More Haste, Less Speed

In implementing this week's challenge to "moisturise my life" today, I gained an unexpected insight into goal-setting.

I learnt that in spite of one's eagerness to move ahead, if you don't figure out what's the right way forward, you'll just end up crashing head-first into a wall. In short, not only do you fail to meet your goals, you also end up making things worse.

Which reminds me of a second, related, lesson. It doesn't matter even if you actually already "tried your best". The wrong way forward is still the wrong way forward, even if you had the best intentions in the world. I learnt this lesson the hard way when I finally confided in a friend some months back about how hurt I was that some guys kept picking on me, the way I dressed, my clothes, my make-up etc back in university (and in some ways, now). I felt that I had already done my best. I don't think my clothes are the worst in the world, and I didn't understand why they had to pick on me when other girls around me were also in a t-shirt and jeans get-up.  When I started working, I started wearing make-up on a daily basis. But even then, on the random occasions that we met up, there were often comments about this. I pretended not to care, not to even hear when they laughed at this. But I'm only human, and I often asked myself, what I was doing wrong.

I finally told a mutual friend about this, and used the "but I'm already doing my best, why are they still picking on me?" line. And he gently told me, "well, maybe you're just not doing it the right way".

Point taken.

Not that it takes away the hurt. But I guess I'll just have to do a further analysis on how to make things better. Because ultimately, I'm doing this for myself. And not for anyone else.

But coming back to today's point. In my haste to over-hydrate my skin, I was putting products that were too nourishing, hence causing some breakouts (can't pinpoint the exact product, but a good guess I think would be the laneige sleep mask, something I've been applying a bit too liberally these few days). I visited the FANCL counter for a skin check this evening and picked up some products from the AC range. Was also given strict orders NOT to put anything else on my skin until my skin clears up.

Just back to basics. Because sometimes when things are all messed up, that's just what we need.

1. Take small steps.
2. Be consistent.

But also be alert to the signs around you when things are not going the way you think they should, and be ready to change course.