• Home
  • About
  • A Little Bit of Love
    • Manifest
    • Travel
    • Dreams
    • Relationships
    • Thoughts in motion
    • Experiences
    • Less Talk
    • Motivation
    • Love
    • More Action
    • Late night
    • Life
  • Why Didn’t You Warn Me?!
    • WDYWM Podcast

lipstickandblackcoffee

~ To A Life Worth Living xo

lipstickandblackcoffee

Tag Archives: Boyfriend

If Only You Loved Yourself

22 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by Irene Ephraim in Lessons Learnt, Life, Thoughts in motion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Acceptance, Boyfriend, freedom, Girlfriend, growth, Know, Love, Marriage, Mental Health, relationship, Rich, Self-care, self-esteem, Self-Worth, value

img_6515Works like a charm. Every time I openly confess my feelings about something, freedom follows. Give it a go, release your feelings and it need not be public but it must be seen by you. When you release the feelings, it no longer owns you and keeps you captive. 

Back to today’s post.

It’s so easy for someone to say ‘love yourself, value yourself, have self worth’, and the rest of it, when the reality of doing that is obscure to most of us. What school can we go to to learn this exactly? Many of us do not have a clue what that means or how to even begin to do that. 

I’ll break it down from my perspective, you may have yours and I’d love to hear it too!

Before you can begin to love or value yourself, you first have to know yourself.

Think about it, how can you love or see value in what you don’t know or understand? It’s near impossible. Do we love complete strangers at first glance? Typically no and that’s what some of us are, strangers to ourselves.

We don’t know what we like or don’t like, what makes us excited, what makes us happy, what makes us angry, what we will or will not do, our limits, our beliefs and so on. How then will it be possible to love yourself if you don’t know who you are?

Therefore rule no 1: Know Thyself.

To do this, spend time monitoring your thoughts, what and how you do things and the interactions and impact you have with/on people. Do things you haven’t done before, and revisit things you used to enjoy doing.

The aim is to put yourself in a position to get reacquainted with yourself, and in some ways discover more of who you are. 

For example, I know if something scares the crap out of me, thinking about it is not going to make it better. In fact I have to do the complete opposite and not think about it and just do it. That’s what happened when I jumped out of a plane, when I travelled to a different country for the first time alone, when I started this blog, when I attended university, when I left various jobs, you get my drift. Things get done when I get up & do it. I know this about me because I’ve watched how I respond to things. And guess what? the things I think about in excess seldom get done as I am the king of rationalising the hell out of something. In knowing this I am better equipped to maintain the most important relationship I have, which is with myself.

It’s only when you know more of who you are both in the good and not so good that you can begin to appreciate the essence of who you are and have an understanding of how you can then love yourself.  

A few ways I love myself are: 

1. Removing limitations with the things I desire

2. Being kind to myself and reaffirming the goodness in me whenever I feel low and ugly (yes I have ugly days).

3. Exercising discipline in areas that I desire to be improved upon (I checked my credit score yesterday and its in the 900’s, I could scream and yes I worked for it!).

4. Being still.

5. Having nice quality things and surrounding myself around good people.

6. Maintaining the standards that I have set for myself.

7. Saying no.

8. Saying yes.

Loving yourself isn’t only about physical self care, it’s also about accepting who you are and doing the work to improve the things that could be better.

What are your thoughts?

Xo

 

Day 2: Dance Fever & Gym Boyfriends.

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Irene Ephraim in Experiences, Life, More Action, Thoughts in motion

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Body Goals, Boyfriend, Dance, Experiences, Gym, life, Meagan Good, Sophia Miacova, Teyana Taylor, writer

I’m back!

After yesterday’s post, I rushed off to a dance studio.

IMG_1721

I decided last week that I was going to get back to one of my first loves, dancing. I’d been meaning to do so for a while, but I couldn’t find classes that fit what I wanted to do, so I said  ‘F it, I’ll teach myself’.

