How To: Get Shit Done

Allow me to tell you something you already know: Life’s all about balance.

Some days you eat healthy and drink plenty of water.
Others you do a late night trip to maccas with your boyfriend singing “double..double dinner, double dinner, double dinner double dinner” to the tune of Game of Thrones and order steamed buns.

Some days you wake up early without an alarm feeling refreshed, actually do your laundry, hang shit on the clothesline (!) and then proceed to fold. and. put. it. all. away.

I know. It astounds me as well.

Other days you moan and groan, dragging your feet and proceed to tell anyone in a meter radius how you feel every god damn minute.

Seriously, if you could go an hour without saying how tired you are, you could achieve anything.

I recently wrote about Procrastination and how it can rule your life like some sort of negativity-fuelled overlord that feeds off untidy kitchens, full vacuum cleaner bags and your own self-loathing.

This time, I want to tell you how to grasp the rope of Productivity and get out of that sinking sand.

I would say once and for all, but lying isn’t my strong suit.

Don’t set the bar too high by jumping in the deep end.

Hun. You’re not Drake and why would you want to be you can’t go from 0 to 100 real quick. Habits take time to change, so allow that for yourself. Start with making adjustments in your mental attitude and reward yourself for the progress you’re starting to make. Having good support from those around you is important. Sometimes people will raise their eyebrows at you for making changes. You need to have faith in yourself and only listen to those who want to bring you up.

Take note of when you’re doing things that make you feel good.

This is also known as being mindful.
A way that I’ve found to completely rewire my brain is at the end of every day, write down 3 things you are grateful for. It can be so simple. Sometimes mine are just being grateful that I have 2 eyes that work and all of my fingers and toes. 

Then, at the end of every month, it’s a good time to reflect on how you’ve been feeling and acting. Making a conscious effort to do this means that you will be able to identify what you’d like to work on and more importantly, what you’re doing well at. 

The more often you consciously do these two things, the easier it gets. You form a type of muscle memory in your brain and it becomes automatic. You will suddenly be so grateful and happy while also being able to recognise what you bring to the table life-wise which I have found to be so important for my self-worth.

Indulge (and then get back into it).

The more you deprive yourself, the more you will be drawn to the things you are avoiding. Get the duvet day out of the way and get back amongst it tomorrow.

If you don’t do it, don’t expect someone else to.

In other words, don’t put things off hoping that if you don’t do it, your partner/flatmate/mum will pick up the slack. No sugar-coating here (I’m on a diet) be harshly honest with yourself. There’s no such thing as “it’s not my turn to do the dishes”. You’ve literally just made that rule up so you can do fuck all.

Don’t do things for anyone other than yourself.

If you do things “for” someone with an expectation behind it, you’re not being kind you’re doing a weirdo business deal that the other person has no idea they’re part of.
And that’s really unfair.
Also, it increases the chance of resentment building and decreases the chance of you continuing to do the good things. Your motivation is coming from an external source which means you are putting that power in something other than you.
You will wonder why no one treats you the way you would treat them and essentially put yourself on a pedestal built from false pretences.
Find it within yourself. You will hold it and nothing can take it from you.

Obviously, things happen in life that will get you down and it can be so easy to absorb the vibes other people (and even events) emit. And when you’re feeling like shit, you won’t want to do anything!

Building that resilience is extremely important. 

There’s that saying “an entire sea of water can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside of the ship”. Taking care of yourself is the equivalent to fixing any holes in your ship so the little things in life won’t get in and weigh you down.

Build yourself strong. When things are thrown at you, take your time to take care of yourself, feel what needs to be felt and keep doing the things that you know make you feel better. Don’t let those bad vibes come in too far and undo all of your good work.

I hope you have a productive and happy week!!

Keep being you

Megan x

How To: Love Your Natural Skin

This weeks blog, I wanted to share some personal stuff that I haven’t really told anyone before!
I want to do this in the hopes that it may help someone out there. Even if it’s just in a small sense to help them feel like they have someone to relate to and maybe give some comfort in knowing they aren’t alone and that it’s more than okay to be you. (approx. 7 min read xx)

Ever since I was in primary school, I remember feeling self-conscious about the way I look.

