What do you do when you’re stuck in a rut and looking to reboot your life? Many of us turn to self-help books, which are unavoidable these days. While they may work for some, often we’ll nod along and think we’ve found the key to all our problems but fail to actually implement their advice.
So instead of getting fixated on the latest self-help trend or setting ourselves unachievable targets, why don’t we spend time working on ourselves all year round? One foolproof way of doing this is by internalising as much life advice from the people we admire as possible. Not only is this inspiring, but it’s also a guilt-free and more sustainable way of becoming the best possible version of ourselves.
We’ve been lucky enough to publish life advice from a host of inspiring women, whose wise words we promise will be invaluable, whatever life crisis you may be in. From the fashion editor who quit her job to become an energy healer, to the founder of Bumble on making it in your 20s, the podcasters lifting the lid on the black British female experience, the amputees changing the way we view yoga and our columnist Ariane Thornton-Mason, who reflected on her experience of cancer, women have a lot of priceless life lessons to share and we'd be fools not to listen to them.
You'll never need a self-help book again...
Cara Delevingne On Style, Womanhood & Her 2018 Goals
"I do think it's an important thing to talk about, very honestly, the ups and downs of growing up and being in the world that we live in, and not just our own problems but other people's. It's very important to give other people a voice and a platform and not only that, but just talk about the issues in the world that aren't being talked about, whatever they may be. Especially for women at the moment, women are going through so much and there's wonderful change happening, even though it's painful and raw talking about those things, even though it makes you feel uncomfortable, it's important to talk about those things, because the amount of strength it's given so many people is incredible."
Shami Chakrabarti: Gender Injustice Is "An Apartheid" For Men And Women
"I would encourage my younger self to be more confident. My motto now, and it took me many years to arrive at this, is that everyone’s equal, no one’s superior. That’s the sentiment I would want to get across to my younger self but also to you, everyone of your age and younger. That self-deprecation needs to go."
The Founder Of Bumble On The Future Of Dating & Making It In Your 20s
"I have panic attacks. I have horrible anxiety. I have really, really good days where I feel on top of the world, I’m on inbox zero and feel like a machine, and then there are times when I think I can’t do this anymore and it’s ok to feel that way. Not everything is going to be easy and when you just accept and embrace that, it becomes easier."
Whitney Wolfe
Lady Leshurr: "I Couldn’t Care Less What Anyone Thinks Of Me"
"If everyone was treated exactly the same – different races and wherever you’re from – if everyone in the world was treated the same, there wouldn't be a stigma around people of certain colours or genders, but it’s life isn’t it. I love that I’ve been able to break down barriers, just by being myself. When I stopped listening to everybody in the industry and people giving me advice, saying 'you should do that' or 'you should show a bit more flesh', I just did me and that’s what got me to where I am now."
"Be prepared to work very hard, I can tell you first-hand that fashion isn’t always glamorous. It is an incredibly competitive industry so you have to really love what you do. Always be kind, confident and approachable, whether you’re an assistant in the fashion cupboard or doing admin on work experience, introduce yourself and make yourself known… I always remember personalities."
Munroe Bergdorf On Her New Illamasqua Campaign, Beauty Heroes & Being In The Public Eye
"When it comes to diversity I think it's so easy to just cast “light-skin” models or really obvious choices and have a mixed-race girl and that would be the diversity. We need to be challenging what diversity actually is. If it’s just tokenism and ticking the boxes, that’s not good enough. You need to be representing everybody, if you truly want to push the campaign that is there to break down barriers, you need to be breaking down those barriers."
The Need-To-Know Network Helping Young Fashion Professionals
"Let’s be real – nepotism is a fact of life. When trying to make a start with nobody in your corner, you tend to hang around the sidelines, waiting to get picked and often never getting picked at all. The class barrier is another big divider that isn’t spoken about much. I grew up in Tottenham, in a council flat around ‘bad crowds’. My life experiences were very different to all the people I worked around and that within itself can cause a lot of anxiety and internal pressure. I remember never wanting to mention where I live yet also feeling a great sense of pride that I had ‘made it!’"
Dior Bediako
"It’s always been important to have a team around me that I trust. I’m lucky to have built a team that shares my same passion and love for what they do. They are like a second family to me."
Adwoa Aboah On Gurls Talk, Her Heroes & Self-Care
"People need to get up off their arses and make a difference. Start being conscious of the bigger picture. It’s not just a magazine cover, tens of thousands if not millions of girls read that magazine and they look through that magazine and they see one type of girl and they don’t see themselves. It’s a long ladder of shit."
The Dutch Politician Taking On Trump's 'Global Gag' Rule
"This is a time to really act. We hear a lot of talk about what President Trump does or doesn’t do and his decisions. But if we all just listen to that and not act, many women will suffer because of those decisions."
"With conservative tendencies, women and girls’ rights are usually the first to be affected and attacked. We can’t let that happen.”