To date, there’s very little that provides me with the feeling of freedom as dance and performing does…Nothing else matters, you just lose or should I say find yourself.

I literally paid for a dance studio for an hour on Friday afternoon. I did my research, found a venue and booked it.

I was excited and a tad nervous even though I was going to be in the room by myself. Ever the investigator, upon getting into the room, I squinted my eyes looking for a camera. I knew that if there was a CCTV camera I’d still be conscious and not completely myself. I didn’t find one,“Yay!”.

Let me tell you, I felt (looked) like a complete fool! LOL. I mean, I can dance in a club but when you’re looking at yourself in a mirror, you really get to see how good or bad you are. My verdict: stiff as a board, but I’m totally okay with that because it means I have lots to improve on. Hold up, I don’t have two left feet, in fact on any given day I’m pretty good, but pretty good is not what I’m after, bloody brilliant is the goal! All in all I left there feeling really rejuvenated and happy with my decision to brave it alone.

Sometimes, its good to do something just for you.

27 June 2017

It’s a very scary thing to witness someone who gave you life be so vulnerable. They’ve cared for you, loved you, disciplined you, practically done everything for you and in a blink of an eye that could all change. My mother is made of solid iron so it was definitely worrying to see her need help.

My mother is however feeling much better today. She still has to rest, but there aren’t any signs of imminent danger. Thank you God!

I’m heading to the gym shortly as I have some major body goals. I want to feel and look the best I have ever done.

FullSizeRender (2)

FullSizeRender (1)

FullSizeRender

Meagan Good, Teyana Taylor and Sophia Miacova are my current motivators.

You hear it all the time from mothers about how they didn’t appreciate their bodies and if only they knew what they had then and so on. I definitely don’t want to be singing that song.

I want to be happy with that new phase in my life when it comes, knowing that I truly enjoyed myself and my body. Also, you have to be what you want to attract, so buff body it is. That’s not to say my life will stop when children arrive, it won’t, it will just be massively different.

Pre 2017 I hated the gym but needs must. Working out at home wasn’t working and as with a lot of things you have to be in the environment that cultivates the things you want, joining the gym made sense.

I actually like it more now, it makes me feel good especially on a crappy day. Oh and having ‘gym boyfriends’ helps too. Well, they’re not really my boyfriends, merely people who have some sort of ‘interest’, they want to teach me stuff *roll my eyes* everyone is an expert in the gym ha! Like last night, a guy who I’m sure is old enough to be my dad (slight-moderate exaggeration) was asking me to train with him and if we could exchange details. I politely declined. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the affections, it’s nice, but sometimes a girl would like to train in peace even if it means looking like an utter idiot because you really don’t know what the hell you’re doing! I am considering getting a personal trainer though because this lower belly fat has gattogo!

The weather today is PANTS! Talk about grim. Raining cats and dogs “booooo!”, although it’s usually the best time to sleep. I don’t like public transport on a normal day so when it’s raining, erm ew.

I’m babbling now, thats enough from me. I’ll talk about my car drama and anything good (speak it) that happens between now and tomorrow, till then Godspeed!

…And yes today started off much better than yesterday-I win!

Xo

P.s Pictures provided by the muses Instagrams  @meagangood @teyanataylor @sophiamiacova, I don’t own shit.

Why Didn’t You Warn Me?!

Why Didn't You Warn Me?!

Why Didn't You Warn Me?! is a podcast speaking on the things you should know, but don't. The things you typically find out after the fact, and it's sometimes too late. Fear not, Why Didn't You Warn Me?! with Irene aka Lipstick, will give you the 411 through story-telling, conversations, and refreshing perspectives.

© Copyright © lipstickandblackcoffee 2021

  • Listen on Apple Podcasts
  • Podcast RSS Feed

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • lipstickandblackcoffee
    • Join 266 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • lipstickandblackcoffee
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...