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| The Bodysuit |
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Wednesday, January 9, 2008
If you want to look polished outside, make sure that what you wear inside is up to snuff. The inner world mirrors the outer one, so we are told in philosophical circles; nowhere is this more evident than in the world of lingerie. How many times have we seen a $500 dress suit scandalized by the lumpy rolls or ripples emerging from an ill-fitting bra? A tailored outfit should look what it is meant to do—make you look sleek and tailored. No surprises. No bumps. No tell-tale bulges. That's why when it comes to fashion ethics, the bodysuit is indispensable. What is a bodysuit? Also called a "snapsuit," "leotard," or "onesie", a bodysuit is an ingenious blending of bra and panties together that you can slip on, pull down and fasten with snap-on buttons at the crotch. With that pulling down, you can lessen the damage done by ridges, flaps or belly rolls in one fell swoop of lycra. Lines that normally show from the bottom of the bra or from the waistband of the panties or stockings are almost eliminated with a good bodysuit—provided that you are not grossly out of shape. Unless you are an amazingly trim size 4, your body hugging silk gown needs a bodysuit to give that gown a polished sleek look. It gives you that extra smoothness under a figure hugging dress. There are, however, a few challenges to wearing a bodysuit. First, bodysuits are often sold according to bra size which means that for those of us who do not have a perfect body, a body suit might be an ill-fitting enterprise. It might fit you at the bust, but not anywhere else. The best bet here is to find a bodysuit that is made from very stretchy fabric which can provide you with a bit more "give" in the hips and tummy areas. A second challenge is the difficulty bodysuits often pose for women in the washroom. Under an evening gown, the whole process of unbuckling and buckling the bottom fasteners of the bodysuit can be a feat on its own. Tricky stuff indeed, especially if your gown is made with layered chiffon. But women have done worse in the name of beauty. And considering the sleek lines that present themselves when you emerge from the washroom, the agony is well-worth the eventual poise. Another word of caution about bodysuits. They are most suitable for fairly well-shaped bodies-- bodies that are well toned and evenly shaped -- in all sizes. A bodysuit will help you maneuver your way into a dress that is just slightly too small, but it won't turn a size 10 into a size 6 or a size 16 into a 10. And if perchance, you do eventually manage to stuff yourself into a size 6, be prepared for a very, very uncomfortable and unflattering evening. If you are a size 12, get a size 12 bodysuit; it will still tuck in your tummy and flatter your profile, but it will never turn a medium body into a small one. A bodysuit flatters a good body, but it is not a miracle worker, Betty Halbreich says in "Secrets of a Fashion Therapist." Here is a list of what a body suit can and cannot do: 1.It can tame the jiggle in your backside, but it will not create "buns of steel." 2.It cannot take the place of time spent on the stairmaster or the treadmill. 3.Even the tightest waist cincher on a body suit cannot give you a nineteen inch waist. 4.It can flatter a toned body and make you feel slimmer, but it will not replace a sensible diet and workouts at the gym. 5. It will make a great reward for personal goals achieved in weight loss and inch loss—the trophy of a great body achieved through hard work and efforts. A bodysuit is a must in every lingerie set; however, use it with discretion and respect. Resource: "Secrets of a Fashion Therapist" by Betty Halbreich ( HarperCollins 2005) _______________________________________ ------ A runner for 27 years, retired schoolteacher and writer, Mary is helping people reclaim their bodies. Nutrition, exercise, positive vision and purposeful engagement are the tools used to turn their bodies into creative selves. You can visit her at http://www.GreatBodyat50.com or learn how she lost her weight at http://www.greatbodyproteinpower.com HOW TO REBUILD TRUST IN A MARRIAGE If a marriage has problems, the chances are good that trust has been broken. And yet, trust is a central component for a successful marriage. So how do you restore broken trust? And how do you do it without spending months in marriage counseling? Trust can be broken in so many ways. The most common culprits are an affair, hidden addictions, lying, and financial secrecy. But if you look deep into the heart of a distrusting spouse, it goes beyond the usual trust busters. Trust is weakened in a relationship when a spouse is frequently late, unreliable, or insensitive. Hiding a few empty beer cans can damage trust between you. It doesn't take much to shake trust. But it sure takes a lot to rebuild it! We live in a microwave world of fast food, express delivery, and speedy-print. And so we figure, if we lost trust in an instant, there must be a way to rebuild it in an instant too. NOT! Trust is built one small step at a time. There's no other way. There's no Herculean event that can deliver instant-trust. In fact, by definition, trust is about CONSISTENCY. That's what it means to trust someone…to be able to PREDICT their behavior. Predictability is a function of repetition. Repetition comes with TIME. Think about it. When you trust someone, it means you can RELY on them. But before you can rely