The All-important Underwear

Chapter 3

The All-important Underwear

Dear chicks,

We all come into the world the same:

Naked

Clueless

& Super-Unstylish

Yet some of us have the ability to achieve wealth, popularity, attention from the cutest guys and a seemingly effortless sense of style, while others end up anonymous and forgettable.

Before you figure, that’s easy, some girls just have all the luck: Think again. It’s an even playing field when we all come into being, but the difference — with a capital “D” — is purpose. Purpose, to me, is the foundation for your every action and choice. Which is why I compare it to a very modest, yet crucial, aspect of your outfit — underwear.

Okay, maybe the thought of lacy lingerie, push-up bras and everyday knickers appear the antithesis of something as lofty as your life purpose. But hear me out. One of the most common wardrobe malfunctions on the red carpet involves, you’ve guessed it, lingerie. A star could be clad in delicate designer couture, but because she’s worn a white bra and panties under that sheer gown, she is only remembered for one thing — wearing the wrong undies! All because her white intimates have completely shown through her see-through dress once the paparazzi’s flashbulbs go off. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing the most beautiful outfit, if the foundation of your get-up — your underwear — is not suited for you.

Those girls we always wished we were didn’t just randomly become popular, smart and successful overnight. It’s simply because they have focus, in other words, the undies that offer the best building blocks for their overall ensemble.

In this chapter, you’ll grasp that knowing your purpose will help guide the choices, activities and the time you devote to each pursuit — to achieve your personal mission. And as powerless as you may feel when the going sometimes gets tough, remember that you have a choice – including the choice to take each sassy platform-heeled step to becoming that fabulous chick everyone looks up to.

Xoxo,

Jacyln

[Quote on a Post-it]

“If your wearing lingerie that makes you feel glamorous, you're halfway there to turning heads.” — Elle Macpherso

Foundation studies

Purpose. Oooooooooooooh... Big word. But do we know what it really means? In this hopefully-fun-to-read book you now hold in your hands, we like to think of “purpose” as that special something you are meant to do — the reason for your existence. Goals and objectives are your everyday kind of directions, but a purpose is above these things. It’s your end-all, be-all kind of main goal. And when you figure it out, your life will have so much more meaning than it already is.

Quick straw poll: How many of us have experienced that “what-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-do” feeling more than once? The sad thing is that lots of folks – including many grown-ups whom you think should know better – go through life without finding out what it is we’re supposed to do. Instead, we potter around aimlessly, often pursuing what seems “right”, “cool” or “on-trend”without slowing down to reflect. The result? Feeling completely lost and directionless.

You may sometimes wander into the lingerie department of a store and think, why are there hundreds of underwear styles and designs? Sure, bikini-cut, cotton panties are comfortable, and you could very well go through life in that same style of knickers. But it may create unsightly bunching when worn under a stretchy jersey skirt, or doesn’t do anything to hide love handles and lumpy thighs. A thong or high-cut support pants, on the other hand, makes you look so much sleeker and groomed — because they were the right foundations for your outfit.

Like how the importance of wearing the right underwear is seldom visible to the untrained eye, sometimes you may not understand why you feel disappointed or unfocused in life. It’s all because you’re not in sync with your purpose — like how you haven’t discovered the perfect pair of shape-enhancing undies — and you’ll tend to make a host of disparate choices that don’t lead to results you truly seek.

Yes, you can carry on without a purpose, but if you don’t understand what it is that you’re meant to do with your life, then you’ll be cutting yourself ridiculously short. It’s like showing up to a costume party without a costume: You can still have fun, but you’ll always feel out of place and maybe even a little inappropriate. So don’t be your own party pooper and begin your journey to becoming a purposeful chick!

[Reflection box]

Have a think:

To get started on the path to discovering your purpose, toss your mobile phone into the drawer, turn off the TV and find a safe, quiet spot to reflect on the following questions:

1. What things in life make you happy?

2. Who is your role model and why do you look up to her/him?

3. When you dream about your future, what do you see?

4. What do you excel at doing?

5. What activities make you feel fulfilled?

Allow yourself to brainstorm answers to the above questions freely and without embarrassment and judgment — it’s essential that you are honest with yourself! Then, print the questions and answers neatly on a sheet of nice stationery and tack it the piece of paper to your mirror, so you’re reminded of finding your purpose when you see yourself every day.

[a different typeface that is attention-grabbing]

The chick challenge:

Why prevent yourself from being the best you that you can be, and having a blast while you’re at it? Now that’s something to think about...

[end of reflection box]

[Start of box or a “thought bubble”]

Designer with a purpose

“I always wanted to do something you could take home at the end of the day. My happiest memories at school are of art. This is just an extension of that. I mean, I love the idea of turning an idea into something women wear.” — Phoebe Philo, fashion designer

[End of box or a “thought bubble”]

[Pull-out quote, in the form of a Post-It]

“Wildly successful people understand their purpose — they have focus.”

“When you’re not in sync with your purpose, you’ll feel disappointed, unhappy and unfocused.”

Finding your purpose

Having completed the reflection exercise above, you have taken the first step to discovering your purpose. But the journey may not be easy, mainly because our lives are packed full of errands, tasks and activities that sometimes, it’s almost impossible to remember to focus on anything other than the task at hand! Girls may be natural born multi-taskers, but that doesn’t make us superwomen.

Sometimes, you need to strip down to your underwear — which nobody but you would be able to see. Because it’s what you wear under your uniforms and outfits, underwear is seen by you and you alone — it’s the most personal you could get when it comes to clothing.

Hence, stripping down to the bare minimum represents setting aside private, one-to-one time with the most important person in your life — you! And time alone is essential to figuring out your purpose. On the surface, it feels that spending town on our own would been taking time off from developing relationships and pursuing our other goals. But solitude allows us to recharge, rediscover, refresh and reflect.

Being alone allows us to step back from the overwhelming world we live in. Once you get over the fear of being alone, and facing yourself stripped bare, you’ll find it absolutely delightful spending a day doing “Me” things, because knowing who you are is the critical to finding, and sticking to, your purpose.

Chick challenge:

It’s all to easy to fill your schedule with social activities — there are just so many movie dates, trips to the beach and co-curricular commitments! So make it a point to mark off “alone time” in your calendar, dates with yourself that you’ve got to keep. How about a date to just chill in your room with that new album you've been dying to check out, but nobody seems to care about, and scribbling in your journal? Or check out that cool new art show, which your friends think is beyond geeky, but you want to catch? The possibilities are endless, so enjoy your time with you, yourself, and I!

[quote on a post-it]

“I decided instead of running away from the idea of a life alone...

...I'd better sit down and take that fear to lunch.

So, I sat there and had a glass of wine...alone.

No books, no man, no friends, no armour, no faking.”

— Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

Jac: Is this still supposed to be in this chapter or Clothes Maketh chapter?

The brassiere for you

“We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us, how we take it, what we do with it — and that is what really counts in the end.”

— Joseph Fort Newton, author and minister

Just like how you can decide between a push-up bra or sports bra to feel either womanly or in control, everything else you do adds up to the person you are today: From the school you choose, the hours you spend on the phone versus the time devoted to hitting the books, to the friends you surround yourself with. Damn, that sounds like a whole lot of pressure! But it also means that reaching your goals — from tracking down the perfect ensemble for a day out with the girlfriends to snagging a spot in your college of choice — is within your control And that’s why we’re here: To demonstrate how different pieces of “clothing” can be very helpful in achieving your their purpose and goals faster. But it is still your choice to decide which pieces of clothing you want to wear.

