Inner Beauty

Celebrity Makeup Artist Shares Important Beauty Tip via a Video She Made in Her Car

One year ago this week, I began taking Barre3 classes 2-3x per week. It has been a life changing experience for me. Not only am I enjoying these classes as they combine pilates, yoga, ballet and cardio, I am getting into great shape and have never felt better physically and mentally. The classes end with a […]

One year ago this week, I began taking Barre3 classes 2-3x per week. It has been a life changing experience for me. Not only am I enjoying these classes as they combine pilates, yoga, ballet and cardio, I am getting into great shape and have never felt better Continue reading “Celebrity Makeup Artist Shares Important Beauty Tip via a Video She Made in Her Car”

Whose voice is running in your head?

We all have them; those voices in our head that cause fear and doubt and undermine our lives. Often, they are the voices of people who we trusted and felt safe around but betrayed that security, and in the process, created a life-long internal battle for our self-esteem. It could be the voice of a parent, love interest, or even a teacher or boss whose opinion you valued, and now their words hang over your heart. “Don’t eat that or you’ll get fat.” “Don’t bother trying that you’re not capable.”

I know those voices all too well. Several years ago, after going through a difficult divorce, I lost my job of 12 years, and found myself raising three small children with no money. For months I paid my bills with credit cards and when those ran out, I applied for welfare. As I struggled through a downward spiral, voices from my past played like a broken record telling me that I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough. That was until my best friend Lori called and told me she had stage four colon cancer.

I realized at that moment life was too short to listen to any voice other than mine. I decided that whatever was playing in my head, and no matter who said it, it was time to erase the tape and live my beauty! When I did, my life changed dramatically.

So how do you erase and reprogram your positive inner dialogue…

Identify the negative and re-program the dialogue.

Write down all the negative inner dialogue that runs through your mind. For each bit, answer this question: What was the true intent behind the statement, meaning, who made it and why? Here’s a story to help you get the gist of what I want you to do. . . .

I was working with a client shortly after her husband left her. After weeks of self-esteem coaching, she wanted to go shopping to create a new look that matched her new life. As a celebrity stylist and life coach it’s always fun to help women bring their inner beauty to life through a look that matches who they are. After trying on several flattering outfits, however, she looked dejected and stared at the dressing-room floor.

“I have to tell you something,” she said. I braced myself because, by now, I’ve learned that clients who are making bold changes also confront even bigger fears. “I think my stomach looks terrible in all these clothes.”

“What?” I gasped. “You look incredible! You have a great body. Where is this coming from? What is the voice in your head saying exactly?”

“It’s my ex’s voice,” she confessed. “He told me that I was getting fat, and he didn’t want to have sex with me anymore.”

“What was his genuine intention behind that statement?” I asked.

“To hurt me, I guess.”

“So, it wasn’t true, right? He only said it to upset you. Do you see the difference?”

She nodded, and relief washed over her face. The inner voice that had damaged her so deeply wasn’t true, and now she saw it for what is was; a lie.

She stood up straighter and smiled, and I knew she was on her way to becoming a free woman.

Now it’s your turn to do this exercise so that you can finally be free of any shaming voices that hold you back. And even if the original intention was positive—as a way to protect you, for instance—the result may still be the same. This exercise enables you to observe this dialogue for what it truly is and no longer allow it to control you.

What is True Beauty?

As a makeup artist, I’ve made a career out of working with both celebrities and regular people from all walks of life. It has been my job to make these men and women look and feel their best before appearances on TV, film, and the stage. As I worked to get my clients “camera-ready,” I began to see a clear connection between who these individuals truly are and how that translated into their outer beauty.

I realized that the magical “it” factor we all search for as women had nothing to do with finding the right shade of foundation or being a size 2, and it went well beyond mere celebrity status. There was something more, and I wanted to know how to get it.

And so my journey began. I kept working on helping women look beautiful while searching even harder to find the secrets to actually being beautiful. I spent years trying to understand what made certain individuals such rare standouts. My hope was that if I could figure it out, I could combine that knowledge with my expertise as a stylist and makeup artist and bring this life-changing beauty to others.

One day as I arrived at the CBS station I worked for, the morning-show producer caught me as I came through the door.

She wanted me to come up with a beauty-and-style segment to appear on the newscasts from time to time. And not only was I supposed to help create it, they also wanted me to host it! My dream had always been to work behind the scenes making women feel beautiful, but I realized that this new opportunity would allow me to reach thousands of women at once.

As soon as I agreed to step up to the challenge, my mind immediately raced in a million directions. I could help people learn how to become more beautiful! I was ecstatic!

