RSSMotherhood’s Real Gifts
July 23, 2010
Talk truthfully to other women…and they will talk truthfully to you…and they will be your salvation. Just knowing you’re normal helps.
Read morePolite Lines for your Hair Colorist
June 28, 2010
Light or Soft Season Client : I feel my head is one become one big amalgamated highlight. I’d like to go back to my natural color with just a few highlights.
Colorist : Why? It’s boring.
This Week in Macleans March 29 2010: Forced To Get Real
March 22, 2010
Macleans articles are fair and multi-faceted. I can get a handle on the larger topic by reading 4 pages. I understand the history and the arguments, and not sound like an idiot when the subject comes up. This topic will not be going away and the sooner I get it, the sooner my family’s health and sustainability will improve.
Read moreCreativity And The Meaning Of Mind-Body Exercise
February 10, 2010
Since I’m forced to do something essentially boring, I’ve had time to ponder why so many more good ideas come to me on the bike than when I’m having a hot bath. Same thing with driving. I believe that my left brain feels busy and important, or thinks it is, so the other side is free to wander.
Read moreThe DVD I Use To Heal
January 26, 2010
I believe that there is no division between Nature and our bodies, between the energy fields around us and within us. There is also no distinction between what is happening to your body and what is happening in your mind. Your Deeper Self and these forces are one and the same, completely swirling and intertwined.
Read moreAttention Clothing Retailers : At 12Blueprints
September 26, 2009
As marketers, when we encounter new ways of doing things, we have 2 choices.
Read moreThe Reveal Photos
August 2, 2009
Once we show you you in the right colours, you will not be able to stop looking at yourself for quite some time.It is very pleasing and interesting to look at. Nobody can be objective about themselves. Nobody. Our mind Photoshops our face every time.
Every season has some special edge. Once you know what it is and how to achieve it with colour, you know everything you need about your appearance.
Book Review : Secrets of Six-Figure Women
March 1, 2009
Like many women, understanding any aspect of finance, wealth, or investment by staring at charts and graphs gets me nowhere. Women don’t learn that way. It makes our eyes glaze over, causing the male financial advisor across the table to conclude that we’re bored or too dumb to get it.
Presenting information to us in the way that is effectively presented to men does not work. Bring on the female financial advisors who can explain in pictures, or with stories, and we’ll get it. Women care about money. We may attach odd values to it, but we especially want to look after those we love. We don’t want to be in the dark, but there is a linguistic issue here.
Armed with knowledge and understanding, women will become very powerful in dealing with money (and probably bigger risk-takers than the men). In fact, the more knowledge women have about a topic, the better and more confident their decision-making. Think about this : is the same true for men? I think it’s the reverse, actually.
Barbara Stanny’s book, Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies To Up Your Earnings And Change Your Life, first published in 2002, does not contain any stock charts. It’s not even about how to invest or manage your money. It enters the picture sooner than that, with how to make the money in the first place by creating an inner change. Fulfillment and empowerment, with very practical and realistic advice on how to get there, are the biggest landmarks on the road to financial success.
Stanny is the daughter of Richard Bloch, one of the founders of H&R Block. Her first husband lost her trust fund through bad investments, leaving her with huge bills and no knowledge of finance. She was forced to face up to a common trait of inherited wealth, namely big insecurity about her ability to support herself. Her journey is recorded in her first book Prince Charming Isn’t Coming : How Women Get Smart About Money , and this one.
Barbara Stanny
For Secrets Of Six Figure Women, Stanny began by interviewing hundreds of women in many income brackets, searching for traits that were common among the high (and low) earners. If you take a group of equally bright, equally educated, very capable women, why is it that some of them will always struggle financially while other will earn ever-rising amounts? Is there a shared set of characteristics that can be found repeatedly among women earning more than $250,000 per year?
Turns out that there are at least 7. And since they’re not personality traits, but rather ways of guiding decision-making, they can be learned.
This is really about finding that thing that you were born to do with love and passion, whether you are paid or not, and from there gaining the self-esteem to charge what you’re worth. Lessons in uncovering your own set of underlying values, in not being a victim, in finding gratitude for obstacles, and so many of the thoughts that resonate strongly with women, are found here.
There are chapters on facing fear and declaring intention, about pulling away the safety net, and about negotiating on your own behalf. The information comes to you through stories about how other women cope with these issues, how they succeeded and how they failed, and what they learned from it.
There is some great advice to be found on speaking up for yourself. This is probably the spot where women are weakest. The biggest reason that men make more money for the same job is this : THEY ASK for it. Until you learn to take yourself seriously, nobody else will either. Learning to do this can be extremely intimidating for girls and for women. Most of us need all the help we can get at using our elbows.