Lilianne Ploumen
Meet The Podcasters Shining A Light On The Black British Female Experience
"I wish we could burn and bury the word diverse. By default we’re all diverse, it’s just whose story gets told unfortunately isn’t. Millennials will be known as Generation DIY – we’re tired of asking for a seat at the proverbial table. When I was younger, Bob the Builder was a thing. When it comes to diversity and representation the question is “Can we fix it?” and our answer is always, 'Yes we can'."
Satia Sa Dias
Amputee Yoga Is Changing The Way We View Limb Loss
33-year-old Melissa Latimer was 15 when a lower portion of her right leg had to be removed. She discovered yoga less than a year ago:
“I lived a life where I was almost scared of being open with being an amputee... Now I'm the complete opposite. I’m proud of who I am and not afraid to show my body. It completely changed my life. Physically, I'm much stronger, and have learnt so much about working with my prosthesis, rather than just living with it. But emotionally and mentally it has had an even greater impact.”
Helen Mirren's Very Blunt Career Advice For Young Women
"Don't be an asshole. Work toward financial independence, if that's possible, because it gives you a freedom. It's a difficult thing to do, I know, but save your own money. I think that's very important."
PHOTO: GILBERT CARRASQUILLO/FILMMAGIC.
Facing My Own Mortality
Ariane Thornton-Mason
"When you yourself are faced with your own death, your understanding of what it means reaches a much deeper level. For once, I am unable to put this into words, it is rather more a feeling, a sense of something much greater than me, a spiritual awakening perhaps. With all this come questions but also acceptance, and peace. An unbuttoning of control, a loosening of desire and drive, a mellowing of the need to know one’s future destiny, living instead in the moment. This is what it must feel like to be truly free."
Why I Walked In A Fashion Show 18 Months After Losing My Breast
Alice Purkiss
"Cancer is cruel. It doesn’t care who you are. It targets and takes some of the world’s best people. It leaves behind devastation. Cancer took so much from me and I hate it for that. But it has given me a tribe of people I love, and it has afforded me countless experiences I could never have dreamed of. It has changed my relationship with myself. And for that, I am grateful. Whatever comes next."
Illustrated by Sydney Hass
'Doing It All': Caryn Franklin MBE On Working Motherhood
"But let’s be clear, there were times when my constant companions: exhaustion and guilt would collide with misjudgement and unforeseeable outcomes to impact on both my professionalism and my parenting. Those ‘head-in-the-hands-why-am-I-doing-this-to-myself’ moments really suck. BUT I wouldn’t call motherhood an impediment to career success in the same way that I wouldn’t define career success as the highest measure of achievement in my life. In that respect I don’t take an either/ or approach. I am a better woman, having altered my journey and perspectives to take in parenthood."
Why Becoming A Mum Is Like Being A Teenager Again
Rachel Segal Hamilton
"Parenthood is angst-ridden, exhausting, sometimes tediously mundane, but it’s never stagnant. Your child changes constantly, and you change with them. Which is why, a year into motherhood when someone asked me if I still feel like “me”, I wasn’t sure how to answer. Of course I’m not exactly the old me. But I’m on the road to becoming a new me, just like I was back in adolescence. Only, this time I have someone travelling alongside me and they, not me, are the most important person in the world."
Illustrated by Anna Sudit
What Happened When We Asked Our Grandmas About Body Image
Advice for a younger generation of women from Ann (pictured), 82, Lewes:
"I would just say do the best that they can to feel good, by looking as good as they can, so that somebody tells them they look marvellous. But that’s as far as you need to go. Doing that gives you confidence, and confidence about the way you look gives you confidence in the way you approach people."
This Editor Quit Fashion To Become An Energy Healer
"I had a huge wake up call when I realised everything was about choice. I am the artist of my life and I choose how I want to create my life."
Chloe Kerman
What I Wish I Knew Before I Quit My Job To Travel
Kate Lucey
"You don’t need to have a reason for wanting to rack up a serious wedge of credit card debt and swan off to the abroads to experience the wonder of the bloody WORLD, so don’t let yourself be guilted into having one by people who can’t fathom why on earth you’d want to press pause on a life of working until 10pm before downing a desperate bottle of Campo Viejo at your desk."
What Running A Marathon With Depression Taught Me
Hannah Smith
"We don’t really know where the end is or how we are going to get there or what troubles we will meet on the way – which is as true on a race day when the end seems too far to imagine as it is in life when all you can manage for dinner is a bowl of stolen cereal. If running has taught me anything about depression, or life in general, it’s that all we need to do is just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and that help is there if we ask for it. When the finish line finally comes, it will be the times you didn’t “just do it” that you will regret."
"Most People Carry Some Sense Of Sexual Shame": Meet The Women Behind Guys We F***ed
"Being a woman comes with a lot of bullshit baggage. It took me a long time to realise that being whistled at or called out on the street for having tits by a guy my dad's age (or any age) is not okay. It always angered me, but it never occurred to me that it shouldn't happen until my early 20s. Corinne and I wanted to talk about slut-shaming because we've both experienced the double standard over our sexuality. For me, the goal wasn't to make other people feel better by airing my stories out but when I realised that oversharing lifts other people's shame, we made it a point to be overly honest."
Krystyna Hutchinson
Photo: Dustin CohenLike what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
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