Coaching, reloaded - Coaching question of the day #381. - Our daily quest beauty, from now on

What is life all about, after all? 
In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), the second movie adaptation of the short story by James Thurber (1939) directed by Ben Stiller as a remake of the one with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo (1947), the wise and adventurous photographer Sean O'Connell played by Sean Penn says "Beautiful things don't ask for attention".

That's not only a very interesting line and an elegant way to introduce the bittersweet plot twist that will become clear at the end of the movie, but also a fascinating way to look at life.

[The best thing about this question?

Every place is a good one to start with, 

as long as we start for real...]

Beautiful things don't ask for attention, but we can learn to notice and appreciate them anyway.

Coaching, reloaded - Coaching question of the day #322. - Your definition of elegance

Today, someone asked me out of the blue what elegance means to me.

And I have to confess that I was taken aback, even if just for a moment. It was the kind of moment like "Uhm, I know exactly what it means for me but how can I convey it?".

I could go for classic Hollywood comedies from the 40s and Busby Berkeley musical choreographies. 

I could go for Elsa Schiaparelli or Paul Poiret.

I could go for Scandinavian design or Erté.

I could go for practically almost every Italian historical building or something Art Déco.

[Elegance? Something I found difficult to digest for many years,

before I was able to rediscover it in a new, more personal way]

I could go...

And then I realized that replying "I recognize it when I see it" or just saying that elegance for me has nothing to do with luxury objects or money would not be enough.

Coaching, reloaded - Coaching question of the day #184. - Where beauty lies, for you

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they have been saying for over two thousand years, by now.

And they will probably keep saying it as long as we will all be around.

Even more so, in a world that wants to celebrate and empower diversity.

We all have our own sense of beauty, style, aesthetics.

We look different, we are surrounded by different stimuli, we are attracted and impressed by different things.

[Beauty is a state of mind.

Discovering new places for it can be the quest of a lifetime]

This can be very enriching and valuable, as we get a chance to discover what can be beautiful for someone else and, very often, we are surprised to experience something so different from what we considered the epitome of beauty just five minutes before.

Colors in culture - This can be the color of... #3. Red, or over 160 different cultural references about the color of rubies, passion, and Snow White's apples

After green and blue, the series Colors in culture is back, at last, with its third installment, dedicated to the diva of the color wheel...

Red doesn't need big introductions.

It's usually the first color people notice, because of its wavelength in the light spectrum, and it is one of the primary colors in both the RGB and the CMYK color models. Without red, there would be not that much you could do with colors, and the scene would look somehow... a little bit dull.

Technicalities aside, red is the most used (and sometimes abused) statement color.

It is associated with bold choices, it doesn't matter if we are talking about fashion, food, seduction, the military world, the symbols of religion worldwide, or... concepts like transgression and good luck.

[Useful thesaurus of Red shades,

with the proper English names,

by Ingrid Sundberg]

You want to get noticed? In most cases, red will do the trick for you.

That's one of the reasons why so many foods, flowers, and toys are red, and why companies like Kellogg's, Coca Cola, Virgin, LEGO, and Pinterest do their best for being an eye-catcher, both online and offline.

Well, my smile's pretty hard to miss, considering I'm a gal who likes her lipstick: the redder the better.

Dolly Parton

Even if the urban legend that Coca Cola "invented" Santa Claus' red look as we know it for marketing reasons related to its brand is... just a legend, red is a color designed to leave a durable impression.

Without further ado, here you can find a list of over 100 different cultural references: emotions, ideas, objects, places, etc. related to red as a color.

Life choices Vs. Dorian Gray, or what does your face say about you, your life, your thoughts?

"You look way younger than you are", they say.
And then, usually, they tell me that I look something between five and fifteen years younger than my age, depending on how tired or fit I am on that particular day and on how good or bad they are at guessing other people's age.

They have always said that, my whole life. Even when I was so young that the sentence was almost ridiculous.

And it is interesting to notice how something that drove me crazy at any occasion back in the days, when I was a teenager and a twentysomething so eager to be taken seriously, makes me so happy today, every single time.

[How good are you at guessing other people's age?

How well does your face tell your story?

Pic: Me, December 2018 © Radoslaw Kosiada]

Why is it so different now?