I had rosy red cheeks and very fair eyebrows which also had a red hue on the skin behind them.
I’m sure this is far more common than not, but I didn’t have any friends who looked like me.

Other kids used to say weird shit to me like “do you shave your eyebrows?”.

Also in my family I would be teased. Families often joke with each other and that’s totally normal but in particular, one aunty would tease me about my chubby cheeks, “huge” arms and barely-there brows. Which made me feel like the odd one out. A weirdo.
However, I was young and assumed everyone in my family loved me anyway, no matter what I did or looked like.

But I can recall the final instance that really got to me.
I was about 7 or 8 years old and we were lining up for the yearly class photos.
You know the one, when you had to go sit with everyone in your class and look all keen, finally get the picture and then shuffle off into another queue to smile like a geek for a solitary shot that your mum would dish out to the grandparents.

The geek herself aged about 7?

Anyway, it was in this queue that the principal came up to me and asked me to “wipe that lipstick off my face” to which I replied with a blank stare.
What lipstick?
He then held up his thumb and tried to wipe. my. eyebrows. off.

He let out a confused “huh” sound before he realised and scuttled off back to his office.
I was stunned and not sure as to who was the most embarrassed by this interaction.
But I went inside feeling really sad and, well, ugly.

This feeling stuck and I fully dwelled on it becoming hyper-sensitive to comments about my appearance.
I started comparing myself to my friends and I remember I would stop eating my lunch and throw it away in some sort of compensation, as though I didn’t deserve it.

It was somewhat of a relief when a year or so later I went through chemo and all my hair fell out. Like, at least now I matched.
My rosy-red cheeks disappeared entirely as there was little life left in me.

As my hair started growing back around age 12, I discovered makeup.
All I wanted to do was blend in to the crowd so I learnt how to cover my redness and pencil in my brows.
I finally felt like I looked somewhat normal.

I can’t say I was excited about leaving Intermediate and heading to high school. I wasn’t excited about anything, really.
But I was ready to leave behind the awkward in-betweener stage of my life where I was only known as “the girl in the blue beanie” or, my favourite, “Smeagol”. To be fair I was sick af and did actually look like this lol so at least they we were accurate.

So, I continued playing with makeup through high school.
Despite the other girls who would take the piss out of me for it. I resented their hissing whispers but kept practising. I remember hating pretty much everyone at my school and I know I was really hard to be around. I would carry all the side-eyed looks, rumours and backstabbing around with me and bring the negative vibes home.
However, makeup never eventuated into anything more than a tool I used to make myself feel more comfortable about my appearance.

This became rather dangerous as I quickly believed that I needed makeup in order to even leave the house.
I felt like if I looked perfect then nobody could diss me for anything. Like I was taking their ammo away.
Rules started forming in my mind about how I was supposed to look and even friends and family weren’t allowed to see me without my makeup on.
I was so incredibly insecure and actually fearful of being seen without it.

As the years went by, this fear increased in depth and enveloped me.
Now, no one was allowed to touch my face.
Even if a friend reached out and said “oh, there’s a hair stuck on your face let me get it off for you” I would recoil and I’m sure a couple of times I snapped at them to not touch my face.
I couldn’t accept any compliments because I felt like they would never say those nice things to me if they knew what I “really” looked like.

Bout 15 ay

I’m well aware now of how silly all that may seem and how I really held myself back. I can now see how almost childish it is to depend on other people’s validation for your own self worth. You need to have it within you and it can’t be something someone can take away from you.
If you’re not “hot” in school, then that’s all good. You just haven’t peaked yet. Who would want to be the kind of person who wants to live in the past and will never be the “greatest” like they were in high school.

It’s such a shame because carrying around any sort of fear is really unhealthy and I quickly developed social anxiety and multiple types of depression.

