Take time to appreciate beauty

While our ultimate goal as skin experts is to see our community radiating in their glowing skin, we are also on a mission to promote health and well-being and both inner and outer glowing health. A significant part of achieving glowing health and glowing skin is the overall or ‘bigger picture’ and learning to take time to appreciate beauty.

When was the last time you stopped and actually smelt the roses? Like, actually stopped for a moment in time and smelt a beautiful flower? Or stood back and appreciated an open green field and the sun was shining and the wind was ruffling the leaves in a tree? When was the last time you looked at an elderly person and appreciated that every line and wrinkle has its own history and tells a story and that is beautiful in itself?

The truth is that beauty is all around us and when we finally take the time to stop and see the beauty around us, we start to understand that the world around us is more than just a technologically driven, on-call, negative black hole. By appreciating the beauty around us, we can enhance our well-being and value beauty as a tool that serves to motivate us to find and create more kindness and goodness around us. The simple practice of appreciation alone, can completely shift our mindset and recalibrate and re-energise us and those around us.

We all have changes and improvements that we would like to make in ourselves; ‘I wish I could tan without getting burnt’, ‘I wish I could get rid of the pigmentation on my skin’.

Whilst there are ways in which we can start to improve these challenges and make these changes, learning to appreciate the beauty in each situation will make addressing each challenge more achievable but also promotes a level of self-acceptance and enables you to see the beauty in the flaw.

Here are some examples of addressing the above concerns with a different perspective:

‘I wish I could tan without getting burnt’ – tanned skin is often mistaken for ‘healthy’ skin. Tanning is the skin’s natural sun protection mechanism. When the UV radiation comes in contact with the skin, there’s a clever little cell called a Melanocyte which is stimulated. The melanocyte looks a little like an octopus and has tentacle-like attachments called dendrites. The melanocyte's job is to protect our skin, thus it then deposits small amounts of melanin through its dendrites to surrounding cells essentially injecting melanin (brownish pigment) into surrounding skin cells to protect it from the sun.

So you see, a glowing tan’ is actually damaged skin screaming to be protected. What we should want to do instead, is appreciate the beauty in how delicate and clever our skin is, want to protect it from further ageing and damage, and appreciate the beauty of just how complex and clever our skin is. As we appreciate the complexity and beauty of the body and its abilities, we can use sun protection and take precautionary measures that we know are preventing our skin from ageing and damaging. How beautiful is that!

‘I wish I could get rid of the pigmentation on my skin’ – following on from the above example, hyperpigmentation can be caused by a number of factors including scarring, and hormones but the biggest cause is prolonged sun exposure. We’ve usually caused most of the damage in our skin that becomes evident later in life by the time we are 25 years old. The clever melanocyte’s dendrites become damaged, meaning they no longer have the ability to evenly distribute melanin in a uniform manner to create a nice, even ‘tan’. The damaged dendrites now squirt melanin unevenly into surrounding skin cells causing a splotchy, uneven pigment (similar to a splash of paint).

In this case, we’ve already done the damage but what we can do is try to inhibit further melanin production and damage by using products such as corrective serums (avoid bleaching products – these will cause further damage), use an SPF every morning and maintain a healthy skincare routine that promotes brightening the skin. While doing this, we can ensure that our diet is high in antioxidants which fight free radical damage and prevent further ageing and damage, all while we admire just how incredible the human body is.

Appreciation of beauty can have us in awe most of the time. We can general moral elevation by appreciating goodness and kindness and develop admiration when showing appreciation of skill.

So the next time life seems as though it’s going just a little too fast for you or you feel that you’re only seeing the negative in situations, stop, breathe, shift your thoughts, mindset, and perspective, and take the time to appreciate the beauty around you; Especially your own!