At the LCC event last week, I met Annica Englund and her friend Bea who had just returned from a training session, and when I learned that I had barely trained since high school, we started discussing that training and beauty are connected.

I have thought a lot about this topic afterwards and thought I would share my thoughts as it feels extremely relevant :)

First of all, I absolutely agree, exercise is not just about beauty because you get a nice body from exercising, but also because exercise and a good diet also show results on skin, hair and nails. You feel good about training, and if you feel good, you look good. But I still do not want to put a = sign between training and beauty. If I feel good, I radiate beauty, regardless of whether I am completely unfixed, but feeling good is about so much more!

The time after high school has been quite stressful for me, both professionally and privately. I worked in a lunch restaurant 5 days a week for almost a year, and since then there has been a focus on driving licenses, the new webshop and the blog (do not think any of you have any idea how much work is really behind).

I felt that it became so heavenly a must to be "perfect". You should not only do a topnotch job but also always look good, have a tidy apartment, spend a lot of time with family, friends, boyfriend and  exercise several times a week. If I tried to have all the balls in the air, it was still things that became half-hearted, and therefore I chose to prioritize the training completely for a while. Because you know what I think? The body (and appearance) feels worse from stress than from being untrained! I can feel good without exercising, but I can not feel good when I am stressed.

Same with diet. Because I do not exercise, I try to eat healthier than usual, it is both good and healthy! But if I treat myself to something useless, I enjoy it to 100%. Many people have such a bad conscience when they eat junk that they do not enjoy it, and then it is really unnecessary. Either you let yourself enjoy it, or you can just as well not.

Now during the summer, however, I do not have as stressful schedule, so I have started to grab the training piece as well :)

I would also like to add confidence in this category. This is the most important but tricky bit. I think it's a bit like quitting smoking, you have to have the will and really decide to succeed in changing your mindset! Ask yourself the question "do I want to waste time in life feeling bad about things I still can't change?" because it is so, most of the shortcomings you think you have are sitting only in your own head. And as I realized when I chose to put the training on the shelf for a while - no one will think I'm perfect anyway so I can do as well as I  want and let myself feel good. As long as I feel good about it.

I say like the Dalai Lama - "Choose to be optimistic, it feels better"

I had very bad self-confidence before, and even though of course I still get a slap in the face sometimes, I feel that I have managed to get away from it. In short, by trying to be as positive as possible and not waste my time on things that affect me negatively - and then I mean both thoughts, people, and things. I began to think about what qualities I wanted others to look at, and realized that it was basically just personality-related qualities such as average, happy and optimistic. The rest is just a bonus!

I shut people out who take more energy than they give, and I exchange negative thoughts or change them into something positive instead. If I feel ugly one day, I think "as long as I do not let my ugly feeling take over the radiance, no one will notice how ugly I am" and then I joke that those next to me will at least feel better and that is not wrong to be able to contribute with it either :)

It takes time to change your mindset, but basically bad self-confidence consists of negative thoughts, so instead of trying to change yourself to be perfect in your own eyes, or try to teach yourself that you are good enough which is also very difficult, you can fool the brain by taking a detour around the problem and just trying to become the world's most positive person instead - then your positive thoughts about yourself will automatically lead to a better self-confidence. And if you like yourself, so do others!

I feel good now. I'm not completely happy with my life situation in Gimo, but I make it work and I know that me and Miska will be able to afford something of their own closer to Uppsala / Stockholm in the end! I work with something I love and I go my own way! Now the webshop is open and instead of stressing with the "next step", I plan to work with what I have and observe where this takes me somewhere, and enjoy the summer a bit :)

With this post, I am not saying that my way of feeling good is the right one, I am saying that you must dare to trust yourself and above all listen to yourself to know how to go about it.

You may only live once.