets others support her and upholds boundaries she has set for
both herself and others.
One thing I loved in one of the videos is that Gina said to
her husband, 'After this six week trip to Italy I am not going to be the same woman when I get back. I am going to be a changed woman. We aren’t going to
be living in this apartment on our return'.
So they put everything into storage and moved into a place that felt
like the new her when they returned. And
she did change while they were away, because that was her intention. Imagine if
you decided ‘I am going to be a different woman next year’ or ‘We are going to
have a luxury weekend away’ (or a luxury staycation at home) ‘and I am going to
be different after that’. I love that!
I decided that for myself after hearing Gina. I’m not going on an amazing holiday, but why not
choose my own new beginning? On Monday I
had my eyebrows microbladed (I’ll show you soon, but here is a photo when they were just done) and I thought, ‘Well,
I’m going to be a different woman with my perfect eyebrows’. I started journaling on the new me – what it
would look like, how it would feel, what actions I would take and what emotions
I wanted to invoke, and what came out is that I am feeling called to upgrade my
entire closet.
I don’t mean upgrade the actual closet or buy new clothes,
but upgrade by removing everything that isn’t ‘the new me’ and where I see
myself heading – with my new eyebrows of course :) And you could decide this with anything too. You might think 'When I get home from work tonight, I'm going to be a different woman' and start being the new you. It's fun.
Straight away I put two tops in the wash to
donate because I wore them a lot in the last year of working in our retail
store and that is my old life. They just
didn’t have a high-vibe energy about them to me. They felt boring and a bit staid. You know those clothes that are okay but not
great? Pretty much they just cover your
body but don’t offer any feel-good factor.
If you have one or more items of clothing that spring to
mind immediately, can I offer you a chic challenge to put them into your
donation box? And let me know in the comments that you did.
So, I’m back to the book editing now, in a high-vibe, abundant,
intentional and sexy way of course!
Wishing you a fabulous day and go and be that next level you.
~Fiona~
PS. I was trying to write this post cozy by the fire but Chloe kept on needing to nuzzle in. She did not make my post writing easier :)