Of course, I couldn’t have known it then, but this assignment would not only be the catalyst for me to achieve my lifelong dreams, but would also prove to be the beginning of a brand-new me. Within weeks, I received my first assignment: find a woman who needed a makeover and create a segment around her. Instinctively, I shied away from choosing someone who could just use a new haircut. I wanted to find a woman who needed a makeover on a much deeper level—someone who needed to feel beautiful, not just look beautiful.

Near the TV studio was MacDill Air Force Base, and many of the soldiers stationed there had just been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The majority of those left behind were women, and the stress and worry they had to bear was unimaginable. With their husbands risking their lives fighting for our freedom, these military wives patiently survived the daily grind of working, and raising their children on their own.

I instantly knew that they were the ones I wanted to work with, and that I was going to do more than one makeover. This was a way I could show my appreciation for their unselfish “call to duty.” So together with a team of stylists from my salon, we updated hairstyles, cosmetics, and even wardrobes. Everyone on my team worked diligently to lift the spirits of these special women.

As often happens when you serve another, your own spirit is lifted. I began to see beauty in a new way.

Once the makeovers were complete, the women were videotaped, and those recordings were then sent through a webcast to their husbands overseas. The entire experience was heartrending and beautiful. I cried along with them as the couples connected via cyberspace, and I watched in admiration as these brave and exquisite women conveyed their love.

I observed, I learned, and I understood: True beauty is not what is on the outside; it’s what dwells deep within our hearts, in the essence of our beings. The only thing makeup can do is enhance that true beauty.

From that day on, I no longer defined beautiful as a hairstyle or a look. I viewed it as a woman glowing with love and living a life of purpose.

Love the body you have…TODAY!

by Celebrity Makeup Artist, Self-Esteem Coach, and Bestselling Author Michelle Phillips

Love the body you have today!

It’s no small secret that women don’t like their bodies. In fact, I’ve been doing a little research and I am sad to report that recent statistics say that more than 80% of women are dissatisfied with their bodies. Even more troubling is that 65% of young girls think they are fat and are already dieting. Ladies of all ages, this has got to change!

As a celebrity makeup artist and stylist the first things I usually hear when when working with a client is “can you cover this up” or “could you make me look 10 pounds thinner?” With the right makeup, lighting, and airbrushing anything is possible in front of the camera, but in real life- the Life Coach in me has to take over from there. That bit of “cover-up” is best if it comes from inside.

I can tell you from working with hundreds of women that the latest diet or workout won’t be the key to having a body you love. Believing in who you are, and in how you look… is the foundation to achieving what you truly want out of life. I know this isn’t always an easy thing to do but freeing yourself of negative thoughts is a huge step towards living a truly beautiful life and achieving a healthy body. The first, and possibly the most crucial step on that path though, is to start loving the body you have right now.

Here are some suggestions to do just that:

Create an “I love myself because…” list

First, write down 20 things that you love about yourself. Your list may include your personality, kind heart, your sense of humor, compassion, smile, elbows, feet, etc. Include your talents and achievements, or various ways you’re proud of yourself. If you have trouble with this exercise think about what your best friend would say about you. It’s time to be your own best friend!

Take notice of the beauty around you

Take a deeper look at nature surrounding you. It may be a tree, mountains, clouds, the moon, butterfly, a flower…is it perfect? Does it have imperfections, maybe a few blemishes on a leaf? Start to notice the beauty around you. Train your mind to let go of the “imperfections” and revel in what makes things uniquely beautiful.

Delete Negative Self-Talk

Every time you hear yourself talking negatively about how you look…STOP! Who needs another critic? Instead, turn that inner dialogue into positive self-talk. You have the power to focus on what is great about you right now by deleting the negative thoughts whenever they show up.

Appreciate your beautiful body

Women are familiar with their face but not necessarily their body. Start to look at your body in the mirror. Study your shape and find the beauty. Notice how your body supports you and your daily life. Our bodies are beautiful vessels that transport our gorgeous souls.

Cut the tags out of your clothes!

Don’t buy a closet full of clothes that are too tight for you to fit into hoping that you’ll be in them soon – those are just guilt garments that don’t make you feel good when you open your closet. Buy and wear clothes that fit the body you have today. They call it a “fitting room” for a reason. Size doesn’t matter; it is all about how you feel in your clothes. By dressing the body you have today will help increase your self-esteem and in-turn unnecessary weight will begin to fall away. When you feel better about yourself, you take better care of yourself. It’s that simple!

No More Makeovers

As women in our 20’s and 30’s, we are often chasing fashion fads—the latest hairstyle, smoky eyes or skinny jeans in an effort to live up to someone else’s idea of beauty. We find out years later how we looked when reminiscing over pictures. “Wow” you say, “I looked like a crazy blend of Madonna and Rachel from Friends!” “What was I thinking?” Worse yet, if we don’t stop going for the trendy looks, we find our kids saying, “Please tell me you’re not wearing that Mom?”