Disclaimer: Of course, it wasn’t just my appearance that contributed to my deteriorating mental health.
I suffered from PTSD due to the multiple hospital experiences but, I’d be in denial if I didn’t acknowledge that it played a role.
So to keep it relative to the subject, that is as far as I will disclose here.
I’m so grateful that I now have a full grip on what contributed to my multiple mental health issues in the past. I reckon it’s really important to get to know anything you are experiencing through honest self-reflection and research.
By reflecting back on events, I can pin point what events lead me to feel certain things and develop core beliefs that limited me.
This helps me explain to myself what the hell I was on about back then. It has helped me to forgive others and myself,  learn from it and ultimately get the f u c k over it.
And so, now that I am fully through the dark tunnel and loving my life on the other side, I would be more than willing to share my experiences in further detail in another blog post if anyone would find it at all useful or comforting.

So how did I learn to love my natural skin?
The truth is, I don’t.
Not 100%. Not yet.
But what I have learnt is that I am ok, just the way I am.
By investing in skincare that really works for me and with the help of my amazing partner, I have felt comfortable enough to let friends and family see me without a full face of makeup.
Some even without any makeup at all.
He has also encouraged me and helped me to go out the house to the supermarket with no makeup on at all and interact with the staff there.
This may seem ridiculous to some of you, and that’s ok because that means you’ve never felt so incredibly low about yourself so I’m genuinely happy for you.

Speaking openly about it definitely helps too.
My good friend said she could relate to this. She said something about her own insecurity that really rang true, “it’s just a characteristic like curly hair or brown eyes. It’s just a part of you not something you should feel you have to hide.”

It may not be every time I leave the house that I feel comfortable enough to wear no makeup, but the amount of times I can is increasing.

I hope this “back-story” post has helped some of you to feel like you’re not alone in your past experiences and that you’re allowed to be you, no matter what that looks like.

I’ll be doing more posts about my natural skin after my vaycay!
I got my brows cosmetically tattooed a few years ago and after a few consultations this year, I’ve been informed that the woman who did them pretty much fucked them up lol sooo they have to be fixed now. Yay.
I will definitely be blogging about this experience too with advice!
There will also be a post on my skincare routine featuring before and after pics of my bare skin! So stay tuned and follow if you’re interested in getting some great skincare tips.

Keep being you,

Megan xx

Megan is the CEO of Maverick Cosmetica
Maverick is a New Zealand online makeup store out of Megan’s home on the beautiful Kāpiti Coast.
All orders $50+ receive FREE shipping NZ wide
Buy any 2 Antipodes products + receive a free Reincarnation exfoliator or Grace facial cleanser while stocks last xx

A Train Of Thought …

We’re getting deep this week, come take a dive into my mind …

Do you ever just sit at your happy place like the beach or in the forest and get thinking?

Getting real deep on your shit like how far you’ve come, how beautiful life is, how hard you’ve worked to get to this point and that if you had done anything differently then maybe you wouldn’t be where you are now?

Do you ever think how far you still have to go, but because you actually want to get there, it’s now exciting instead of daunting?

About how now you can rely on yourself to carry you through?

And yeah, it’s heavy shit, but like most people, you’ve now learnt how to put pain to the side.

Every now and then have a good cry and allow yourself to feel what demands to be felt but now it’s only a bad 5 minutes instead of a bad day, which used to seep into a bad week and then a bad month and a bad year, next thing you know it’s a decade later and you’re still hurt.

Don’t listen to anyone else about how to deal with your shit, don’t even listen to me!

If you can find something that actually helps you, whether that’s going for a walk with a mate or by yourself, talking to someone that’s passed away, or writing a public blog post lol then that is what you should do and fuck anyone who tries to judge you!

Living authentically, with passion and love, is cool.
It’s way more fun! Not being afraid to cut out anything or anyone that you feel is holding you back from prospering is definitely a good idea.

Everyone’s problem is a problem if it’s a problem.

Chew that one round for a bit.

My good friends reminded me of something I had said after a bend one time “just because I haven’t eaten in a year and you haven’t eaten in a week doesn’t mean I’m hungrier than you are. We’re both hungry”

Everyone’s problems are a deal the universe has dealt so that you can learn the lessons you need to learn, and get to the places you’re supposed to be.