"Born This Way" also means "Living This Way", and paying the price for it - In memoriam for Zombie Boy [1985-2018] - Part I

"With such beautiful tattoos, I understand that it is a pity to hide them with those stockings" the doctor said today in the morning, while visiting me because of a terrible pain on my feet that it's making it impossible for me to walk, and referring to special stockings that can be needed in such cases. 

He wants to be nice, and he probably thinks that his words are friendly and charming. And maybe even a little bit flirty, in a fun way.

So I keep my cool, look at him with a firm smile and reply: "Well, this is not about my tattoos, it is about me not being able to walk because of the pain. I just want the pain in my feet to stop". 

After the medication, I go home with a huge white bandage that covers half of a leg and a foot. As I can walk without pain, for the first time in three days, I really don't care about the people staring at me.

[Zombie Boy posing as a polarizer that draws 

so much attention while traveling on the subway 

and minding his own business, 2016

It feels so familiar to me...]

If people are used to staring at me wherever I go, well...

Today they do that even more, and they have the "excuse" of the bandage. Some smile, some look perplexed, some seem to be dying for asking some questions. I just want to go home and take care of my feet.

While hearing about the unexpected death of Canadian model and actor Rick Genest, better known as Zombie Boy or Rico the Zombie, found dead two days ago in Montréal at the age of 32 after (apparently) committing suicide, I have to think again about what happened this morning. 

The mindset you need, when you are a polarizer, and a very special kind of smile that can make your day

Sometimes, being who you are, being authentic, feels risky.

It can feel like being exposed, too vulnerable, even like an open target... or a little bit naked.

Hiding could seem the perfect solution for that, and yet I had to experience, day in and day out, that pushing even harder and being, even more, yourself and showing it to the world is the only solution that will make you happy in the long run.

You have been given a gift. Please stop squandering it.

Naomi Dunford, Click, Clack, Moo: Why You MUST Stop Dumbing Yourself Down

You are different, you say?

Congratulations, honey. Welcome to the club. It's time to start enjoying your superpowers.

On Wednesday, it happened to me three times. 

And I smiled every single one. (Ahoi Wednes-yay for that!)

How? You may ask.

Let's take a step back.

[Let's take a step back, 

with my gorgeous purple flat ballerinas

made in Italy (RIP, lovely shoes)]

I am a polarizer, ladies and gents.

Which means that I am used to the good, the bad and the ugly of being at the center of attention wherever I go, whatever I do.

While going around in summer with short dresses and flip-flops or flat ballerinas, I am used to the fact that the vast majority of people of any age would behave in one of these ways:

Hips don't lie, beards do. And people do it as well, sometimes - Part II

The young, blond man is sitting near me in the subway, at the end of a chilled & sunny summer day.

He's tall and he is hot and he's wearing glasses and... I surprise myself at doing it again.

While sitting absolutely motionless and apparently distracted near him and looking somewhere else in front of me, I am actually undressing him on my mind. 

Yes, exactly. I am imagining him without his huge hipster beard and, virtually, undressing his beautiful face and asking myself if he would be even more handsome without a beard.

["Rire dans sa barbe", a popular French idiomatic expression

not directly translatable into English,

as depicted by Auckland-based designer Anjana Iyer...

with a huge hipster beard, of course]

Gut feeling about that? Hell, yes.

Sorry for not being sorry about that.

As we said in the first part of this post, beards are not really my thing.

Colors in culture - This can be the color of... #2. Blue, or over 100 different cultural references about the color of melancholy, sapphires, and water

You asked for it, you waited for it and... you got it, at last: after a long break here we are with the second blog post of the blog post series about colors and which kind of reference colors can carry in specific cultures.

Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood? 

Anita Desai

The first blog post of the series, dedicated to green, got over 1,200 views so far (thank you!!) and today I am absolutely glad to offer you a second one about a color loved and very used in most countries and cultures, or even one of the only truly "universal" ones, even if with some cultural twists.

[Useful thesaurus of Blue shades,

with the proper English names,
by Ingrid Sundberg]

Mermaids, angels, fairies, and other fantastic creatures can sometimes have blue hair or blue skin and this is one of the most recognizable signs that they are special, different, from another dimension or another planet.

Colors in culture - This can be the color of... #1. Green, or 100 different cultural references about the color of hope and freshness

As already said in this post about cultural differences in color psychology, every color can evoke different ideas, feelings, and meanings, depending on the culture, the historical background, the pop-culture references of a specific place.