Chapter 11 is entitled Claiming Our Power. With some thoughts about how women lost it in the first place, and continue to give it up to keep the peace instead of compete, and finishing with some beautifully motivating words about taking up your own space to the fullest, Stanny has written a book that any woman who is thinking about her life will find great meaning in. You’ll read many sections that you’ll feel were written for you personally. What would it be like to be at the center of your world and have all the rest spin around you for a change, instead of whirling around the periphery of the lives of everybody else all the time?
This is entirely action-oriented. She knows that failure, rejection, debt, insecurity, and mortgage bills exist but small change is still change. What she really says is this : Women hold themselves back by believing that avoiding stress and responsibility is pro-family. I do that. I know more women who choose this avenue on purpose for this reason. I’m beginning to see that Big doesn’t look like I think it does. Big is where the choices are.
So many of us can feel another woman living inside us that the world has never seen. We keep her buried because we don’t have time to become her, or think about what she’s like, and besides, we’re a little afraid of her. We feel the things she could be, but she’s so far away from the day-to-day role we play that we don’t know where to start. Whether you become a high-earner or not, Secrets Of Six-Figure Women will help you discover Your Deeper Self.
Have a look at Barbara’s blog. She posts about once a month, but it is worth reading. This is money and life advice written for the way women understand and learn. My favorite entry, at the end of this page, is entitled “Fear Got You Stuck?” In it is a line I’ve repeated to myself a thousand times :
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
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Presenting information to us in the way that is effectively presented to men does not work. Bring on the female financial advisors who can explain in pictures, or with stories, and we’ll get it. Women care about money. We may attach odd values to it, but we especially want to look after those we love. We don’t want to be in the dark, but there is a linguistic issue here.
Read moreBook Review : Staging Your Comeback
February 26, 2009
The full title of Christopher Hopkins’ book is Staging Your Comeback : A Complete Beauty Revival For Women Over 45.
If you don’t know the book by Hopkins (a.k.a. The Makeover Guy), you have several hours of hugely enjoyable reading and thinking ahead of you. It recognizes our particular needs in a terribly honest way. He’s not too big with indulgence either, the talk is straight up, as in “ …you are not the right temperament for hair color.” Fun moments abound.
You will read some pretty raw admissions (“I am no longer interested in attention from men.”). The makeovers begin with 12 mommies and grannies, women way out at one end of the I-let-myself-go spectrum. He’s got every Before stereotype covered and achieves 12 remarkable transformations.
Check out the Befores right here. See you in about an hour.
Christopher proves that it’s not only certain men and women who can be more attractive than ever as they age. It’s all of us. Every single one. We make excuses for why we don’t care what we look like but the only result is to further and further weaken ourselves.
Nobody cares how old you think you look. We all know that’s a choice. If you don’t want it to be that way anymore, this is the guy to help take you through a transition.He has vision and imagination. There is so much that can be done before you even think about seeing a dermatologist for Botox or fillers. It doesn’t cost that much money. You use face cream anyhow, right? You do get haircuts, don’t you? We all go out in sweats and sneakers sometimes but there are a thousand small differences that matter.
What I love about this book:
1. The women are real. They’re not suspiciously gifted with wonderful skin or fabulous eyes just waiting to be revealed. You know me. I have little use for anything that’s not Real World, unless it’s meant as an entertaining diversion.
2. He’s brutally honest about what age does to bodies but still respects and enjoys the company and confusion of older women. You also know that I love aging, which I see as an opening of doors. And I love older women and their mind-blowing and completely unrecognized (especially by themselves) potential.
3. There doesn’t appear to be any Photoshopping going on, at least not too obviously. A beauty book with a pixel of Photoshop is rendered useless, IMO. Right away, the whole thing is out of reach.
4. He really really gets how to wear clothes, not just for aging but for all body types. Here’s one I never knew, but it’s obvious when he says it as all correct ideas are : The tighter your sleeves, the bigger your chest. OK, I can use that.
5. The pictures are bona fide, cringe-worthy renditions of the I’m-too-busy/old/young/comfortable/ugly/hot – to care. They are not forgiving or concealing anything. I got a few jolts because I think I saw me.
6. He’s not trying to get you to spend useless money. Quite the opposite actually. One of my favorite lines, “In the beauty industry, live and learn is taboo. Forget and buy is the name of the profit game.”
7. It’s comprehensive. The clothes, shoes, bra, buttons, hair, makeup, nail polish… all covered. He hits on every cliché and has noticed every detail.
8. The hair chapter is outstanding. If there’s anything that we all get wrong in every conceivable way, and that ages us the most, it’s hair. He covers it all, from color to cut, with a very comprehensive discussion of the very common problem of thinning hair.
