I have no
secret.
Yet it all got me
wondering:
what does it take to look good? I mean what does it take to look good
really. It's a concern ie it's a preoccupation for
many people. No, it's more than that. It's waaay more than
that. It's a multi-billion dollar industry for many
people. Some of the
answers
I came up with may be the ones you'd
expect.
But given this is
the Conversations For
Transformation website,
the most
powerfulanswer
may not be the one which is the most obvious initially.
Before we
begin,
here's the ground of being for this
inquiry:
unless you have looking good as symptomatic of something
great ie as an indicator of an already great condition, and not
as a goal in and of itself, then this
conversation
probably isn't for you (Gee! I hope you get that) ... and
... no
conversation
about looking good would be thorough enough or
truthful
enough without the following critical and
unflinchingly
honest insight: you and I are crazy about looking good -
literally, crazy. We're obsessed with looking good.
Somehow, somewhere (who's to say where), we got the notion we
have to look good.
Listen:
looking good (that is to say our obsession with looking good) may
actually be a
barrier.
On the outward side, we hope it will attract
attention
to compensate for the lack of
love
in our lives. On the inward side, we hide behind it to avoid revealing
the lack of
integrity
in our lives.
There's a fundamental problem with our obsession with looking good.
It's
who we really areisn't who we wear. And even though it
plays
a vital role, neither is
who we really arewhat we eat. That's why looking good provides no assurance of
our
authenticity.
Who we are,
to put it
blandly,
is what we
speak.
And we are what we
speak,
regardless of how we look. My
authenticity
is measured by what I
speak
ie by what comes out of my
mouth,
regardless of what I eat or who I wear.
It's useful ie it
works
to follow a regimen of right eating. There's simply no excuse for
putting junk into your body. None. There's no excuse (to deploy the old
Buddhist
adage) for defiling the
temple.
In addition, what I find useful is taking carefully selected
supplements (I take ten daily) to provide especially those elements
which, given my propensity for being predominantly vegetarian, are in
short supply in my diet. Vitamin B12 for example, the "vitality"
vitamin, is plentiful in red meat which isn't often on my menu. In
addition coffee depletes vitamin B12. So it makes double sense for me,
given what I eat and drink, to supplement with vitamin B12.
Then there's diet's joined-at-the-hip partner: exercise.
Exercise isn't merely a choice. It's an
essential
so get over it. Now I'm not a
big
fan of going to the gym. It's definitely not in my top ten list of
favorite things to do. Honest it isn't. But now that I'm sixty
!*%$-ing six years old, the alternatives are far, far worse.
Daily aerobic movement is the absolute minimum requirement. I
swim
forty five minutes on each of two successive days at dawn. Then I do
weights for forty five minutes on each of the next two successive days.
Then on the next two successive days for forty five minutes each, I
walk / run - that is to say I walk for a minute and a half at around
three miles and hour, then I run for three and half minutes at around
five miles an hour, then walk for a minute and a half, then run for
three and a half minutes etc. The next day (ie six days later) I'll
revert to
swimming
again etc. And in case you're
wondering,
yes my
health
coach does recommend taking the occasional day off. Rather than
diminish the
power
of an exercise regimen, it may even render it more productive.
All that said, when you take diet, exercise, make-up,
coiffure (hair styling), and haute couture
(fashion) together, they only comprise the entry level of
looking good. Arguably the most
powerful
determinant of what occurs for us as looking good, is
gettingcomplete
with
who you really are
and with the people in your life. There's a quality of life which
being
complete
affords you (and a look that goes with it), which is
naturally
attractive, regardless of who you're wearing. It requires contacting
any and all people with whom you're incomplete
(aliveordead)
and
gettingcomplete
with them, no matter how long ago the
incident
took place when you did something to them or they did something to you,
no matter how trivial the
incident
may seem.
Gettingcomplete
with the people in your life
createsthe space
for being
complete
with
who you really are,
and vice versa. There's no statute of limitations on this.
Getcomplete
with the people in your life. Be
complete
with
who you really are.
Then, look
naturally
whichever way you look when you're
complete.
While being
complete
is really no
big
deal, that's the looking good people really
want in their lives. Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue,
and GQ et al, and all those coffee table glossy
fashionista magazines? They ain't seen
nothin'
like this yet!
Diet, exercise, make-up, coiffure, and haute couture all factor into
looking good. But they all pale in comparison to what radiates around
people who are
complete
with
who they really are
and with the people in their lives. Now if that's so obvious (and I say
it is), then
why
has it taken us so long to find out? It's possible we've stayed in the
dark about this for as long as we have because all of us, including the
people who would have taught us about it when they were preparing us
for life when we were young, were subject to the taboo against being
complete
with
who we are
(as
Alan Watts
may have said). This single factor ie being
complete,
is the most underestimated contributor to promoting a good life and a
great physique and a firm, upright posture and an attractive demeanor,
which all exemplify that prized quality we call "looking good". In
actuality, all the other factors are so far down the scale of what
really promotes looking good, as to be almost totally irrelevant.
By the way, anyone who holds "good genes" and / or "strong bloodlines"
as the
essential
components of looking good (and puts a lot of stock in them) is really
copping out - in my
opinion.
