Tiny Buddha

Author: Danijela Jokic Vaislay

  • How to Feel Good In Your Skin: 7 Powerful Lessons on Beauty

    How to Feel Good In Your Skin: 7 Powerful Lessons on Beauty

    You are beautiful 1

    “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” ~Proverb

    I struggled with body image for years while I was living in Europe because I have a very fair complexion, oily skin, and thin hair.

    During my childhood, people would look at me and comment on how pale I looked and ask my mother if I was anemic. Later on, as I was growing up, people who met me would ask if I was ill, or they would say that I look exhausted, tired, and weak.

    It was most difficult during the summers, when there was always a social pressure to get a tan, as I heard a lot of negative comments then. I didn’t perceive myself as beautiful, nor did I think I would ever, until I came to India for the first time.

    In India, bright skin is synonymous with beauty (beautiful means fair!), and everyone complimented me there, telling me how beautiful I am, that I am “bright like the moon.”

    They also admired my silky, smooth hair and oily skin—in India, they call it “glowing skin” and appreciate it because skin can get very dry, with the hot weather.

    Indian women would ask me over and over to share the secret behind my glowing skin, and they wouldn’t believe that it was naturally so oily; they’d think that it must be some cosmetic product from Europe that I didn’t want to tell them about.

    Suddenly I realized why all my Indian friends, who lived in my hometown back in Europe, would not leave the house without the sunscreen, why they’d always tell me that I’d be considered very pretty in India, and why they’d joke that I’d get married quickly there!

    I was shocked when I realized how much money people, both men and women, spend in India for fairness beauty products. Some women even bleach their skin with hydrogen peroxide-based cosmetics. Yet, in Western countries, people spend a ton of money on tanning products and solariums to get darker skin.

    I realized in India how beauty is socially constructed and started feeling beautiful in my own (fair) skin for the first time in my entire life. Or, I should say, I discovered how beautiful I am, with all my Western “imperfections.”

    For last two and a half years, since I’ve been living in India, people who knew me for a long time comment on how I look much more beautiful now and ask me to share my secret.

    I don’t deny that Indian vegetarian food and the abundance of tropical fruits, together with natural beauty products with neem, heena, herbal oils and sandalwood, are part of the equation. But I believe the major reason is that I started feeling beautiful and good in my own skin.

    Here are seven things I learned that can help us all feel better in our skin, with all of our “imperfections.”

    1. Beauty is socially constructed.

    This was one of the biggest aha moments I had in India. While we may not be considered as good looking in our own country, in some other part of the world we may be perceived as a beautiful person.

    In some other part of the world, our height, complexion, hair color, facial features, and body shape—things we might see as “imperfections”—would be considered attractive traits.

    2. Our body is our home in this lifetime.

    We should be deeply grateful every single day that we have a body, which is our home and our vehicle in this lifetime. We can do so many things with our bodies—dance, swim, run, walk, talk, sit, move, hug our beloved, smile, eat, write, type, pick up objects, work, paint, cook, be intimate with our partner, and so much more!

    Instead of focusing on the color or shape of our eyes, which we may not like, we can focus on how fortunate we are that we can see. Instead of focusing on how skinny, thin, short, or fat our legs are, or how much cellulite we have, we can focus on how blessed we are that we can walk, and so on.

    3. True beauty comes from within.

    Although this saying may sound cliché, it’s actually true. No matter how many beautiful facial features a person may have, a sad or angry face is never pretty. No matter how beautiful a person’s appearance may be, if the same person behaves with disrespect to others, or acts rudely and arrogantly, people will not want to spend much time around him or her.

    A smile can bring radiance and beauty to every single face.

    An old wise saying suggests that our external beauty is often what gets people attracted to us, but it is our personality that makes them fall in love with us.

    4. Stop the negative self-talk.

    If we observe the thoughts running through our mind every single day and notice negative self-talk about our body image, we need to consciously stop ourselves and replace those thoughts with positive ones.

    Telling ourselves that we are “fat like a cow,” “ugly as a beast,” or that we look “pale and sick” will do us no good. It will only crush our self-esteem and makes us feel insecure and less worthy.

    We need to observe these kinds of thoughts and decide that we will not continue repeating the same old negative story over and over again; instead, we will embrace and love ourselves, with all of our imperfections.

    It can be hard in the beginning, but the first step to letting go of the negative self-talk is to observe and notice these thoughts coming up. Once we become aware, we can replace them with more positive ones, like, for example, we can focus on what we like about our appearance, or what we like about ourselves that has nothing to do with our appearance.

    5. Self-care is the road to self-love.

    Self-care can help us feel better in our skin and our body immensely. Nourishing our body with nutritious food, good quality cosmetic products, and massages, and practicing some form of physical activity that we enjoy, will not only help us to feel good in our skin, but also to love and respect ourselves more in the long run.

    6. Confidence is more attractive than good looks.

    Imagine that you have a choice to date one of two people: The first is someone who is good looking, but very insecure, who doesn’t feel worthy and needs a ton of validation and compliments, who doesn’t feel confident enough to express their feelings toward you.

    The second is someone who is average looking but communicative, funny, and courageous, who feels secure and good about him/herself and worthy of you, who makes you laugh all the time, and feels confident expressing their feelings toward you.

    Which one would you choose? Very likely the second type of person, right?

    7. There are lots of things we can do to feel better about our appearance, and feel better in our body.

    Although we cannot change our appearance to the extreme, there are so many things that are in our control, that we can do on a daily basis to feel and look better.

    We can wear clothes that resonate with our personality and make us feel more confident, we can do some form of exercise that improves our body tone, practice yoga or Pilates to improve our posture, get manicures, style our hair in a way that we like, nourish our skin, make sure we get enough sleep and drink plenty of water, decide to eat healthier, and so on.