So here we are, with a new blog post series about colors... 

Usually, people wait for getting green light about a new project, a new activity, a new job. Let's start with green as well.

Again, green is the color of a lot of fantasy creatures like dragons, leprechauns, fairies. How about Shrek, the Grinch, the famous green eggs of Dr. Seuss, Green Lantern, the Green Goblin, and Hulk?

[Useful thesaurus of Green shades,

with the proper English names,
by Ingrid Sundberg]

Here you can find a list of 100 different cultural references: emotions, ideas, objects, places, etc. related to green as a color.

Hips don't lie, beards do. And people do it as well, sometimes - Part I

The first bearded man in my life was Mr. Cookies. 

He was neither the least famous bearded cousin of Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar nor the older brother of the Gingerbread man.

[Gingy, the cute and valiant Gingerbread man of the Shrek series

No close relation with Mr. Cookies.

Well, at least not as far as I know. One never knows]

He was the bearded neighbor living on the first floor of my apartment building when I was a child. A quiet and peaceful man a little bit overweight, probably in his forties, married with a blond enchanting nice woman, he was always kind, smiling and fun to talk to.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life’s about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

I have never been religious, not even as a child, but Mr. Cookies - this was his real last name, only translated into Italian, of course - was to me the closest thing to Santa Claus, that I had ever seen in real life so far. And probably also afterward.

So a bearded man was for me so far someone somehow friendly and helpful and such, but for sure not attractive or sexy. And not only because as a child I had not yet very clear in my mind what sex appeal or sexiness should be.

Then it was the turn of Candy Candy, of course.

Why one should go all in, while being heavily tattooed, and the kind of questions about tattoos that are pure gold

From a technical and medical point of view, tattoos are... scars.

While getting tattooed, one allows someone - hopefully a good tattoo artist, though! - to create a special kind of wound while putting specific colored pigments under the skin with needles, either manually or with the help of a tattoo machine. 

Wounds turn into scars and scars make you tough. 

Aisha Tyler

Over time, that wound is going to become a scar... sometimes a wonderful one, sometimes a gross one, for sure one filled with colored pigments: a tattoo.

[One interesting example of the kind of tattoos I like the most: 

Black ink Polynesian tattoo in the Marquesas Islands style]

Of course tattoos are way more than just a simple scar. They are part of important rituals in some cultures, over the centuries they had (and sometimes still have) a healing function in other cultures, they provided information about the roles of each person in a community or tribal society, they are a way of modifying the body, they marked and still mark a special kind of hierarchy in jails all around the world... and so on.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what do you think about people paying someone else left-handed compliments?

I don't know about you, but I like it when someone pays me a compliment. 

I do like to hear someone telling me that I am smart, intelligent, funny, sensitive, sexy, or a good professional.
I like to hear that my dress is elegant, that my makeup is perfect, that I did a good job, that I said something interesting, that I am a fantastic friend.
I like to be appreciated. 

When someone tells me something nice, I usually smile and say "Thank you!". And I mean it every single time.

Does this sound like a no-brainer to you?

[When Harry Met Sally... 

One of the best comedies of the last 25 years, 

or how one can pay homage to the wonderful masterpieces 

by George Cukor, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder in an original way]

How about this interaction instead?

What if shock advertising would show what we don't want to see? Are you in?

After having the impression that everything has been already seen, showed, tried, experienced, and consumed... 

What can still shock the consumers and the audience?

Shock advertising is usually the answer. The answer most marketers are going to give.

[Domestic violence for a coffee, anyone?

Shock advertising is usually related to a specific culture and time:

what is shocking or gross now, 
could have been socially accepted in the past and viceversa]

What do you think about shock advertising? Does it make you feel uncomfortable or inspired?

Do you find some advertising campaigns interesting, original, funny, ironic? Are they pure genius and are able to start a conversation or are they just gross and unpleasant?

[Advertising promoted by IndyAct.Org

for the "Stop the Carnage" campaign]

Even if not always, I have overall a good opinion about very aggressive advertising campaigns because they force people to reflect on topics and subjects too often forgotten, such domestic violence, children abuse, racism, discrimination, organ donation, endangered species, human and animal rights, pollution and so on.

One of my favorite campaigns ever is a frightful portrait of a French anorexic girl created a couple of years ago by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani: