If you want radiant skin you’ve got to rewire your brain

In a previous life my skin was a monster to be battled with, sending me consistent breakouts and patchy red episodes that left me looking like a marine creature. I tried probably hundreds of different products over the years in a quest to find something that suited my skin type which is sensitive (goes berserk just looking across the room at a new potential soap or lotion), combination (oily in the T zone, and dry everywhere else), and prone to hormonal breakouts, uneven patches, under-skin bumpiness, and red colouring.

So as a woman, what do you do with this unfortunate situation? Silly question! You cover it up of course! I tried plastering over my skin with every “new and improved!” formula that promised model-perfect flawless skin. Various types of powders, foundations, cover-up, creams, lotions, gels, pastes were tested, all trying in vain to smooth over the patchy redness. Does it work? Nope. To be fair to said products above, they sure are handy when you are staring in the mirror at a lobster red face, but in general, you’re still left with bumpy, broken skin. Now however there’s a layer of gunk on top of it that seems to exacerbate the situation even further as 80% of ‘beauty’ products contain at least 1 toxic chemical.

The real kicker in all of this was that by slathering myself in coverup I was not tackling the root of the problem. I believe the root of all of my skin problems was actually the thoughts I was having about my skin. Say what?  Yes, you heard me. I believe that the problem lay in the wrong focus I fixated upon in my mind when I was trying to solve this issue of “bad skin”. And I think this is quite a common problem.

 I believe the root of all of my skin problems was actually the thoughts I was having about my skin.

Through social conditioning from birth we are sent a message (particularly as women), that we need to twist our bodies in pretzel like fashion into a certain beauty ideal.  We treat our body and skin almost like an enemy that we consistently try to whip, cajole, and “get under control”, so that it submits to our ultimate goal which is to “look good” or “look acceptable”, or sometimes to “not look too bad”. The trouble is that we are entirely focussed on how we look rather than how healthy we are. And unfortunately that slight change of mental focus, ends up denying us the very thing we want.

What we don’t understand is that our skin is a major indicator of overall physical health and can act as an incredible ally by being an ‘early warning system’ to potential health challenges  So when it is trying to alert you to this fact by conveniently sending you visible signals (inconveniently packaged as a raging red spot),  we should take the hint, thank it, and then promptly address the underlying problem in our body. Instead we deal with this by trying to simply shuffle it under the carpet by covering it up with foundation. How rude is that. Your body goes to the trouble to send you a message and you simply ignore it!

We need to rewire our brain, and focus on restoring health in our bodies. This creates new neural pathways that make us more resourceful in finding real solutions that actually can, in a Jiu-Jitsu kind of way, get us the end goal of gorgeous skin! With this mental shift, we start to look for clues in the right places. Instead of looking for useless creams and products, we start looking at our immune systems, changing our eating habits, and treating our hormones imbalances, so that we address the original problem that our skin was trying to bring to our attention.

I am very pleased to report that these days I get compliments on my skin. And this change of mental focus was the reason. I followed the clues my skin was leaving, and then addressed them over time. Today my skin glows. I don’t deluge my face with a mask of foundation and if I get the rare flare up I take a look at what I’ve been doing, and make the necessary changes to restore my skin to its radiant self.

I’ll be writing more about this over the next few months, but in the meantime, check out these radiant skin essentials that will help you get glowing!