A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 4 – Full-Time Rose Colored Glasses

  April 23, 2020

Day 4 is titled “Live a Five-Star Life” in 30 More Chic Days by Fiona Ferris. This “Day” is pure Fiona – how to up-level one’s exterior and interior without breaking the bank! Fiona writes about how she has added a luxurious feeling and fun to her daily life through some small-but-daily actions.

Here is one of her tips that I am currently implementing:

1. Read and speak only 5-star discussions. Let’s avoid the Debbie-Downers of the world and hang out with our bubbly, upbeat friends! This includes the books we read and the movies/shows that we watch.

Fiona even skips reading 1 & 2 star book reviews of books that have an overwhelming majority of 4 & 5 star reviews plus several really good discussions on the book that pique her interest on Amazon. I hadn’t thought of the 1&2 star reviewers as coloring my thoughts of a book with a negative vibe, but if the book has 75% or more 4 & 5 star well-written reviews that excite our interest, why read the 10% or less 1 & 2 star reviews? Those negative reviewers are just going to have a corrosive effect on what could be an enjoyable book. 

As far as hanging out with our positive, sunny-natured pals – that goes double for the voice in our heads! Now is not the time to critique everything to death. I’m preaching to myself here. By natural inclination and professional training, I excel at analyzing any situation and listing its problems. Great for work where I got paid to analyze systems and find their weak points. Not so great for the rest of life! (For example, a 2-year old throwing a screaming tantrum? It’s actually not a big problem and the kid will grow out of it. Nothing to analyze or fix here (unless the 2-yr-old is tired or hungry.))

Gretchen Rubin in her book, The Happiness Project, devoted a whole month to attitude. For the month of November, she resolved to develop a positive attitude. Earlier in the book, she had discovered that a good way to change how she felt about something was to “act the way she wanted to feel.” (For example, even if we are feeling a little irritated, if we force our face to smile, in a few minutes, our emotions will little-by-little move to match our physical action.)  In Gretchen’s case, she set aside a “Pollyanna Week” in which she resolved to make only positive comments. (That’s right, no negative comments, at all, for a week.) Fiona also talks about the speaking-feeling relationship in this Day. If we look for pieces of our daily lives to talk up as “5-Star” wonderful experiences, we will notice those terrific experiences and we will enjoy them much more.

Now is the time to put on the rose-colored glasses and just leave them there. There is nothing most of us can do about this whole pandemic situation, anyway. Let’s resolve to look for happy topics to think about and talk about. Try to avoid the news and people who are fixated on the fearful and the negatives. (Avoiding Debbie Downers is easier said than done but at least we can keep that dreary, draining Debbie Downer personality out of our own heads!)

As Fiona compellingly writes, whatever we look for, we will find. So, if we are looking for the negative and the fearful, we will certainly find them and feel depressed and terrified. If we consciously look for the beautiful and the “5 Star”, we will find them and feel happier and more upbeat.

Fiona presents a lot more in this chapter as well as sharing a collection of really good tips on how to get “our 5-Star happy on”. I will be referring back to Day 4 often during this lockdown period.