Meditating Love and Happiness

I've recently joined a meditation and wellness group that meets up during lunch time on the 30th floor of a skyscraper downtown.

It's so high up that you hear none of the hustle and bustle going on during the lunch hour of the downtown business district.

I'm a novice at meditation and I'm in no hurry to learn quickly. Meditation naturally brings you to a level of awareness that causes you to be much more gentler with yourself than normal.

What I loved about this particular session is we participated in a Love and Kindness guided meditation.

It was especially welcome given the current level of divisiveness and misunderstandings going on in our world right now.

The Love and Kindness guided meditation was after we spent several minutes getting centered and shutting out what I am sure is the craziness of the business day for each of us.

This pre-centering was important because I learned it helps you be in a calm state to be the most receptive to the love and kindness visualisations.

The Love and Kindness guided meditation started out with us selecting a person that we had absolute trust and little/no complexities within our relationship...I thought of my sister.

So we were first asked to visualize these things for our chosen person :

I hope you feel safe.

I hope you feel a profound sense of peace and trust.

I hope you live free.

Then we transitioned to us with the person and made same affirmations as "we".

We lastly visualized then that it was just us and repeated the Love and Kindness affirmations.

What's interesting is that after we were done the instructor asked us how we felt or "what came up for us" during the Love and Kindness guided meditation.

My response was that I realized that if he had started it with just me, I wouldn't have "received" the affirmations as openly. But wholeheartedly hoping it for my sister allowed her to be a gateway for me to then receive the prayer affirmations with no hesitation.

Y'all, I was told by a therapist that I had a hard time with worthiness and it showed up again in this meditation session!

And one of the major takeaways for me from this session was when the instructor says that one of the main reasons to meditate and pause is so that you switch from DOING time to BEING time so that BEING in time will inform how you DO time.

In other words, getting centered will help you be more mindful and intentional with what you do with your time and life priorities, as opposed to anxiously living life like it's a blur of activity that you're not in control of...I think that's really powerful!

I'm starting on this journey of meditation and am looking forward to it being a tool towards more self care and more self awareness in my life.

I'll keep you updated as I learn!

The Slingshot and Conquering Your Giants

My Urban Lifestyle

I find the most interesting things while riding trains and trolleys as my daily routine. 

And I find them in random spots whereas there isn’t even a lost and found that I can turn it into!

Today I found a wooden sling shot. If you’re familiar with the bible then you’ll know that a slingshot was used by David to kill the Giant in his life.

Maybe we can all take inspiration from this random find and be empowered to conquer a giant that has had a foot hold in our lives that’s preventing us from our level up.

Whether that’s your own inner negative self talk, an unhealthy relationship or a brave Ask that you need to make. 

No matter what it is, think of this pic you bumped into of a sling shot and go slay this week!

Cruelty Free and Gorgeous for National Lipstick Day

It used to be that to achieve a well pigmented beauty look that was also cruelty free (meaning, no animal testing), you had to find a hard to find online or local only brand.

Due to a higher demand for more clean beauty options, the market for cruelty free beauty is better than ever!

To celebrate National Lipstick Day, here are a few of my favorite cruelty free lipstick brand partners:

Fenty Beauty

Pat McGrath Labs

Marc Jacobs Beauty

Kat Von D Beauty

Smashbox

Iridescent Beauty

Kat Von D Beauty: Metal Crush Highlighter

Most new beauty that comes out can start looking like same-ness.

But then there is Kat von D Beauty.

Kat von D Beauty is one of the most unique beauty brands on the market but what makes her coloring and unique palettes even more attractive is that her brand is vegan, cruelty free and not tested on animals.

Gone are clean beauty brands with boring, neutral and basic palettes.

Kat von D Beauty offers fun, whimsy and fearlessness in cruelty free beauty whose pigments can even show up well on olive and darker skin tones.

That makes me a happy girl!

@iamcharityleigh (Instagram): KVD Lashley Liner

@iamleah  (Instagram): KVD Lash Liner

How to Create a Mobilized Vision Board

A PicCollage Vision Board

I have been a long time teacher of showing people how to get the most from creating their vision board, including tips on making sure you create one that manifests what you want out of your curated life.

One of the key points I make in my vision board talks is that part of getting the most value from taking the time and effort of creating a vision board is that you need to keep it in a place that requires you to have to see it frequently. Preferably daily.

Why?

What you keep putting in your mind's eye begins to seek ways to manifest itself. If you put your vision board in a spot where you'll never/hardly see it, then it doesn't give your mind, body and soul direction to seek your heart's greatest desire.

Now that data shows that we are constantly on our phones, I thought it would be helpful to give you a guide to make your vision board mobile.

Vision Board iPhone Screensaver 

Mobilizing Your Vision Board:

1. Download the PicCollage app

2. Click "Get Started" and it`ll request permission to access your phone's camera where your pics are stored. Click "OK" to allow access.

Don't be afraid to screen shot images from the Internet, online magazines or other resources to add to your camera roll for your vision board. This is the online version and the same as the traditional way in which images are cut out of magazines and glued to boards.

3. Click on pics from your camera roll that you want to include on your vision board.

When finished with picture selections, click upper right hand check and it takes you to next screen.

4. Your pics will appear in a default, freestyle collage. You can change your collage by selecting your preferred layout along bottom portion of selections.

When you are done with your preferred layout selection, click "Next".

5. On this screen, you can move your pics around and reorder way using your finger, including resizing, adding border and more.

Play around with it and features until you get the images just right to how you want them to appear.

Click "Done" (upper right hand corner)

6. On the "Save or Share" screen click "Save to Library".

You also have many options to share including email, social media, messenger, and more.

What's brilliant is you can also Print from the app!

One other great thing about creating a vision board in this way is that it follows one of my tips in making your vision board an evolving vision you have for your life. So unlike the traditional way of gluing images on a board, this will allow you to easily  evolve your vision board with your life without having to toss your whole board away when one part no longer serves you.

So no more excuses of your vision board being tucked away in a closet or some place that you lose track of your dreams and goals.

Make it mobile and watch your life change!

Tag me @curvalish on Instagram when you create and share yours...I'd love to see your vision boards!

P.S. You can pay to have the PicCollage watermark removed so you have a clean vision board image. Its worth it and only a one time fee.

The Pursuit is Happiness

Pic Credit @katcoleatl (Instagram)

Like most of you I’ve seen the fabulously inspiring movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” starring Will Smith as real life overcomer Chris Gardner.

But at the stage in my life where building Curva-Lish into an inspiring and authentic lifestyle brand, this picture I saw from Kat Cole on Instagram accurately depicts where I’m at in my life.

My life is no longer about pursuing happiness as some elusive destination.

My life is now about the pursuit is happiness.

Almost everyday.

Do you get the power in this one degree mindset shift?

Make happiness your everyday being-ness.

Even if it’s small, like sipping your coffee during a great summer sunrise.

The old way of elusive happiness would call this activity pursuit of happiness.

Instead, live in the moment of that sunrise and know that your coffee time pursuit is (already) happiness.

Just be.

Happy.