Defining Your Beauty Maintenance

Beauty is such a personal process. There's a lot of factors, physical and emotional that will be going through metamorphosis. Beauty routines are so inspiring to watch. I love seeing people sharing their rituals with the world. Building your beauty maintenance is going to take your time. I need you to manage your expectations. Most of this process, I guarantee is going to be you versus you.

It's going to look different to each of us. The most fun part of beauty maintenance is the inspiration. Let's get through the inspiration to the actualization!! Take back being vain, and full of yourself. There's nothing wrong for taking more priorities towards feeling and looking more beautiful. Starting with you and continue with you! Other opinions aren't valuable in this space.

Time for Beauty

How much free time do you have right now? Where are you willing to cut from without guilt. It took me quite a while to unwrap this idea that prioritizing my beauty was vain and self serving because it took time away from other things that felt more worthy. What I know now is that there is a lot of free time around me. When I cut down on things like my scroll and tv watch times, I found the lull. Which then helped me incorporate my beauty ritual into those times. Take the pressure off yourself for it to come together all at once!

Beauty Maintenance Time Management

A shorter routine is not going to be better than a longer routine and the opposite is true too. Find the sweet spot that works for you. If you want more time for your beauty routine consider stealing away time here and there at the beginning and end of your day. Your night routine can be shorter or longer than your morning beauty routine. The magic in picking the right time comes from finding how to make it work for your in the time you have available. Please note that integrating most products that aren't masks don't have a huge time toll if you're short on time. I love getting creative with some sheet masks when undisturbed mask time isn't available.

Beauty in the Long Term

When it comes to my beauty regime, I try to think long term. Monthly and yearly. This helps me pick products with actives and line them up to when I should be seeing results(usually over a few months). Along with proper photo documenting, I love coming back to see at the end of the year where my skin was at it's best and what products I was using. Over time, the actives you'll need will change. That plays a part in what suddenly isn't working anymore.

Managing Your Beauty Expectations

Life has its moments and we are not powerful enough beings to rip time from where we find it most valuable. Investing in your beauty routine benefits you most with consistency. The products can change around. But, what could stop you dead in your tracks is always going to be your expectations. Products can't work miracles and the more you put it doesn't mean you'll get it right back.

Open to Interpretation

I know the idea of spending endless amounts of time tweaking and experimenting sounds overwhelming. It's actually really a relief to remember that it's not supposed to happen all at once. Since it's your routine, its open to your interpretation. Release this pressure that how big or small your pores are is a part of your personality. You have these amazing beauty features given to you by life. Make your beauty routine an expression of making something beautiful even better!

Beauty as Expression

Remember this routine is meant to be an extension of yourself. Leave yourself open to easily changing your mind around your routine. I give you permission to switch out your beauty care focus, if you feel it hasn't been serving you.

Beauty is: You vs You

When I was growing up, it was a staple at my house to say beauty is pain. Referring to the physical pain. Usually brought upon my head as my mom yanked out my knots in my hair. As an adult, I'll happily put an asterisk to that. I spent months teaching myself that there's nothing wrong with feeling like I look prettier because I invest in products that work and enhance my natural beauty.

*beauty is pain because it requires you to step away from instant gratification

At first, you're going to be working against the tide. Creating something out of nothing. It's a personal choice to invest your time into beauty maintenance. In the beginning, we have to unlearn this idea that beauty is vain. That vain is the root of all evil. Vain is not evil, its the prioritization of self. In no way does that mean we are devaluing others as individual beings.

Beliefs about Beauty

Dismantling beliefs that have been instilled in us for so long has set us up indefinitely for self sabotage. Even on the best days of sticking to what feels good in my beauty routines, I fall off. No insidious reason, I'm only dragging my feet. Even when its something that feels good to do, and I get good results doing it. It's easy to drag my feet.

Every day we're fighting beliefs that didn't originate with us and fighting the self sabotage that comes with it. Beauty is pain because it requires me to test my patience. To turn away from comparison. To be uncomfortable redefining what I've held to be true about my own beauty.

Break in case of makeup emergency:

In some cases, makeup has played an interesting ebb and flow with instant gratification and how I feel about myself. Social media had convinced me that I'm beautiful by my skill, not by my nature. When in reality, the two work together. My natural beauty doesn't disappear because I haven't mastered a certain technique.

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