Project 333 Clothes Encounters

After reading Project 333 I thought long and hard about when we should welcome discomfort versus when it’s better to feel confident.

Ultimately feeling good in our clothes is what we should strive for. Thinking about using a capsule wardrobe I realized that each of us should dress to please ourselves. We don’t need to step out in clothing trends or outlandish outfits.

Dressing in clothes that are ill-fitting, make you appear sick or tired, or that you’re simply not comfortable in is a mistake. It’s the surefire way to feel miserable all day.

Breaking the fashion rules and other rules can be fun and is often necessary. Isn’t it likely that other people expect us to conform to how they think we should behave precisely because they have their own insecurities they can’t live with. They want us to be company in their misery.

Courtney Carver frowns on thinking you have to do things perfectly.

No—I didn’t follow the guidelines to the letter. You can revise how you execute Project 333. My collection is geared to 39 to 44 items so technically you could call it Project 339 or 344.

Plus there are about ten or eleven items of clothing that I don’t wear that I haven’t discarded or donated. They don’t get in the way of reaching for the ones that I want to wear. So they stay for now.

My jewelry items are listed separately and Courtney said that’s OK. Nor do I count hats tote bags coats pocketbooks or bandannas.

In the summer I list under one item number each my black and white tee shirts. Since they are basics and I own three or four of each color. Those tee shirts get worn-out fast so it’s fine to rotate wearing more than one. Then list in the 33 only one white tee and one black tee when you actually use more.

The alternative is to wear only one white and one black tee shirt. Discard them at the end of the season when they get grubby. Then buy one new tee each summer.

Again Courtney Carver wrote that you don’t have to do this in a perfect way or follow her 33 guideline to the letter.

Coming up my winter capsule wardrobe.

Project 333 Guidelines

Minimalist maestro Courtney Carver created Project 333 to better manage her health by using a capsule wardrobe of 33 seasonal items worn for 3 months.

Following the Project 333 system makes sense to me. Especially for those of us who have a hard time getting dressed in the morning. Pulling clothes off hangers, throwing on the bed the discards, and finally arriving at the outfit to wear.

Sound familiar? In a future blog entry I’ll go into detail about making our lives easier with other strategies in addition to creating a capsule wardrobe.

Here’s what to include in the 33:

Clothing

Accessories

Jewelry

Shoes (one pair counts as one item)

What not to count in the 33:

Wedding ring or one other sentimental piece of jewelry that you never take off.

Underwear

Sleepwear

In-home loungewear

Workout clothing (when you use the gear to exercise – wearing yoga pants to run errands in town is part of the 33)

Coming up how I created my own capsule wardrobe.

Life-Changing Book

This month I read a life-changing book: Project 333: The Minimalist Fashion Challenge that Proves Less Really is So Much More.

In January I talk about this challenge in detail and how it played out in my life. For me the better part of the guide was when the author talked about life topics like being creative and breaking rules. (Hint: Creative people live longer.)

To get followers to buy the book I’ll quote from it. The single most useful advice was asking readers what other rules we could break along with fashion rules.

To wit:

We should break written and unwritten rules such as “The rules and expectations that other people have quietly (or not so quietly) set for you.”

Isn’t that how it goes that other people think they know what’s best for us. We fall in line and sink into doing what they say. Then we get ill conforming to this false version of ourselves.

It’s time to take back our lives. To trust ourselves to know what’s right for us in terms of how we should think feel live act love and dress.

Our uniqueness and our differentness are gifts we give each other.

Let’s not allow those “minders” to impact how we feel about ourselves.

Lastly: author Courtney Carver gets this imperative stance right too:

“Just because things are crazy around you doesn’t mean things have to be crazy within you.”

Rouge

The novel above is spiky, surreal, seductive. Forget that it received only 3.8 stars on Amazon. I recommend that everyone reads this book.

Though fiction the narrative exposes the dark side of the skincare industry. By the time I got to only page 119 I had no interest in buying and using anti-aging creams.

The book should turn all readers off from seeking eternal youth. Save your hard-earned money. Use it to donate to charity. Buy a new shade of lipstick guilt-free. Our skin is beautiful even with lines and wrinkles.

Rouge is the gold standard for the craft of fiction. The book should win a literary prize.

You can check it out of the library if you can’t buy it.

Seeing Others

I checked out of the library the book above. This is the book to read if you care about what’s going on and want to aid in changing things.

The first habit to adopt is to see what goes on from the other person’s point of view. It’s called a Point of View for a reason. Everyone’s lived experience impacts how each of us thinks about life, the world, and people.

Scapegoating the readers of books is not the way to end injustice. Authors have been fixated on changing the behavior they assume the reader has when those media darlings haven’t met you.