9. He’s heard every comeback. He’ll tell you your fears before you tell him. Your objections get pretty weak when they’re No. 5 and 8 on the Exposing Your Excuses list.
10. His goal is to give you things you can do yourself. He just wants you to see differently, where seeing yourself is the hardest thing of all. He’s never showing himself off.
11. He’s funny. I spewed my smoothie on the line about the biscuits.
12. He can be brutally honest, ( I know I said that already) , almost sarcastic, in trying to get these women to see that they are so much more than they believe. Your best friend can say things nobody else can, not strangers or family, because you know he/she loves you and you can entrust him/her to take care of your feelings. Nothing is held back.
13. He doesnt’ see what is. He see what is possible. Possibility is what it is all about. Learning, change, it’s all in honor of what is possible. And there are very few limits.
See the man himself on YouTube.
He says his frustration with makeovers is that women don’t continue to practice what they learned, they just go back to the familiar. It may be because the transformation is too much of a leap to adjust to, too much like a fantasy. It can’t be incorporated into the woman’s life fast enough, so it just gets forgotten like a dream or a week on a Carribean island. Even I couldn’t maintain myself in the After Pics and I already use all this stuff. If you presently wear no makeup but would like to try, you’ll need a friend who knows how to do this or a makeup artist. Ask around. Book a private appointment, not a MAC counter on a Saturday afternoon.
Another reason women don’t stay with the changes is the time it takes. I don’t know about you but my tightest commodity is time. Change does take time. It takes trial and error and error and error too. So take on one thing at a time, and pretty soon, you’re in a whole new place, looking back and thinking “That WAS me but it isn’t me anymore.”
He writes a blog. I liked this post on aging. Considering the world of appearance that he lives in, he finds a good balance.
His personal experience with plastic surgery, the new addiction, and how easy to go a little too far with just a little more is here.
Enter the Sweepstakes to win a makeover with him!! for US residents only (how could they?).
We’re not trying to look 21. Or 31. We’re trying to look like fantastic 40’s , 50’s , and beyond. OK, maybe a fantastic 60 does look 50, but not 30!!
Sometimes the way you look IS what’ s holding you back. It’s not a symbol of the shallowness and superficiality of our world. This is completely internal. The whole thing is happening inside yourself. It’s your message to your subconscious that you’re slowing down, that you don’t see yourself or your future as worth the effort. If you believe the future looks just like the present, why expend the energy?
What you believe about the world makes it the way it is for you. If you can sincerely say “I like my life and I don’t want anything to be different, ever, not one single thing”, then you’re doing fine. Otherwise, change starts with you. You don’t have to see or know the endpoint. You don’t have to absorb the entire scope of possibility immediately. You are just signaling your subconscious that you’re changing your brain waves. It will get it. It works for every human being and it will work for you. It never doesn’t work.
If you look like you can take on more, this could be the first step in convincing yourself that it’s true. We’ve all seen (or been) the woman who got an amazing haircut but didn’t keep it because she couldn’t match her personality to that cut. Certain behaviors accompany, and are expected of, certain appearances. Amazing, subtle, and true.
Everyone else automatically believes what you believe about you - I mean, what your subconscious believes. You can strut all you like; if your subsconscious has doubts, that’s what others will hear. Can you know ahead of time where the break in the clouds will happen? No, that’s not part of the deal. All you’re doing is saying “I want the cloud cover to lift. I’m ready to think about a new chance.”
By the end of the book, you feel like you’ve travelled a little journey of empowerment with these women. He has given them back so much pride in themselves. In the After pics, they’re laughing and moving and playing in ways they probably never would have again.
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If you don’t know the book by Hopkins (a.k.a. The Makeover Guy), you have several hours of hugely enjoyable reading and thinking ahead of you. It recognizes our particular needs in a terribly honest way.
The makeovers begin with 12 mommies and grannies, women way out at one end of the I-let-myself-go spectrum. He’s got every Before stereotype covered and achieves 12 remarkable transformations.
Interview With A Makeup Artist 1
January 3, 2009
If ever you find yourself in or near Prince Edward Island, Canada, make sure your eyebrows have grown out and you bring your whole makeup bag with you.
Position of PEI in Canada (dark dot in the East) linked to Wikipedia page.
You can pay a visit to makeup artist extraordinaire, Jenepher Reynolds. She’ll give you the most perfect eyebrow shape and color for your face, talk to you about your hair color, suggest what makeup to keep and what to turf, and create any look you request on your face (everyday, monochromatic, makeup for photos, evening, whatever you can dream up).
Search her name on this site and you’ll see several articles where her products or advice are mentioned. She brings experience from retail, the modeling world, and the field of makeup for cosmetic surgery. A 42 year old woman herself, she understands how the face and skin change over the years. She gets that you’re busy, don’t have an unlimited budget, and want to look polished, not painted.