on someone, you must depend on them time and again and NOT be disappointed. If you're disappointed, even once, the trust is broken. I often compare the building of a relationship to the building of a house…both happen one brick at a time. And every brick is significant because it strengthens the foundation. The stronger the foundation, the more room you have for error. For example, how damaging is it to ruin one brick when you're working on the 3rd floor of a house? It's no big deal, right? You have a strong foundation, the house is in tact, you clean up the mess, and you build on. It's like that in a relationship. If you have a strong foundation, you can make a mistake without ruining everything. It's no big deal. You can move on. But trust is DIFFERENT. One mistake kills you. Because trust is about CONSISTENCY. Building trust is NOT analogous to building a house; it's more like climbing a ladder. You don't have a foundation to support you. If you slip, you fall all the way to the bottom. That's how trust works. It's unforgiving. So if you're trying to restore trust in your marriage, and you're expected to meet your spouse for dinner before your marriage counseling appointment at 6:15 PM, don't arrive at 6:19 PM. For you, 6:19 PM might be a matter of 4 minutes and no big deal. But to your spouse it might be about reliability, and you may have just slipped all the way to the bottom. You just broke whatever pattern of consistency you built prior to arriving late. And now you have to start all over again. How do you rebuild trust? You make and keep promises. Make and keep. Make and keep. Make and keep. Over and over again. AND DON'T MISS! Nothing destroys trust faster than making and BREAKING a promise. To be consistent (to build trust), you need lots of opportunities to come-through. So create them for yourself. "Honey, I'll pick up some milk before I come home." And then do it! "I'll meet you at our marriage counseling appointment at 9 AM." And then do it! "I'll read it by tomorrow." And then do it! "I'll say it differently next time." And then do it! Look for opportunities to make and keep promises. That's your opportunity to build trust. Like a ladder…climb one rung at a time. It takes time. There's no short-cut. And you can't slip. You have to stay focused. And just to be clear, the little things count big. If trust is about consistency, then it doesn't matter what you promise. Just promise and come through. Don't think that just because trust came crashing down in one dramatic event (an affair or whatever) that you have to reestablish it with one dramatic event too. You can rebuild trust by making and keeping SMALL promises over an extended period of time. Mort Fertel allows those that need help to Subscribe to his FREE family marriage counselor help email service. Over 75,000 each year subscribe to receive the free report "7 Secrets for Fixing Your Marriage." Mort Fertel is a world authority on the psychology of relationships and has an international reputation for helping people renew their marriage. In addition to working with couples, he teaches individuals how to single-handedly transform their marital situation. For more information visit www.marriagemax.com Why Do We Hurt Those We Love Most And How To Stop This You love each other but can't manage to communicate without arguing, fighting and ending up exhausted, each one in his corner, trying to lick his wounds and thinking of how to protect one self against a new attack. And in spite of that…you love each other? How is this possible? Why do people hurt most those they love? How come we can't express our love? How come we are full of good intentions but when it comes to reality we find ourselves again shouting and blaming the other one. And then that monster of guilt jumps out of nowhere to our throat to strangle us once again. How to stop this infernal behavior? First let me explain why this happens. We all need energy. We need energy to live and to survive. Energy comes in many forms : love, attention, interest, food, friendship, money, approval, recognition… We all need this to feel good, to build our personality and to find our place in society. But here it is : as long as we think this energy has to come from other human beings, we will get caught up in struggle. Because human energy is limited. We have to fight for it. Human energy doesn't last. There isn't enough of it. So we have to be the quickest, the smartest, the most beautiful one, to attract the attention from the other and to pull his energy. If this doesn't work, we try another strategy. We try to pull attention by negative behavior. Every child learns this very quickly in his early life : when he is playing quietly on the floor with his toys, mum goes on cooking dinner or talking with daddy. But as soon as the kid hurts his little sister or is playing "sick", mums hurries to give attention to him. She shouts maybe, she's angry or worried, but no matter, all this is attention for the child! He learns very quickly which behavior gives him the greatest amount of attention and energy. When his mother or father looks at him, even angry, it still is energy coming his way! When they shout at him, they give him energy. Negative energy, alright, but it is better than no energy at all. When we grow up, and start to date, we discover a very interesting phenomenon : when we fall in love, we receive a lot of energy (read : attention, interest, time, love etc.) for free. The other person gives us freely and abundantly a whole bunch of energy. We