Monday menu: from constellations to corduroy

5 intentions for the week ahead

One of the reasons I share this Monday menu is to be brutally honest. The mantras and motivational words, pieces of art and plans to be made are not written down for the sake of it, but are there because I desperately need to see them and believe them, and I know other people might need them too. Words carry so much power, and sometimes we need to read the words (and repeat them all week!) to remember that the power to change the world is in our hands and our hearts, and today is a great day to be ‘day one’. As always, I have chosen 5 intentions and priorities for the week ahead, because spending some time thinking about what you want to achieve and how you want to feel by the end of the week is a really good way to begin it. Intentions don’t have to be serious and sterile, they are about creating, owning and living the life you want to lead.

I hope you do something with intention this week, whatever form it takes.

Fashion whimsy, Schiaparelli

1. Leaning into uncertainty, and proceeding despite it.
   Ok, this is quite a long one… A sense of uncertainty has been rumbling beneath my feet, and on Saturday, it cracked wide open and swallowed me up. I felt both heavy with dread and sprightly with tingling anxiety. The only way out? Face it head on and use it as a learning curve.
   Why did I feel uncertain? I am anxious about where I am in life and where I am going, forgetting that I am actually very certain about where I want to go, and I should take pleasure in the fact that the journey is unknown, because that means there is so much for me to discover and to learn as I go. The feeling of uncertainty forced me to question what I want to be doing with my time, to take an honest account of what is important to me, what I want to experience and what I want to create. I know a lot of my uncertainty stems from feeling that I am not working towards something, or giving my creativity an outlet, and one of the biggest hindrances to this is hesitating to act upon creative ideas for fear of failing when I do. Self-doubt. It starts as a spark, crackling and fizzing like broken bulbs on a fairground ride. Then it catches and the blaze picks up, leaving you to stand by as you watch your world of ideas melt like the clown faces atop the waltzers. Uncertainty forces you to push your ideas back to where they came from (be it the head or the heart), clogging up your insides and preventing that creative flow. The antidote? I physically wrote down the ideas to get them out of my system, which enabled me to pick what I wanted to focus on— focus batters uncertainty when you want it to. The most important lesson about uncertainty is that it reminds you how fragile you are, but how resilient you can be. Feeling uncomfortable is a part of growth, and uncertainty forces you to look inside which, in turn, will enable your horizons to explode. I hate the way uncertainty makes me feel, but it should not be something to fight against, because somehow, it will guide you to where you need to go.
   

2. Mantra: Self-doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. Don’t doubt, just do.
   

3. Drinking: creativity runs dry when you haven’t given yourself enough to drink up. Yes, we have social media and immediate access to almost anything we desire, but the constant stream of inifinite ‘inspiration’ can actually leave you over-stimulated and undernourished. Sometimes, the only way to get inspired is to cut it all down and do just one thing, go to one place, seek out just one single thing that speaks to your soul. Remove what clogs the system and drink from something more specific. Savour the nectar and remember that more isn’t always more, but none is definitely a bore.
   

4. Quoting: ‘Allow your dreams to be a constellation. Let them navigate you through the unknown’
   

   

   Coat, £199, Mango

5. Shopping: I desperately need a new coat, and I’m looking at the above from Mango (the scarf is detachable, making it 1000% more appealing) and, to my horror, corduroy. I’m penning a piece as I explore what’s out there.