One of their cardinal sins is hiring a life coach as if wanting to improve yourself is an injustice.

In real life as well as between the pages of books there’s a better alternative to stereotyping people:

Each of us should tell our unvarnished stories. Storytelling is the way to kindle empathy and to motivate readers to act or to change their mind.

In this season when the holiday card greeting Peace on Earth appears to be a cosmic joke I persist in having hope. I remain an optimist.

There’s work that each of us can do to aid in healing. It starts when we choose recovery and reconciliation instead of waging a war with people we view as our enemies.

Positive change IS happening in corners of society in America under the radar of the people who have been given a media platform to spread hateful and hurtful rhetoric.

We don’t have to buy what they’re selling us this season. They can attack us sight unseen when the truth is hiding in plain sight: change is going on.

Let’s not click on the bait or repost bitter barbed-wire attacks.

Love is All Colors just like Love is All Sizes. And Love is Love however it appears. People are falling in love with each other. Individuals are acting as Advocates. Fathers are raising their kids to have manners and compassion.

These tiny acts of justice are going on all around us.

Now more than ever seeing each other and recognizing each other is the way to go.

I’ll end here with what a famous Russian art instructor told me when I took his life painting class. He told me: “Paint what you see not what you know.”

Let’s take five minutes to share our stories with each other. To show who we are and what we stand for. Let’s take a stand against the agents of acrimony who keep us divided.

The Art of Being Ordinary

Chances are I won’t have a million followers. That’s okay. In the book above the author reveals that metaverse platforms like Facebook promote polarizing content precisely because it gets people to react click like and share the content and linger on the sites.

Animosity goes viral. CJ Casciotta the author of the book ends his guide with the call for reconciliation. He thinks the Poets among us have the gifts to change things.

How eerie it was then that in this blog recently I expressed my stance that I’m going to “call in” others not call out real people.

In whatever I do say and write I want to make people feel good. No–I won’t contribute to making others feel like poop. If I don’t want to feel like toilet scum why would I want others to feel that way.

In here I’ll give away the secret to being effective:

A person who is made to feel ashamed is not going to have the energy nor motivation to change their behavior.

Good luck trying to convert them to your cause when you’re attacking them and cutting them down.

Anger serves only to harm the person feeling that way not the object of their anger. Do we really want to live our whole lives fueled up on resentment?

Bitter dark and small should be a chocolate drop. Not how we think about and act towards each other.

Let’s each of us vow not to sharpen our knives to compete in the shame wars going on. Forks Over Knives should be our life philosophy not just an eating plan.

It’s okay to cut into a chicken cutlet. Why should we cut into others with hateful and hurtful rhetoric. Things haven’t changed so that is exactly why it’s likely we should change our tactics.

Like the author of the above book I choose to be a “hopemonger” not a hatemonger.

Let’s resist the siren call of clicking share on incendiary invectives. The best way to neutralize the attempts to shame each other is to not respond to the original attack. To not swallow the “click-bait.”

The year is ending. It’s time to think about where we have been and where each of us wants to go in 2024. I’m an eternal optimist. I think each of us has the power to create the world we want to see.

In my view too it starts with choosing reconciliation. With renouncing harmful acts of hating judging criticizing labeling and acting violent.

We each of us have the right to choose our own path in life. We don’t have to buy what being’s sold about how to treat each other.

True Style

The second book I checked out of the library was True Style is What’s Underneath: The Self-Acceptance Revolution.

A candidate for a PhD on recovery interviewed me. She asked what I thought the most positive thing was that came from being unwell.

“I value difference,” I told her.

The unique individuals in this guide take off where the others started in the Street Unicorns: Bold Expressionists of Style book I reviewed in a blog entry earlier.

Authors Lily and Elisa had the calling “to uncover what’s underneath authentic style, helping to build a world where getting dressed each morning is an act of self-love.”

I’ll quote from individuals featured in the book as the sparkplug to ignite readers to buy True Style.

Jillian Mercado:

“If you never had to struggle or fight for anything in your life, how could you know who you are and what you’re made of?

If you’re different, that’s sunlight in somebody’s world.”

Tallulah Willis:

“I always say, ‘You know the feeling you’re supposed to have on your wedding day, that you feel like a princess? Why not have that every day?'”

Little old blogger Christina would rather be the sunlight. Not a tornado.

Tunde Truisms

The author of the book above is on the cover of the October/November issue of Women’s Health. I received the magazine two days ago. This weekend I checked her book out of a library. I recommend you buy the guide.

Her SPEAK manifesto is shorthand for Surrender Power Empathy Authenticity Knowledge.

