The Essential Guide to Mindful Dressing: Choose Your Colours - Control Your Life! - Softcover

Standish, Jules

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785354922 ISBN 13: 9781785354922

Verlag: John Hunt Publishing, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Mindfulness is all the rage – and now it can sort out your wardrobe! Wouldn't it be wonderful if every day you could feel happy, calm and in control, simply by choosing the right colours to wear? What could be more fabulous than that? This book tells you how and reveals the secrets of how colours can make you radiate with happiness and well-being, and how you can achieve calm in a frantic world. This is the essential guide to mindful dressing, full of practical tips and advice to enhance all areas of your life through your wardrobe.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jules Standish is an image consultant specialising in colour analysis, and freelance journalist.

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The Essential Guide to Mindful Dressing

Choose Your Colours – Control Your Life

By Jules Standish

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2016 Jules Standish
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78535-492-2

Contents

Introduction, 
Chapter 1: Mindful Matters ... and how to master your image, 
Chapter 2: Ageing Is All In the Mind ... and how colours can change your outlook, 
Chapter 3: Discover How To Mindfully Choose Your Colours ... and dress for optimum well-being, 
Chapter 4: Mindfully Lift Your Face With Colours ... and smile with happiness, 
Chapter 5: Mindfully Red – Choose your shade of red and feel energised and positive, 
Chapter 6: Mindfully Pink – Choose your shade of pink and feel compassion and love, 
Chapter 7: Mindfully Orange – Choose your shade of orange and feel confident and full of self-esteem, 
Chapter 8: Mindfully Yellow – Choose your shade of yellow and feel joyful and happy, 
Chapter 9: Mindfully Green – Choose your shade of green and feel contented and balanced, 
Chapter 10: Mindfully Blue – Choose your shade of blue and feel calm and in control, 
Chapter 11: Mindfully Purple – Choose your shade of purple and feel inspired and creative, 
Chapter 12: Mindfully Neutral – Choose your shades of GREY, BLACK, BROWN or WHITE and feel complete, 
Chapter 13: Mindfully Choose Your Own Colourful Conclusion, 
Acknowledgements, 
Book References, 

CHAPTER 1

Mindful Matters ... and how to master your image

It is not money that makes you well dressed: it is understanding.

Christian Dior

Wouldn't it be great if you could get into the habit of mindfully choosing your colours to suit your image every day? In order for this to happen, you firstly need to focus on your image and how you want to project yourself. Once you start to reap the benefits of looking and feeling your best, eventually with repetition you will mindfully choose colours with pleasure and ease.

Image is important as it defines who you are and expresses your personality giving you an identity. The word image literally means "the general impression that a person presents to the public". If your image was linked to a brand, what colour would you choose? Would you want to be recognised as UPS brown, reliable and dependable and someone who always delivers, or are you a Tiffany blue person, fun loving, imaginative and a great communicator? Perhaps you might want to be Nike red, someone who is exciting, dynamic and a real achiever? Companies spend a lot of time and money figuring out exactly what they want their brand to say about them, because the message they portray is vital to their business. Likewise, the colours that you choose to wear tell people about yourself.

The American writer Alison Lurie summarises the importance of image perfectly in her book The Language of Clothes, "For thousands of years human beings have communicated with one another first in the language of dress. Long before I am near enough to talk to you on the street, in a meeting, or at a party, you announce your sex, age and class to me through what you are wearing – and very possibly give me important information (or misinformation) as to your occupation, origin, personality, opinions, tastes, sexual desires and current mood."

If you mindfully begin each day by focussing on your image and what colours would help you emotionally and psychologically then you can choose to communicate your own personal message. Being aware of your colour choices will show results because your brain has a memory, and if you experience the enjoyment of a great day in a particular colour then you will feel positive and happy the next time you wear that colour, simply by an affirmative association.

So, you have the power to focus on choosing colours to enhance your image and the ones that make you smile. Also be mindful of the fact that your moods and body language are infectious to others around you: your family, friends, coworkers and random strangers on the bus!

It is possible to lose your image, or, perhaps you were never clear about it in the first place. You might have felt you were a more extroverted character in the past, someone who always loved to wear bright, warm shades of red and orange but as time and life have gone on have ended up in dark, muted and sombre colours. In this case, dark colours will be connected in some way to a difficult, melancholic period for you. Are you feeling the need to bring back some of that extroversion now? Over time and through difficult life experiences it is common to end up gravitating towards colours that really don't suit you or resonate with your personality or lifestyle anymore. Being mindfully aware of your needs, you will be able to choose the colours that suit you now.

I was involved in an interesting experiment that was carried out in Psychologies Magazine. They put an extroverted personality who normally wore bright colours in black for a week to see how she felt and how it affected her image. "I feel invisible walking down the street in black clothes" is how she summed up her experience as no one looked at her, or came up and chatted to her. She loved to look colourful and she was not happy with the results of changing her image – it didn't allow her personality to shine through and she felt dull and uninteresting.

The other woman in the experiment was a more introverted person and shied away from colour, choosing to live in black and white for a simple, classic look. However, when she was put into colours that she liked she felt "more playful, more like having fun". This wasn't trying to force her into anything too bright or uncomfortable, but simply introducing some soft, pastel shades that she felt complemented her personality and helped her feel more feminine, aside from the obvious benefit of making her face look years younger.

A wonderful example of someone who has embraced her image, however difficult, is Lizzie Velasquez. Lizzie has an undiagnosed syndrome which doesn't allow her to store fat or muscle, and as a result doesn't weigh more than 60 pounds, is tiny and looks years older than her actual age.

Whilst many women try to change themselves to fit in to the ideals of others' requirements, Lizzie seems to have learnt to accept herself with extraordinarily positive self-esteem. She is inspiring by her self-acceptance, and focussing on positive attributes of her image.

Throughout her childhood Lizzie prayed to be 'normal'. At school the other kids posted a video of her asking, "Is this the world's ugliest woman?" It got four million views and thousands of comments like: "Do the world a favour, put a gun to your head and kill yourself!"

She was devastated for a time but then slowly started to realise that her life was in her own hands and that she was not going to let her syndrome define her. She used their negativity to keep going and realised that by being grateful she could define herself by all the good things that she has; for instance, although blind in one eye she is thankful to be able to see through the otherone.

Lizzie decided to turn her handicaps into something positive; she has written books and does talks all over the world, helping people to see that through her bravery and acceptance of who she is and how she looks she is proud of herself and pleased to be visible in front of all those people. Lizzie proved to herself that self-esteem is possible in all circumstances and, however badly you may feel...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: John Hunt Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1785354922
• ISBN 13: 9781785354922
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar