Self Worth, Respect & Love

A series of connections were made in my head earlier on this evening bringing me to a slight revelation of the great importance of self-worth, respect & love. And I got thinking about how surely in order to love anybody else you must possess a certain amount of love for yourself before you are truly able to expose yourself to another being, and I think that having that belief that you are worthy of another person's love can be quite an unnerving thought for some too. 

Last Wednesday Russell Brand made some comments in his show about his past drug addiction, surely this must have stemmed originally from a lack of self-worth in order for him to stoop to such a low, that forced him to form a coping mechanism that fundamentally influenced and altered his behaviour and personality? The annoyance for others of his unfamiliar and perhaps over-bearing behaviour whilst under the influence of these drugs must have been infuriating, something only a person who knew his true inner-self would have the tolerance for. 

I find it quite remarkable thinking of the almighty hurdle it must have been to to wean himself off them whilst still under the influence of the fog like mentality that heroin tends to bring (said not out of experience but an educated guess!). For despite the support that others offered that initial decision and willpower had to come from him personally. He'd have had to address the true issues that were causing him to use the drugs in the first place, changing his view of himself and beginning to see himself worth more that the damage the drugs were doing to him. Russell said that everyday he is faced with that temptation to reform to his old ways, whether the temptation is small or great it's still remains, but for the past decade or so he has never succumbed to the lows of his old self and instead embraces and actively loves the person that he is, something I strongly admire. 

The drugs in this example could be an endless number of other things for it is just the 'symptom' of an under-lying problem, they could be general habits for some or fatal and harmful actions such as the drugs for others. Whether it be drinking, over-eating or perhaps just blocking people out of your life, these are all coping mechanisms which need that exact same sense of compassion and self-worth to refrain from such abuse instead the ability to visualise yourself as worthy of respect. I think when you can love yourself you can then go forth and begin to go on an endless 'journey' of forming healthy and fulfilling relationships. But that leap of faith, exposing yourself to be vulnerable and learning to accept and cherish all the ins and outs of who you are is quite a daunting process, well certainly for me but we can but try! Anyway just some food for thought! 

love, bean xx 

LUSH 'Volcano' & 'Catastrophe' Review

Today I'd like to do two reviews of a couple of lush products I brought recently. Now, if you've seen my YouTube videos (link up above) then you'll probably know that I have a bit of a thing for the company 'LUSH'. There are quite a few lengthy reasons for this, a few of which I'll just quickly run through:

1. They're very reasonably priced
2. They have a big 'cruelty free' campaign
3. Around 80% of their products are vegan
4. All their products are vegetarian
5. They only used preservatives when they need to
6. They use fresh ingredients
7. They're convenient because they have a lot of shops

Now these are only a few reasons from the top of my head but they really are a wonderful company for all their ethics and their ethos, hence why I seem to spend half a fortune every time I even step near one of their shops. The two products I'm going to be talking about today are both vegan, both of which seem to have rather dramatic names!

The first of the two is a face mask called 'catastrophe'. I'd never tried one of their face-masks before and to be honest I thought I'd rather spend my money on one of their more long lasting products, oh what a fool I was to think this! Some may say that the downside to some of their products are their longevity, this one being 3-4 weeks depending on which day you purchase it in the week. But to be honest for me, the 'best before' date just reflects that the ingredients they use are fresh which is fabulous. Now what this mask is designed to do, with the aid of ingredients such as blueberries that are over-flowing with anti-oxidants, is to help with those days when you see a couple of spots creeping up or if you generally have quite problem prone skin. Afterward using it I found my skin was feeling really squeaky clean and fresh, and the smell of the mask was well, quite simply lush! 

The next product is a footmask which I thought was a fairly bizarre idea at first, I realise I'd been living under a fairly big rock as this is a pretty standard beauty product. It's called 'Volcano' and it's perfect for a quick fix to freshen and soften your feet. It took me a couple of goes to get used to the best way to apply it and I think you have to be careful in terms of application because if you don't have things like your water to wash off with afterwards and your cling film handy then it can get a bit messy. But it's now definitely going to be a standard pamper evening essential for me as I'd been struggling to find the best way to keep my feet in good condition. I think it smells just like a 'Soy Chai Tea Late' which is a pretty gorgeous smell if you're into that type of thing like me. If you go on the Lush website here it tells you each of their products' 'backstories' which I personally think is really interesting.



Let me know if you've got any favourite lush products at the moment!

love, bean xx

Bad life choices!

Recently I've gotten into a disgustingly bad sleeping pattern. And what I've found amazing, but not too surprising, is the extent to which it effects my life. It's currently 3am and this is the usual time I've been finding myself awake, after hours of feeling guilty that I probably should be asleep, not in bed but actually asleep. Don't get me wrong, this is in no way a rebellion type of thing, and there is no clever and justifiable reason as to why I find myself in this silly situation, it just happens. 

Ironically, today (well yesterday now, another example of it being too late to be awake!) I put up a video about getting clear skin naturally without too much hassle. Now this is a strong piece of evidence of how you should 'do as I say not as I do' because I've found spots slowly creeping up on me these past few days. In the video I mention about sleep being an integral aspect to having clear skin and at the moment it's like every time I look into a mirror my spots are just there subtly reminding me of all my current bad life choices. It always used to annoy me when I was little and felt ill (or was just being a drama queen and hypochondriac) when my dad would always just tell me to go to sleep. There was next to no sympathy, although I know that his advice was perfectly legitimate and from a place of love but it never pleased me at the time but sleep really does fix most things!

I'm not going to sleep late either because I don't enjoy sleeping, my whole body clock just shifts so I wake up mid-afternoon everyday, be rest assured sleeping is one of my all time favourite things to do. But the quality of sleep is much less when you go to sleep later and I've certainly felt this in my over-all well being. I've been beyond lethargic, lazy and un-motivated over these past few days. I've hardly done anything, despite the prior plans I'd set myself to get done before college. As I said, my skin has just been dreadful in comparison to what it was and from the lack of caring I've consequently eaten awfully too. My mentality has shifted to an over-all more negative frame of mind, nothing quite seems so bright and cheery as it did before, haha I really feel like I'm taking you to a deep and dark place but hopefully it will convince you not to follow in my bad footsteps! 

So all in all I'm certainly aware that there are no positives to come from this current arrangement that I've got going on. But, I've got my induction for college early tomorrow (that will be a fair shock to the system) and I start properly next Monday. I know that the best way to get out of these awful habits is to force yourself into a situation that means you have to change it, if you've got bad willpower like myself. I'm hoping that all the plans that I'd made for this blog and for my YouTube will come into place a bit more when college commences and when hopefully all of my motivation returns!

Let me know if you ever find yourself getting into bad habits like this!

love, bean xx

Are we really the intelligent ones?

When I look around nowadays, irrelevant of where I may be, I see people who are trying to give themselves a purpose. When young we are taught it's a vital thing to do, from being a toddler we're asked ‘what do you want to do when you're older?'. I walked around a city this afternoon for 3 hours just observing; mobiles, suits, rushing around, everything and everyone looked so serious. But if everything were to be stripped back, hypothetically you weren't able to recall anything prior to this moment, what would you be left with? Primarily you are simply left with your body anything else like the makeup, clothes, relationships and jobs are just what you've decided to add to your life. These other additional factors we can survive without, but what about an integral organ such as your lungs? You can survive without your career but lungs are a vital part to your survival. Yet people smoke in hope of maintaining and balancing their stress levels to excel in their career. Effectively, people are willing to literally die for their jobs. Of course, this is only one scenario I could go on forever listing the different harmful things that people do to their bodies in order to keep these impermeable parts of their lives thriving. Fascinating; this is human behaviour.

Our one true responsibility I believe in life is to look after our bodies simply in order to keep on living, I wonder how many people out there sacrifice things to do this job justice? It’s probably a good thing that our heart doesn’t rely on us to consciously keep the blood pumping around our body. Evidence from observing other human decisions would suggest that we’d probably all be dead in days due to our bizarre priority lists. Soon to be mothers tend to be very cautious to not smoke or drink and to take in extra nutrients all in order to care for their growing foetus. Then the baby is born and everything normally goes back to how it was before for the new mother. And as we grow up and have to look after ourselves this care for our ever-growing bodies gets thrown out the window too.

If you were in a house on fire your instinct would probably be to run as far away as fast as possible from the life threatening circumstance. It’s our animal instinct. Actions such as smoking is actively and consciously walking into that burning building. It’s slower but it will inevitably harm your body and ultimately it’s a death sentence. I often think animals are the more intelligent creatures because they listen to their bodies, they're happy to feel what they’re feeling and they do things in their best interest to thrive and stay alive. Animals only eat the food that they were designed to eat. Although humans can digest meat if you look at our teeth, as an example, they aren’t similar to those of a true carnivore, they are blunt and good for nibbling on foods such as vegetables. We can survive on a 100% plant based diet but we cannot survive on a diet composed purely of just meat. Interesting… I hope that you aren’t one of these people I have spoken about in this post, I hope you're somebody who takes care to nourish your body everyday and respect it for all that it does for you.

love, bean xx

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Miranda Kerr Inspired Makeup

For my latest YouTube video I did a makeup look, using vegan products, inspired by Miranda Kerr. Now, I think she is so naturally beautiful and thankfully she is very open about her many secrets to looking so good. She vows by yoga, eating well (she studied nutrition) and 'being beautiful from the inside out'. I personally think she is a wonderful role-model (especially considering the current media which tends to be filled with surgically enhanced 'celebrities' checking into rehab) it's so refreshing having somebody like Miranda who always appears just at peace with herself.

Her usual makeup look is relatively simplistic, she tends to wear a soft brown eye but with a splash of colour on her lips, you'd certainly never see her with big false eyelashes and caked on foundation. Below is the picture which I used as inspiration for my video as I knew that I wanted to incorporate a bold pink lip in order to use my new Bare Minerals lipstick which is part of the 'Marvelous Moxie' collection in the shade 'risk it all'. I think, however, without the lipstick and with just a nice lip gloss that this is a perfect everyday makeup look. 

I think the following quote by Miranda is really beautiful and says a lot about her mentality when it comes to real beauty; 

“A rose can never be a sunflower, and a sunflower can never be a rose. All flowers are beautiful in their own way, and that’s like women too. I want to encourage women to embrace their own uniqueness.” 

I will hope to do a more in-depth post about Miranda, a think she's a real positive inspiration, which tends to be a fairly hard thing to come by nowadays.


love, bean xx

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Urban Decay Naked Palette (for vegans!)

In my last post I spoke about the brand 'Urban Decay' and as a follow up to that I am going to do a quick review on a fully vegan eye-shadow palette that I put together from their range. It was really in replacement for their naked palette which sadly doesn't have enough vegan shades to make it worth buying. Now, finding pigmented eye-shadows in general is pretty difficult but add onto that requirement list being vegan as well; you can near enough forget it. This was my opinion until I came across these little wonders:

I wanted a fairly neutral palette because I like having the option to range from simple day-to-day to a fairly glamorous evening look. I have found these colours to be perfect for that range, they are easily built up but regardless of which look you're going for you can guarantee that they will stay nicely without smudging or drifting throughout the day. The four colours I went with (from lightest to darkest) were 'Space Cowboy', 'Virgin', 'Buck' & 'Darkhorse'. 

Urban Decay do much more adventurous colours then the ones I chose but I thought these four were a good place to start. The most unique I think is the sparkly one because it is ridiculously pigmented without being too overwhelming and it really stays, this is quite nice in the inner corners of the eye or patted on-top of the other shades. They all blend wonderfully together but without turning a murky colour which is very easy with a lot of eyeshadows nowadays. I really do recommend that you have a look at the full range of what Urban Decay has to offer so that you can find colours that suit you and your preferences! 

love, bean xx

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD4otT45t00

Where's the big Vegan Community?

So here I am, it's god knows what hour in the morning but there is something on my mind. I'm currently trying to create a YouTube channel specifically for vegans and aspiring vegans to learn how to apply this lifestyle in the modern world. I want it to be for teenagers, and adults, who want to know things like what vegan makeup there is out there, what ready meals are available at supermarkets and how to have things like a vegan pamper evening. These are all scenarios which I think people need to have the answers to in one place instead of bits and bobs here there and everywhere. I think there are so many people who share the same vision which is good but instead of there being lots of different smaller groups I think to be great, and to share this message we believe in, that it is vital to unite.

It is really frustrating sitting here and realising that there doesn't seem to be a spokesperson, a personality driving this force to bring together what I think is a huge community of people who currently don't seem to be interacting with each-other, at least not to their full potential. I reckon if the general population knew how to apply this lifestyle in a realistic way, not just knowing why they should do it (for example what PETA offers), then lots more people would be content with making that shift to 'veganism'. But I am beginning to see that it's going to take a lot of effort to initiate that push in bringing a whole lot of people from all the corners of the world together. How am I going to try and make that effort in beginning that driving force? I have no idea. But I'm ready to do it. 

love, bean xx

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD4otT45t00

Now is the only time

Tiredness, stress, anger, death; recently I have felt so overwhelmed by these negative things that seem to try and take over my life, perhaps to an extent I've also been ignorant and not accepted the power they can have on your life if you allow them. As of late in the news there have been far too many articles for my comfort about young people tragically dying, due to both self-inflicted and natural causes. No cause of death makes it, for me, any less heart-breaking when you can see the masses of potential that these youngsters had. I think it also hits home pretty hard as I, like many others, am at a cross road in my life where I’m choosing the direction that I want to take, a decision that determines so much, not only for me but potentially for others too. In retrospect I see how self-absorbed I’ve been in my tedious everyday actions, forgetting to actually start living and appreciating each moment I'm gifted with.

I was in a fair amount of shock last night when I hear the news that a 13 year old girl called Talia had died, whose outlook on life had and will continue to teach me so much about what constitutes to real living. She was fighting cancer for 6 years yet she had hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to her on YouTube, and reached out to even more, inspiring so many to be a little happier and worry a little less. She inspired me personally in so many ways and the thing that hurt me the most about hearing of her death is that there was so much that I wanted to continue to learn from her. She accepted her situation, she wasn’t afraid to show how she was feeling and she did what made her truly happy. Need I say much more about this wonderful person? Ellen Degeneres was right when she described her as having an 'old soul'. I believe that she took her life firmly in both hands and ran with it, letting nothing slow her down. At 13 she had achieved more than most do in a lifetime because she was motivated and wasn’t going to let her personal demon, cancer, stand in her way, which would have been a much better excuse then most to not want to fight and achieve as much as they can. 

When I watched her videos it often made me feel so silly about myself because I'd been worrying and letting myself get upset about the most tedious of things yet she was teaching others incredible lessons. For instance, accepting your situation and the truth but not letting it dominate your life and instead highlighting the things that you do like, for her it was through the means of showing her bald head yet wearing makeup and showing off her favourite features of her face. This in itself makes me want to fight, I want to fight against my natural instinct of letting other people and the little voice in my head influence how much I achieve. I have a fair amount of dreams and I feel, even just in honour to Talia, that I should try my hardest to make sure that they come true. Recognise what it is that you want to achieve then run with it, don’t ever look back just keep on going. The second you stop and try to apply conventional logic then may lose the true wild spirit that it takes to achieve the most extravagant of aspirations.

Love, bean xx

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD4otT45t00

A Genuine Smile

I was on the train making my way to Glasgow and my head was pretty full with irrelevant worries which as the train progressed, through increasingly more beautiful countryside, seemed to gradually slip away. At one moment all I could see was fields which stretched for miles, slightly resembling a patchwork blanket consisting of hundreds of different shades of green. The next minute the train was surrounded by hills, with sparse white dots scattered across them. I think it's safe to say that the bliss scenery was a pretty big factor in helping me get lost away from my thoughts.

However, something much smaller caught my eye throughout the journey. A minor little detail, I may have been the only person to notice, but a woman was sat in the corner just taking in her surroundings yet there was something so pleasant about her. At first I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was about her that captured my attention to such a degree, whatever it was it made me want to just sit down with her over a brew. Yet she was just an ordinary woman. After a while had passed I figured that the part about her that was so inviting it was her most infectious smile. Once I was conscious of it I couldn't then help it, she'd passed on the disease to me. There was no way I couldn't not smile about somebody who just seemed to be so content with life, making everything seem simple. 

She could have been going through something awful, her life could have been the biggest mess imaginable but you'd never have guessed it due to the genuine smile painted across her face. For me, it was inspiring. I couldn't believe the difference it made to my mood almost instantaneously, I was absolutely intrigued by her friendly and calm disposition. It got me thinking what a difference it could make if everybody incorporated that simple gesture into their lives. We have little control over the majority of things in our life, ultimately we just have to go with the flow, but this is something that anybody and everybody can do. 

It's simple and in the grand scheme of things it's probably towards the bottom end of most people's priority list. But we just don't know how it could change somebodies day, like it did to me. And after a while you may even find it turns into a bit of a habit which helps you in creating an overall happier mentality. A genuine smile, who knew something free and so in-elaborate could make such an impact on a person's day.   

Love, bean xx

''Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.''

-Leo Buscaglia 

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD4otT45t00

10... Vegan Celebrities

I want to do a small and simple segment on this blog of lists of 10. The lists will cover a range of topics, starting with celebrities! 

1. Russell Brand
2. Ellen DeGeneres
3. Kristen Bell
4. Bill Clinton
5. Emily Deschanel
6. Avril Lavigne
7. Jason Mraz
8. Michelle Pfeiffer
9. Brad Pitt
10. Ben Stiller

love, bean xx

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD4otT45t00