Because sometimes, being brave means making difficult – yet significant – choices. The poet Robert Frost once wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” There are times in your life when you find yourself faced with two opposing options — one may be a safe choice like that little black dress everyone wears, and the other is a whole lot less popular, such as a floor-sweeping maxi frock. But at times the less obvious, and way riskier, option may take you down another path in life altogether – and perhaps even help achieve your purpose.

But, like leaving the house with a Visible Panty Line or wearing a too-tight bra that causes fatty back rolls, it’s okay to make the wrong choices once in a while. The trick is, learn from life’s many slip-ups and forgive yourself. Like if you’ve cheated once on a math test, that doesn’t necessarily make you a cheater forever; or if you trusted the wrong friend once and she betrayed your friendship, it doesn’t mean you’re doomed to meeting cretins for the rest of your life.

Don’t be so hard on yourself and bear in mind this one point: Mistakes in your life — unlike style mistakes that keep coming back into fashion! — do not necessarily have to repeat themselves, if you don’t allow them to. Our past definitely contributes to who we are and we can’t and shouldn’t run away from that. But what we can do to shape our future to what we hope it to be is to start making the right choices. So if you don’t like yourself now...

There

Is

Hope

If you’re not number one fan of who you are today, it doesn't mean you don't need to like how you will be in the future. Everyone can choose to be different and it starts with the right choices. One huge step to becoming a mature, purpose-driven woman is to admit your wrongs, and letting them go.

[same font as the chick challenge earlier in this chapter]

The chick challenge:

1. List down your personality blemishes or negative viewpoints you feel are holding you back from achieving your purpose. You can also ask a close and trusted friend, or even mum or sis, if they could constructively help you identify these pitfalls.

Are you too hard on yourself, or perhaps too slack to push yourself that much more because you’re afraid of failure, for example?

2. Accept that it sucks to fall or fail. And analyse your feelings to figure out how these fears and failures came about.

3. Free yourself of the past and look towards the future, using the reflections you made earlier on in this chapter on discovering your purpose as a starting point.

[Start of action plan box]

Get in focus!

Make a list of all the activities you do in a week and calculate the time you spend on each activity. Separate the activities into “needs” and ”wants”. Needs includes all your basics: Sleeping, eating, going to and from school, taking a bath, etc. Wants are all those things you don’t necessarily have to do, like learning a hobby such as dressmaking or catching the latest movie.

INSERT Activity

Now, look over your wants and see which activities are in line with your purpose. For example, watching TV and surfing the Internet aren’t exactly going to help you fulfill your purpose of, say, helping save the environment.

It’s okay to relax sometimes — we all need to veg once in a while. But you may notice that you’re wasting way too much time on things that aren’t helping you get closer to what you want to do and where you want to be. The question now is: What are you going to do about it?

Dear parents,

Some days, when we’re spending hours gossiping on the phone with our girlfriends or days engrossed in watching our favourite TV show that’s just came out on DVD, it appears that we’re completely aimless — and will lack focus for a long time to come. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Everybody, even a child who appears lost and directionless, has a passion. And your daughter needs you to lead her on a path towards achieving her purpose.

First, she needs your encouragement to discover her real purpose. Perhaps she showed some interest in painting after attending an exhibition. It doesn’t automatically mean she will be an idealistic artist who will be perennially holed up in a studio — although that may not be a bad thing considering today’s booming Asian art market. That artistic eye may translate into your child being a creative director of an ad agency or the owner of a gallery one day.

Next, you need to cultivate in us a positive attitude. The world’s most successful people may have been perfectly ordinary kids, but with a nudge in the right direction, they had the opportunity to reach their potential. Positive people also naturally send out positive vibes, which will in turn draw the right company to your daughter’s social circle. Remind your child to look on the bright side and frequently fuel her passions by being supportive. Our pursuits may not always be academically-oriented, but instill in us the importance of finding fulfilment in life, instead of simply chasing after quantifiable results. Finding meaning in our pursuits will ultimately help us become happy, purposeful women. Now who wouldn’t want that for their ki

Love,

Jacyln