Tunde tells readers to “lead with empathy.” She recounts her struggle with not liking her muscular arms.

Tunde is a Peloton bike instructor who reaches 20,000 cyclists in her motivational workout sessions. She is a face of Revlon cosmetics and a Nike apparel athlete.

Tunde’s book and the pep talks she gave in it touched me. I have the opposite experience of Tunde and other young women. I didn’t think I had to conform or should choose to conform to have other teens accept me.

By the time I was only 6 years old I was bullied. At the same time I was taught my ABCs I learned that the other kids didn’t like me. An outsider from that early age I had no one I thought I should impress.

Often I read first-person accounts of women who tried to starve themselves thin to fit in or get others to like them. They had body image issues like Tunde.

It is not a compliment it’s racist and insulting to tell a person like Tunde: “You’re pretty for a Black girl” or “You’d be pretty if you lost weight.”

I had no admirers either secret ones or others who gave me comments like that.

As for Tunde’s take on Authenticity I’ll get at her abiding belief in my own words: “When you show up as yourself great things happen.”

Secrecy breeds shame. Hiding who you are–and keeping in a closet the parts of yourself you think no one will like or approve of–causes ill health.

My mother doesn’t understand how I could’ve recovered from the bullying in a way where I don’t often think or talk of it. Yet the reality was 6-year old girls had already become bullies and I was their target. Up until I turned 14 and went to a different school.

This treatment should have been the tip-off that as an adult I’d be attacked for speaking out to say that recovery is possible.

Whether it’s from racism like Tunde experienced, ageism, mental or physical illness, political division or anything else we struggle with my mission in this lifetime is to promote recovery and healing.

In the coming blog entry I’ll review the second book I checked out of the library: True Style is What’s Underneath: The Self-acceptance Revolution.

A chip is not the kind of accessory we should be carrying on our shoulder. We each of us have the power to change our lives for the better regardless of our circumstance.

It starts when we take to heart the Tunde-isms in SPEAK and begin speaking up for ourselves.

The subtitle tells it all: Get from where you are to where you want to be. Like Tunde I believe it’s possible to do this.

Life Lessons from Hip-Hop

I’m a 58-year old white woman who played Run DMC Public Enemy and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince on my FM radio show when I was a disc jockey in the 1980s.

In the 1990s I marched to the beat of Queen Latifah singing “U-N-I-T-Y.”

That was the extent of my love affair with rap music.

So when I checked out of the library Life Lessons from Hip-Hop- it was an unlikely contender for the best self-help book I’ve ever read.

The rappers who were interviewed said things that mirrored how I’ve felt in their own words.

So I bought the book to read again. To get readers to buy the book I’ll quote the prime insights from 2 Hip-Hop artists.

Please I implore followers to listen to what they say.

I respect any artists who use their emotional energy to tell stories that can move readers listeners and audience members to action and compassion.

In Big Sean: Talk to Someone

“I realized that the only way somebody can affect how I’m feeling is if I give them permission to make me feel like that.”

In Pharrell Williams: Be Empathic

“Empathy is the skeleton key to any room…It’s the number-one thing we need before love. Because if you have no empathy, then you can’t even get to why you should love someone else.

That goes for the one you marry, the one you hate, your parents, your children, strangers.

If you have no empathy, it’s not possible for you to like and definitely not possible for you to love.”

Skin in the Game

After reading the above book I coined the term Bite of Life as in taking a Bite of Life.

For Beauty Individuality Truth and Empathy. This is what I believe in.

My view runs counter to the Dermalogica founder author. She doesn’t like and use the word beauty. I beg to differ.

Seeing beauty in the ordinary–in the broken; in the struggle; in the people, places, and things no one else deems beautiful–is a gift each of us can give each other.

What I seek to do is Celebrate Life by dressing up; by making art out of the everyday; by spreading joy and optimism in a world full of despair.

Read Skin in the Game to get a shot of confidence. Jane Wurwand’s life story could be any of ours with a twist. She had a failed first marriage by the age of 21–and things could’ve gotten worse.

Wurwand is living proof of what I’ve written before that where you start out is not where you have to remain.

That ambition born of altruism is the right way to lead in business and in life.

Wurwand references Madam C.J. Walker in Skin in the Game. How could she not. Walker was a radical beauty entrepreneur in her time.

Reading Skin in the Game I thought: “She could do it. So can I.”

Though I checked the book out of the library I recommend you buy it. It’s worth taking the gems of advice to heart.

You want to conquer a market. Or succeed in any venture. Be kind and care about people.

That’s what Wurwand made her mission as the founder of a skincare line that grossed $1Million in its first year in 1986.