Earth is school for the soul.

Everyone has their own positives and own negatives. Try not to compare someone else’s highlight reel to your behind the scenes.

No one can have yin without the yang.

In saying that, I don’t believe everything happens for a reason because sometimes horrendous shit just happens in life and there’s literally nothing good about that event.

Maybe sometimes you just have to carry it with you and find a way to accept it.
That can make you into a better friend / parent / child / sibling ’cause you’ve actually experienced some flip sides to the regular Main Street life.

Whoever became a good sailor from calm seas?

You’ve crashed into a million pieces, you find yourself now having to scrape them all back up. You cut your hands trying to put them together again (and again) and then all of a sudden, you’ve done it!

It is part of your history, not something to disguise.

Your right people, your tribe, your family, will see that in you and see you as more beautiful and special because of your fucking spirit.

So cheers to you, grab yourself a wine and have a bloody good weekend. You deserve it. xx

Megan is the CEO of Maverick Cosmetica.
Maverick is a New Zealand online makeup store out of Megan’s home in the beautiful Kāpiti Coast.
All orders $50+ receive FREE shipping NZ wide

Do you realise how beautiful you are?

“You’ll worry a lot less about what others think of you when you realise how seldom they do”

-David Foster Wallace

 

Something I have realised about humans is we are all trapped inside our own heads.
I don’t mean that as in we are all completely mental (although I’m certain the best people are).

I mean that as in our beliefs and understandings about ourselves and the world are limited by our own perspective.

Your beliefs create your reality. What we think, we become.

Your thoughts, or self-talk, can easily be influenced by what influential people in your life say about themselves and can be reflected on to you.

For example, my “best friend” at school would say on a daily basis how fat and disgusting she thought she was and moments later she would squish my hands and compare her thighs to mine.
I saw I was bigger and came to the conclusion “if she thinks she’s disgusting, she must think I’m really, really fat”.
My aunty would say my arms were as big as her thigh and the chubbiness of my cheeks was a common topic of ridicule. An elephant never forgets.

Why we give other people power over how we feel is still a mystery to me, but nevertheless I began to throw my lunches away and not eat at school or in public places.
With time and with constant self-talk of “you’re not good enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough, you’re lazy, you’re annoying” this insecurity lead on to my appearance and I started wearing makeup at an earlier-than-most age and would never leave the house without any makeup on. Because to me, if I looked “perfect” people would think I was perfect and had a perfect life and therefore have nothing to criticize me about (to my face anyway LOL).
The thought of anyone seeing me with no makeup on was genuine panic attack fuel. This is still somewhat true 12 years on.

However it is amazing what surrounding yourself with genuine, positive, loving people who aren’t constantly competing with you and bitching about others (because if they do it around you, they’re doing it to you) can do for your self-esteem.

So if you have been like me, had this secret that you carry around for years (the secret being what I actually look like lol) and you feel as though you couldn’t possibly tell/show anybody, you get to a point where you realise, you have to.
And when you finally do, when you finally summon up the courage to show people, to get this huge thing off your chest, you realise…

People don’t care.
No one cares! Not really. Not even your closest mates (in the nicest way).
They don’t really care. Because they are also trapped in their own minds, they are the centre of their own worlds and the big stuff you’re telling them is just information about you.

That’s all.
Like the stuff I told you before, really big deal for me; for you, just some information about me.

So you may not even care about this blog or find it interesting (soz bout it) but I’m hoping that there might be someone out there, like me, who will find this comforting and a confidence boost to allow them to be themselves.

Makeup is fun and absolutely a great way to give yourself a confidence boost, but if you let it become so much more than that, that you need it, it really becomes a problem.
If you look at your face with no makeup and truly cry, believing you’re hideous, if when people compliment you, you say to yourself “you wouldn’t say that if you saw me in the morning”, if you can’t leave the house or answer the door without putting makeup on..

I urge you to realise how beautiful you really are.
You’re fine. I promise.
And isn’t it comforting to know that no one actually cares wtf you look like?

Keep being you,

 

Megan xo