don't even have to ask for it, we don't need to apply any strategy to pick this energy, it's all for free! We let go of our mechanism to pull the energy of others towards us. We loosen up. We "fall" in love. We almost literally fly. We are high! Everything seems to have more colour, is more vivid, we feel lighter, life seems easy, everything goes by itself, we have the feeling we love everybody and everything, even our grunchy boss! Nothing can hurt us, we feel safe and boosted with energy. But this is his or her energy! We are flying on someone else's energy, and human energy is limited! And that is exactly the problem! This stream of free energy begins to slow down, because the other one goes back to his business and activities he had before. Why? The body is not able to handle this amount of adrenaline for a long period of time, they say… but the real reason is we need to learn to pull our energy from somewhere else, not from a human being but from the source of energy itself. So our lover gives us less free energy than before. We were used to this energy-flow and now we have to do it again by ourselves! Free energy is so much easier! We don't have to do any effort to get it! And now we are getting less of this free energy, we don't want to let this happen. At this moment our old childhood-system of capturing energy is triggered because of the scarcity of energy (there is an alarm inside us that says : "Danger! Lack of energy!") and the old mechanism to capture energy from others starts running in our head and in our behavior. The mechanism that worked when we were a child to get the energy of our parents, will be triggered by the lack of energy now. We do what we did as a child to get energy flowing our way. We can do this by playing the victim ("Oh poor me, look at all that I do and nobody is grateful! Look how good I am and still life strikes me with disapproval, disease and misery! Oh oh oh!"). Or we get attention by being aggressive, shouting and trying to dominate the other one. A third mechanism is harassing the other one by asking too many questions and controlling him. A fourth system is playing silence, refusing contact, not to speak and not to react, so the other one will do whatever he can to get in contact with you again and this will give you his energy. These systems will of course make the energy of the other one flowing your way. But what next? The other one is now low on energy and wants to get his energy back. So now his mechanism is triggered by his lack of energy. He will now use the system that assured him the energy of his parents when he was little, to get his energy back from you. He will either shout at you, either playing the poor one that didn't deserve your treatment, either torture you with a bunch of questions, or refuse contact. This explains why we hurt the ones we love. First reason is we want their energy, energy they gave once for free. We hurt our loved onces most because they gave us love and energy and attention for free in the beginning and now we have to do it on our own and we are angry and want get back to them. We think we are entitled to have their energy still for free and start our mechanism to get it. Second reason we hurt them most is because of convenience : they are always around, their energy is available so when we are low on energy we try to rip their energy off, and hurt them by doing that. Stealing energy from another human being is hurting him. What can we do about this? We should only be in contact with other people when we are sure to be already filled up with energy, so we won't steal theirs. When we are full of energy, and conscious of what happens between people, we can give the other one energy instead of ripping him off. We should not meet each other when we are low on energy. It's the responsibility of each and every person to generate energy by himself and not to depend on other people. How to do that? By connecting to the energy that is always available. That is the energy of the Universe. The easiest way to connect to this energy is contemplate the beauty of a flower. You also can contemplate the beauty of an object or a person. You can listen to beautiful music, take a walk in nature, meditate, pray, dance, paint, read positive texts, work on your mission on earth, love your cat or dog, anything that gives you energy. Make a list of every activity and behavior that increases your energy level. As soon as you feel you're in a conflict with your partner, boss, child, parent or whoever, do something to get yourself together and raise your energy. Don't say anything until your energy-level is again high enough to be able to send energy to the other one. By sending energy, you are sure not to steal energy from the other one. This is an act of love. If you are not able to get your energy level any higher, go to another place, do something for you and wait until your vibrations are high enough to meet the other one again. The important thing in a relationship is not to make the other happy or to expect the other one to make you happy, but to make yourself happy and offer this happiness as a free gift to the other! Loving another human being is giving him energy! See the difference? Do you want to love your loved ones or steal their energy? Written by Ineke Van Lint, psychologist. You are a unique, wonderful person! Find out why in the two free e-courses on http://www.theenthusiasm.com. Find your purpose and realize your goals. Be a success! |
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