A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 21 – What is in a Name?
May 10, 2020
“Reframe Everything to be Beautiful, Magical and Luxurious” is the title to Day 21 in Fiona Ferris’s book, 30 More Chic Days. Fiona writes that what she names something is a powerful method to either draw her closer to the thing or push her away from it. She gives the example of a supplement of organic flaxseed oil combined with safflower oil. The name was Beauty Oil – she asks “who wouldn’t be drawn to it?” If the name was Health Oil that would be pretty attractive. We all want to be healthy. But the name Beauty Oil, Fiona writes, was a more powerful draw. The concept of beauty already includes the attributes of good health. (You’ll notice that mascara advertisements never show a long-lashed, yellow-tinged, bloodshot eye with the dark circles of exhaustion beneath it. No, the mascara’d, long-lashed eye always has a healthy, bright white area around the colored iris and smooth, glowing skin around the eye.) The example opened Fiona’s eyes to the idea that she could consciously choose to make a few other “desired” healthy habits more enticing by applying some type of “Beauty” name to it. This would make the action easier to adopt and keep. In a way, just like the mascara company is marketing their brand of mascara to us through a gorgeous image, we can market desired actions to ourselves by how we “advertise” or name the action.
Fiona is craftily using the concept of “reframing” to inspire herself to take positive actions in her life. Eric Barker (on his blog here) tells us that ancient Roman Stoics wrote 2000 years ago that how we “frame” a situation (how we describe the situation to ourselves) determines our emotional reaction to the situation. The big takeaway is that we have the power to create our own positive or negative response based on how we “frame” the situation in our minds.
Today’s topic coincidently echoed a recent “beauty” reframing experience of my own. On Day 14 (here), I mention rereading Chris Crowley and Harry Lodge’s book, Younger Next Year. I happened to be scrolling around Chris’s website (www.youngernextyear.com) later that day and came upon a brief reference Chris made about the link between cardio exercise and good skin (here is the post, if you are curious.) I’m already a believer that a daily 40-45 minute brisk walk that gets the heart rate up to 60-65% of max rate is a “good thing”. (In fact, I try to keep my morning “gratitude” walks at a pretty brisk clip.) But was Chris’s cardio-good skin link true? Is my very same power walk each morning which starts my day on a good mental note also causing beautiful skin? I did a little poking around and background reading. The data seems to support the idea that consistent cardio workouts improve circulation which improves a whole host of things in our bodies – including good, healthy, glowing skin. (With proper sunscreen, if you are outside – otherwise, the sun-induced skin cancer is going to wreck your skin.) Ever since I read Chris’s comment, I am vigilant about checking my Fitbit to make certain that my heart rate stays consistently in that 60-65% range during my morning walk. I now call it my “Beauty & Gratitude Walk,” by the way.
