New Year, New Look
Image is important not only in our city, but everywhere. Whether you like it or not, everyone does the quick five-second once-over from head to toe to assess the kind of person you might be from your attire. Your clothes and your behaviour say a lot about who you are, and sometimes they don’t necessarily reflect the wonderful personality inside.
Eve Roth Lindsay is an image consultant who can help you achieve the goal of looking smart and appropriate with the right colours and styles. At your consultation with Lindsay, she assesses whether you have cool or warm undertones based on a colour wheel created by Alfred Munsell. The same colour wheel is used by painters and designers. Then you are matched with a set of swatches to identify which colours work best for you.
“You want colours that harmonize with your skin. When someone’s eyes go down to your clothes, they should come back to your eyes because that is the most important feature for communication,” says Lindsay. She also helps with make-up, and more detailed consultations lead to assessments of body shape and the styles best suited to those shapes. “We basically help people to make their wardrobe work for them,” says Lindsay.
Tips Lindsay has for changing your image: “It’s really important that your clothes fit you well, as is knowing how to dress for your body type.”
Sonia Samtani, also an image consultant, works not only on clothes and make-up, but also behaviour and movement. She believes every action says as much about you as the clothes you wear. “Pay attention to your movements, the way you sit, stand, get up from a chair – they all say something about you. Be aware of your movements,” she says.
It’s also important to maintain your image on the inside, says Samtani: “You have to change your internal dialogue. If you think ‘I’m fat, I’m ugly, I’m unattractive,’ then you’re not really going to own your look and feel comfortable in it.”
Samtani’s tip for making sure your clothing suits your colouring is ‘the blink test’. “When you blink, and then your eyes refocus, if they are drawn to your clothing rather than you, then the colour isn’t right for you. You want the focus to be on you and your features, not your clothes. They are there to help you look better, not to be the main attraction.”
If you’d like a style or image makeover, contact Eve Roth Lindsay at 2719 9674, or by emailing eve@savvystyle.com. Contact Sonia Samtani for image consulting and life coaching at www.soniasamtani.com or call 2992 0828 for enquiries.
New Year, New Career
Sometimes pushing yourself to look for a new job, or even a new position at your existing company, can be tough. Comfortable where you are, yet you know you want, and can do, better – but the effort to make the change is often daunting enough to put anyone off. The rot starts innocently enough – usually with procrastination – but then that New Year’s resolution to get yourself a better, brighter career slowly withers and dies. Sometimes you need a boost not only from friends and family, but from a professional as well, to get you on your way.
We spoke with Angela Spaxman, a business and career coach, for pointers on how to keep on working towards that goal. “People’s first mistake is that they make broad resolutions,” says Spaxman. “If you are more specific about what you want, you can be successful much more easily.” Then, she says, it’s just a matter of working through the steps to achieve that more specific goal.
First imagine a positive and attractive theme for yourself – for example, if your goal is to enjoy work more, your theme should be happiness and positivity in the workplace. Secondly, you need a vision of your goal – “You must see, hear and feel exactly what it is you want for yourself in the workplace,” says Spaxman. Envisioning your achievement is key to securing it. Finally, make sure your resolutions are not negative – instead of saying “I will not be working at this company in six months time,” say “I will be working at a new company in six months time.”
Most important, says Spaxman is “Make sure your resolution is what you actually want. Often there is pressure to change careers from family or other people in your life.”
If you’d like to contact Angela for career and business coaching, visit her website www.spaxman.com.hk for contact details and more information about her coaching sessions.
New Year, New Order
There are times when clutter and mess can drive you mad. You know you have to clear it all up, but not only do you not know where to begin, you’ve got to find the time to plan and do it. No matter how hard we try, some of us just can’t seem to make the time, but with Kristin Lowe’s company, Organising Solutions, you can tackle the mess.
For both home and office, the first basic step to organizing, says Lowe, is to focus on a small area. “Often when we organize, we think or rearranging things. What you should actually do is choose a small area and completely remove everything from that area and sort it into three piles: keep, don’t keep and a maybe keep. Eventually you’ll come down to what needs to stay and what needs to go,” says Lowe.
Once you’ve done that, you can begin to store what stays in a way that keeps things organized and tidy. Perfect places for storage units, or furniture that encourages good organization, are IKEA, MUJI or, for more high-end units, Shambala in Horizon Plaza. Other Japanese home stores are also excellent says Lowe, because the Japanese are so used to having little space in their homes. Lowe’s company can also provide organizational plans for helpers, should you be unable to carry through the organization of your space yourself.
A new year often means a new home and for those planning on moving base, Lowe has a handy tip: pack your boxes with your new house layout in mind – if those books in your bedroom will end up in the study at the new place, label the boxes they’re packed in for the study. It will make things easier both for the movers and your unpacking.
You can contact Kristin to help you organize your home or office at www.organisingsolutions.com, or via email info@organisingsolutions.com. For enquiries call 2251 1511.
New Year, New Partner
All you need is love according to the Beatles and not many of us would disagree. Finding your special someone is often much harder than it should be, but perhaps that’s because we’re not prepared. Pia Muggerud, a life and relationship coach, helps people understand themselves better so they can find a suitable partner.
Muggerud says its very important to look at the basics when choosing a partner – what is it that you really look for? Ideally you should write down two lists: one of non-negotiables – things that cannot be compromised, for example non-smoker, vegetarian and so on. The other is what Muggerud calls “a nice wish list”: things you would like your partner to have but aren’t absolutely necessary – dark eyes, likes dogs and so on. By writing these things down, you discover a lot about yourself, what values and ideals you really have, and what it is you’re truly looking for in a person.
Past experience is important too: what’s worked before and what hasn’t are good indicators of what you want and what you should be searching for. Also, use friends, family and colleagues as resources – these people may have a better idea than you do yourself and they can help you on your hunt for a suitable partner.
Although a lot of this seems like common sense, most people tend to ignore such basic steps when looking at relationships – and dive headfirst into muddy waters. But does using a relationship coach to find a partner take away from the spontaneity of it all?
“It can seem like that,” says Muggerud. “But I’m not asking my clients to follow a strict regimen, I’m asking them to be aware of those things they are looking for and have fun with them. Slot appropriate questions into conversation to find out more about your date.”
That may require more deftness than some people are used to, but Muggerud points out she is able to help with that too. She can advise people how to feel less awkward on dates and understand the dynamic of how to make a date run better.
But her number one tip for finding a new relationship is: “Be open to things and realise it can happen anywhere.”
Contact Pia Muggerud for life and relationship coaching by emailing pia@co-pia.com
New Year, New Money
Well, the festive season has come and gone, but what’s left? A hole in your wallet from all the shopping and partying? It’s perhaps the only resolution we make every year – save more money and spend less. But how do we do that? Angela Leung, a financial coach, spoke with us on how to make the most of our money.
“It all depends on income,” says Leung, “but you should aim to save between 10 and 20 percent of your monthly income in investments.” Her advice is that too many loans, such as mortgages, can cause our greatest financial burdens so we should be careful not to over-stretch ourselves. Most important is to come up with a realistic budget of expenditure in a month and factor that into the amount one is able save every month.
Leung also says using credit cards can be part of the problem when it comes to saving money, as we do have a tendency to over-spend on them, especially during holiday seasons. Cut down on using credit cards, she says, and only spend on them when necessary.
If you do plan on investing your money, consider your age, and the levels of risk you’re comfortable with. “Young people can afford to take higher risks with their investments because they have a longer time to earn back any lost money,” Leung says. “But older earners should consider low-risk investments so that they don’t lose out on their retirement funds.”
However, her number one piece of advice is: “Maintain discipline, it’s the most important part of saving your money.”
Get your finances in order with Angela Leung’s help; contact her by emailing ayyleung@netvigator.com.
New Year, New Diet
Over-indulgence in food during the festive season is always one of the reasons we plan to ‘detox’, or live healthier lifestyles, in the coming year. But how soon is it before we pop into McDonald’s and succumb to fast food, ignoring any ‘health’ food on the menu?
Anita Cheung is a certified holistic health counsellor who works as a lifestyle and nutrition coach. She helps people transform their lifestyles by looking at individual dietary needs and finding the best ways to fulfil them through cooking, detox or supplements. “Initially,” Cheung says, “it takes about three weeks to change the habits of the person I am coaching and a few months to firmly establish them in a healthy lifestyle.”
Her approach to helping people maintain healthy diets is to take an integrative approach using both Western and Chinese methods. With such an approach and taking into account a person’s metabolic type, Cheung can help them understand their body and what it needs. She also explains the benefits of eating whole, natural foods and organic produce.
Cheung believes that to maintain that New Year’s resolution of staying on your healthy diet, the most important thing is to get your priorities right. Make sure that healthy eating is a priority in your life, and be clear to yourself why it’s so.
Finally, have fun with eating healthy – remember the 80/20 rule, you only need to be good about your healthy eating 80 percent of the time, nobody’s perfect, so you shouldn’t have to be either!
Need help sticking to that healthy diet? Then contact Anita Cheung at anita@integrative-living.com or check out her website www.integrative-living.com |