What we don’t know about the futility of these surface fixes is that the beauty we are searching for lies a little deeper. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we may have lost touch with the woman we wanted to be physically, spiritually or emotionally, and it could be affecting every aspect of our beauty. We don’t know what’s missing or how we lost it, but at some point there is an awakening. We spend our 20’s and 30’s in what I call our getting years—getting the job, getting the husband, getting the kids, getting the perfect house—only to wake up later on and say, “I may want everything I have, but do I have everything I want?”

If you want to find real and lasting beauty in your life and look, now is the time in your life to know that you have earned something more. Let’s stop wasting time on make overs, it’s time for a transformation!

I was lucky enough to spend the first 10 years of my career working on my dream of being a makeup artist, doing what I thought was making people beautiful. After working with top celebrities and truly amazing people who don’t live in the spotlight, I learned an invaluable lesson. No matter how good I am as a makeup artist I can only enhance your true beauty. Saying that usually brings up two reactions; “Yeah right” and “Great, but what is true beauty?” Your true beauty is in your passion, compassion, your tears and laughter. It’s also the times when you allow yourself to revel in your deeply beautiful qualities. Every line, every wrinkle, and every gray hair, is a wonderful part of the story of your beauty.

This next step is the most challenging for a lot of us: defining our beautiful qualities. In my experience, women would pop down in my makeup chair time and again with the first words out of their mouths being, “Could you cover this or that up” or “Make me look 10 pounds thinner” or “10 years younger?” Listing what we feel is wrong with us is easy. But when I ask women to list 10 things they feel make them beautiful, they often have a hard time. I’d like you to do that when you finish reading this. But don’t stop at 10. I want you to list 20 or even more of your beautiful qualities. These can be your hips, lips, smile, sense of humor, listening skills, intelligence, or anything else that makes you a stunning one-of-a-kind woman.

From there, I want you to post your list where you can see it, maybe even break it down into smaller lists. Put them on post-it notes on your make up mirror or the visor of your car. Just be sure to put these reminders of your beauty in places that constantly reinforce the definition of who you are.

Busy women fall out of touch with who they are and forget what they have to offer. Sometimes they need a reminder of the divine gifts they are to the world. They need permission to celebrate themselves and know that it’s okay to bloom, soak in the sun and express the wild colors they were created to be.

Let your list be your reminder and before you spend any time at the end of this year or the beginning of the next thinking about what you don’t have, remember the beauty you DO have!

Fire Red to Carnation Pink: Uncovering Inner Beauty

By Asia Voight

“Some day my daughter is going to be Miss America!” my dad boasted to other parents waiting outside dance class. Standing beside him my leotard glimmered in bronze over my long smooth legs. Every daughter wants to make her father proud. Believing that outer beauty reigned supreme, and that one day I would be Miss America, I signed up for every lesson that would get me on that national stage. Gymnastics, modeling, piano, cheerleading, singing and baton twirling lessons filled weekly schedules. Determined to please my family and make myself a star I pressed hard to excel.

By my teenage years, the momentary highs of my many accomplishments were followed by a deep sense of shallowness and darkness that lingered inside me. And at night I became haunted by a re-occurring dream where layers of bizarrely expressive African looking masks came off my face only to reveal nothing but a void, a black space. I began to see myself as empty and hollow, a mannequin of changing masks. The positive outward appearance and talents of my waking self was intended to bring me love and acceptance but instead, it brought about a severe disconnection between my outward persona and what I felt. Until one day, I found myself on my knees in prayer.

“God, show me how to be real. I’m sick and tired of feeling like a hollow shell.” Like a small tornado my prayer swirled up to Heaven.

In my early twenties, a speeding semi driver crashed his rig into my van and into my dreams of beauty. Trapped inside the van, a raging fire closed in on me. Managing to wriggle my body through the partially open driver’s side window, I jumped into an inferno of flames and miraculously made it to the other side

As days and weeks passed, lying immobile in my hospital bed with 72% of my body charred, I watched lovely new skin begin to form over raw flesh. Maybe I still can be Miss America, I thought. However, all hopes cast off with this new skin as it became twisted like roots and vines. The skin fit so poorly over my bones and muscle constricting my every movement. I could not even wipe my own tears away. Hope ebbed away as each new scar formed. All the softness and gracefulness of my skin and body had been burnt off and taken with it the only avenue to love and acceptance I had known in the world.

“It’s time to look,” a staff nurse said. She handed the mirror to me but I would not take it from her.

“No!”

“Your going home soon, you have to look, “ She jetted the mirror in my face.

“I want to remember myself as beautiful,” I kept my eyes closed.

“You have to face the truth,”

“I’ll do it on my own.”

Later that day, shuffling weakly with the use of my cane and a grip on the wall handrails I made it to the bathroom. Once in I closed the door behind me. Elated to have accomplished my longest walk since the accident I relished a moment alone. This euphoria didn’t last long. Seeing the large wall mirror caused me to break out into a cold sweat. Can I do this?

Cautiously peeking out one eye at the top of my head in the mirror I let out a sigh, Not so bad, I Initially thought. Scanning down the rest of my face I grasped the sink’s edge as both eyes fixed upon my neck covered in a speckled, discolored skin-graft that looked like dead bare chicken skin. Steadying myself against the vanity, hot tears streamed down my cheeks like water down a tumbled mine shaft.

Any illusion of beauty gone, I set into hating the hospital staff, and made God an enemy of mine. Doctors call this healing? God betrayed me by keeping me alive for this. Death would have been the miracle here. I am utterly worthless now. Hideous.

My anguish only deepened as the staff got me ready for the day before leaving intensive care. My nurse gave me a package – a Jobst pressure garment used to compress raised scars. Painfully, the tight nylon-like suit stretched over my thin-skinned legs, torso, and arms – at the bottom of the package, a facemask. Refusing to put it on the staff held vigil at my bedside. My shouts of “No!” and “Get that away from me,” would not deter them. Finally giving in, the mask came over my face like a suffocating white sheet placed over the dead. The binding magnified my shallow breathing as the Velcro at the back of my head became fully attached. The nurses walked away pleased at saving my face from contracting, while I disappeared under the restricting tan mesh and ceased to exist.

The next day they wheeled me from the hospital to a vehicle waiting to take me to the airport and eventually my hometown. A staff nurse handed me a laminated card. If anyone around me were to become overly frightened I could show it so they knew I was not a bank robber or dangerous somehow.

Sitting in a narrow wheelchair on the airport runway, the crew and my mother cautiously lifted me up the airplane stairs. Rounding the corner into the aisle, the piercing stares of alarmed travelers bore into my eyes. Tightening my throat to stifle tears, I put my head down until landing. Upon arrival at O’Hare Airport with one more flight home, my mom wheeled me through the crowds to our next gate. A stranger faced us; I shielded my heart ready to be confronted by her glare. Instead she pulled a flower from her purse and looked deeply into my eyes. My breath sucked back into my chest as our gazes locked. Mouth agape, I reached out for the flower. I felt her heart open like the pink carnation she handed me. Smiling through my Jobst mask my heart lifted.

During the next few months of recovery it continued to be painful turning over in bed and reviving my paralyzed leg, but the image and sensation of the unknown airport traveler continued to give me strength to progress with my physical therapists. Likewise, meeting new people in the hospital became easier as my skin and body continued to heal. Now it was time to take my new face out into the world.

I no longer wore the mask and yet I continued to be self-conscious about the red scar that covered the left side of my face, and the graft on my neck that looked like a patchwork quilt. I drove into my old neighborhood and pulled up to a favorite hangout. My heart raced in my chest as I thought, What if no one likes me anymore? Or worse, they don’t want anything to do with me since I’m not pretty. I sat there for long moments of breathing and searching for my confidence to take this step out into the unfriendly world.

Then the image of the pink carnation sprang from my mind, energizing me like new blood. And I heard an angel speak to me through the darkness like one of the caring night nurses; “Inner beauty and love shines out as attractiveness, be this splendor and wear it on your face.”

Every cell of my body savored this declaration and I found the courage to walk into my old haunt. And to my amazement, familiar friends from my past gathered around with hugs and kind words! Looking deeply into their eyes I witnessed authentic beauty reflected back to me as if each of them had handed me a pink carnation.

About Asia Voight

Asia is an internationally known Animal Communicator, teacher and speaker, who has worked with over 40,000 animals in the last 13 years. Asia’s inspiring work has been featured on ABC, NBC, and Fox TV, as well as, countless radio interviews like the Rick Lamb Show and dressage rider Jane Savoie’s tele-seminar. She has graced the covers, of many publications such as Brava and Women Magazine, the front pages of the Wisconsin State Journal and the Fitchburg Star with her amazing personal story and words of animal wisdom. Asia has published a chapter in Crossing the Rubicon: Celebrating the Human-Animal Bond in Life and Death, an inspirational and uplifting story of the healing aspects of her Animal Communication work.

Speaking in front of thousands of animal lovers, Asia is often a popular keynote speaker for countless events like the Midwest Horse Fair® in Madison, Wis., where she has delighted audiences with her on-the-spot personal readings, humor and warmth.

Also, a popular teacher in her Animal Communication workshops, Asia generously shares her skills by gently guiding course participants on how to connect with one’s own animal companions, through exercises and guided meditations.