    Though we should do these things for ourselves, if we feel good in our own skin and love ourselves, other people will instantly start perceiving us as more beautiful and loving as well.

  • 3 Ways to Cultivate Gratitude and Boost Your Happiness

    3 Ways to Cultivate Gratitude and Boost Your Happiness

    “Gratitude can turn common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” ~William Arthur Ward

    Living in India for more than two years now has been an eye opening experience for me, as I’ve realized how I used to take so many things for granted. While growing up and living in my home country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in Europe, I was lacking gratitude for all the blessings that surrounded me.

    While sitting in our penthouse apartment in the New Delhi suburbs, in an air-conditioned room, still feeling the need to chill with a cool water or a mango shake due to the intense heat (which can reach up to 118° in the summer), I could observe the construction ground across from our building.

    Constructions workers would come in at 9am and work for twelve hours, with only a short lunch break, without proper safety equipment, chilled water, or any shaded cover to rest.

    While they’d wipe sweat from their face, I’d imagine how hot they must be feeling, as I was sweating even in an air-conditioned room.

    Some of them were working together with their wives, who would help them earn their daily wage (equal to $1).

    These women would carry piles of cement and bricks on big pots on their head, from one side of the construction site to another, sometimes climbing many stairs as well. In my home country, I never saw women working on construction grounds or carrying such heavy loads on their heads.

    Their children would play in front of the construction ground with sand and small rocks, as their parents could not afford to send them to school.

    I thought about how, in my home country, children often complain that they “have to” go to school and people complain about how tough their jobs are. These people in New Delhi could not even dream of sending their children to school or having an eight-hour job in an air-conditioned office.

    The wives who didn’t work on the construction ground would work in our building as maids. One of them cleaned our home. Every day she came in with a water bottle, which she’d cool in our refrigerator, as they did not have an electricity, not to mention a refrigerator, in the slum where she lived with her family.

    After cleaning our home, she’d run back to hers with a chilled water bottle in her hands, almost losing her breath, as if she was afraid the heat might warm that water before she would return. Then she wouldn’t be able to cool her small children, who were waiting in the heat in a slum without a fan.

    Since that day, I never look at the ice cubes in my drink the same way I once did. Ice cubes were just pieces of frozen water, until I saw that for some people, even chilled water is a luxury! Ice cubes are a symbol of wealth and abundance to me now.

    I suddenly became grateful for all the things I am blessed with in my life, even the small things, like ice cubes, chilled water, nutritious food, a fan, an air-conditioner, mosquito repellent in the night, clean running water in my home, electricity—not to mention the “big” things, like an opportunity to get educated, to grow up in a beautiful home, which was warm in winters and cool in summers, my job, the power to choose my own husband.

    I never thought I should be grateful for choosing my husband. Yet, in a place where arranged marriages are still tradition, I realized that it was a blessing that I was born and raised in an environment where I could fall in love with a man and choose to marry him.

    Although arranged marriages do work here, and I see people fall in love after marriage, or at least create a relationship based on kindness, mutual respect, and care, I feel so grateful every day that I had a chance to choose the man I thought was the right for me, with my parents’ blessing and best wishes.

    We often take the things we have for granted, yet in many other parts of the world, there are people who would feel blessed and happy if they could enjoy them on a daily basis.

    If we just take a look around us we could find so many things to be grateful for.

    Some of the practices that can help us to cultivate the feeling of gratitude in our life include:

    1. Gratitude journaling.

    Keeping a gratitude journal, where we note all the things (or at least three things) we feel grateful for every day, can be a powerful reminder of how blessed we are.

    Noting down even simple things—like a delicious dinner we enjoyed, a warm home, a cup of tea or coffee, time spent with our beloved—can be a powerful practice to keep us grounded in a positive mindset on a daily basis.

    2. Creating a list of possibilities and blessings.

    It helps to write a list of all the things we are blessed with, things we usually see as givens, that in other parts of the world are not available to many people.

    So many women around the world still do not have the right or the opportunity to get educated, and so many children cannot attend school or University due to lack of financial resources. According to WHO, 12.9% of the world’s population (over 1 billion people) is undernourished and will probably go to bed hungry tonight.

    Millions of people around the world do not have an access to clean, running water and electricity, which in Western countries we usually take for granted.

    Having a roof over our head, a warm room, a meal on our plate, a degree or opportunity to go to University, electricity lighting our home, and cool water in summers are all big reasons we can feel grateful every single day.

    3. Shifting our perception.

    Instead of feeling sad and frustrated about being single, we can look at this same circumstance from another perspective—as the freedom to be able to choose our partner and wait until we find the right one. This simple shift can help us move from a negative emotional state to a state of gratitude.

    In the same way, we can shift our perception of looking at other things, like the job that we don’t like or our living conditions.

    When we catch ourselves complaining about housework, we can see it as a blessing that we have our own home and, as a result, clean it with gratitude.

    Instead of feeling annoyed that we have to cook dinner, we can feel grateful that we’re able to afford groceries. We can also consider it a blessing that, in this modern era, we do not need to manually wash our dishes or clothes.

    When we catch ourselves complaining about the job we hate or feel bored with, we can feel grateful that we have a job and regular income that can pay our bills.

    We can also be grateful for small things, like air conditioning in our office, having weekends off, or the fact that we don’t need to be exposed to harsh weather conditions or safety threats every day, like so many people in other corners in the world.

    There’s nothing wrong with trying to achieve more and move ahead in life, but we can never be truly happy if we do not appreciate what we already have.