Jenepher Reynolds
Her approach is definitely understated and highly customized to the woman she is working with. We all have our insecurities, our preferences, and our openness to change. Though she works with her own line of makeup, there is no upsell here. In fact, she’s used products she knows I own over and over in different ways. A matte brown powder can be an eyeshadow, a liner, a contour, a bronzer, or used to tone down a too-vibrant blush.
It was my privilege entirely that Jenepher found some time to speak with me in July of last summer.
1. You’ve worked at the Elizabeth Arden, Versace, Guerlain counters in various cities. Why did you leave a retail environment?
JR: For various reasons. The single biggest reason was that women doubted your advice because they thought you were always trying to make a sale. No matter your level of skill or sincerity, it was hard to break through that wall of suspicion that you were just in it for the commission. The truth of the matter is that most department store makeup artists, or salespeople, take pride in giving correct advice.
Second, I left department stores because I wanted to work in freelance makeup doing commercials, print ads, etc.
Third, there was an intimidating atmosphere, an aura of inapproachability and status with the prestige of some of those labels. This wasn’t in keeping with my personal feeling that makeup doesn’t place some people above others. Expensive makeup isn’t necessarily better. Makeup is about helping you feel good no matter who you are or how much money you have or pretend to have. I wasn’t comfortable with a sales technique of intimidating people into purchasing product.
2. What are the biggest obstacles encountered by women over 40 being who would like to be comfortable with makeup?
JR: There are two.
The last time many women enjoyed makeup, had time to play and experiment, and learned what suited them was in high school. As time passed, they got busy and continued using the same products and techniques because they worked back then. But colors have evolved. Application techniques have progressed. And a woman’s face at 40 is different than at 20 – not better, not worse, just different. Those colors and applications that worked 20 years ago are not flattering any more, or at least not as becoming as other options might be.
3. And the second reason?
JR: Plain old fear. Women don’t want to look silly so staying with the familiar is at least safe. They’re not sure how to find the colors that suit them best now, given changes with hair color and style and skin color and texture.
What you need is someone who will see you objectively, see you as you look today. How you used to look isn’t relevant. Even women who have adapted their makeup to their changing face can have difficulty letting go of a rut they got comfortable with.
The solution for both situations is solved by seeing a makeup artist. For many women, accepting the suggestions of an artist, a stranger who is seeing them for the first time, is very difficult. They really have strong convictions that they need that dark lipliner or dusty rose blush. It’s the job of the makeup artist to evaluate the woman’s degree of comfort with change and with her appearance.
Get recommendations for makeup artists from women you trust, just as you do for hair stylists, and then let them do their work. You don’t fix your own toilet, and you don’t stand there questioning the repairman’s every move while he’s doing it. You’re paying professionals to take their advice, not your advice, right? Go with an open mind. Don’t wash off the makeup till a friend has seen it, a friend that you trust for ruthless, honest feedback.
4. What are the biggest makeup mistakes you see?
JR: Rings around the eyes [heavy eyeliner]. Rings around the mouth [heavy lipliner]. Shimmer on skin that can’t take it. Foundation colors chosen by holding the bottle against your face at the drugstore. “Dusty rose” blush on every face. Beyond those, it varies by individual.
5. What are the most important changes you suggest for mature faces?
JR: There are two guidelines to keep in mind because they apply to almost every woman over 40 years old. The first key to attractive makeup is keeping the color deposit light. Literally using a light touch will result in softer color deposition. Avoiding products that are not too heavily pigmented and colors that are not dark or matte for that skin tone are important too. A heavy-handed application will show in the final result.
The second principle is using smudged definition of features. Distinct, obvious lines look harsh. Given that the soft appearance of youth is lost with age, hard lines are too noticeable and can be aging. Softened lines are youthful and forgiving of changes in skin texture.
You may have found some things you recognize in yourself already. You’ll find more in the second half.
Since you’re in PEI having a gorgeous makeup application, be sure to visit the amazing beaches! Miles of white and red sand, warmer water than anywhere North of Virginia, and sunsets you’ll never forget … the gentle natural beauty of this spectacular place is completely accessible to anyone.
Jenepher can be contacted privately at on the AboutFace site. If you have questions or personal beauty challenges that we can all learn from, please post them in the comments so Jenepher can address them there.
-->If ever you find yourself in or near Prince Edward Island, Canada, make sure your eyebrows have grown out and you bring your whole makeup bag with you. You can pay a visit to makeup artist extraordinaire, Jenepher Reynolds.
She will create any makeup look you can think of, design perfectly shaped and colored brows, and explain how to choose your best makeup colors. You will look polished, not painted.
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