Each one of us wants to leave the house every day knowing that we look our best and are presenting our best appearance to bosses, friends and relatives. First impressions take about 3 seconds to form and they are based on the first look we get at another person. Those first looks take into account hair, skin, clothing, self-assurance and self-confidence. Each of those factors make up our personal style and each of us has our own personal style, whether we know it or not.
So how do we find the best personal style, or first impression, that we can present to the world? The first thing we must do is recognize each of the different factors that make up a personal style and address those individually. The first factor is hair. Our hair care and hair style are noticed, along with our face, in the first 3 seconds we meet anyone. We are sized up by the cut, color, shine, and type of hair we have.
And, while we may not be satisfied with the hair cut or color we have, those factors are fully transformable or changeable. In other words we can change the cut, the color or the style. After all, hair grows at a rate of 1/2 inch each month and any cut, color or style will soon be a memory if you don\’t keep it up.
The second factor to consider is your skin. Skin care encompasses both nutritional intake and external cleansing. It is important to address your nutritional intake which will significantly impact the largest organ in your body, the skin. We really are what we eat and our skin is a reflection of how good our nutrition is. Skin care also means cleansing twice a day in order to get rid of environmental toxins and waste products that build up on the skin as well as dead skin cells. Once cleansing is over it is also important to use a skin toner that balances the pH of your skin and helps to neutralize any bacteria which may be growing on the skin and increase the risk of acne.
However, the most important key factor in skin care and preventing aging affects is moisture. Both men and women should find a moisturizer that fits their skin type as well as the season. Some individuals find their skin gets drier in the summer with the heat while others find it happens in the winter months when humidity is low.
The next factor responsible for your personal style is your clothes. Your clothing should ideally be a combination of factions which you are drawn to and which actually look good on you. No matter how cutting edge the choice, or how in fashion the clothing is, if it is unflattering it is automatically a problem.
This means that no one should ever blindly follow any fashion trend. These trends are often short lived and usually produce pictures that people can use to embarrass you with. Think back on the bellbottoms and afros of the 1970s. While some people really did look great in those clothing the rest of us usually went along with it because it was the trends. The people who did look good, looked good because the shapes and the colors of those clothes suited their body style, shape and coloring.
And just like choosing a hairstyle needs to adjust to the shape of your face, building a personal style means identifying your body type so that you can best choose the ensemble that look best on you. There are several different body types which have been identified and include an apple shaped body which is larger on top than on the bottom, pear-shaped which is larger on the bottom and the top, hourglass that have larger busts and hips with smaller waist, toothpick shaped bodies which have very few curves.
Each different body type has its own challenges and positives. Your job is to determine your particular body type and identify the type of clothing which looks best on it. It is not always easy to be objective about our own bodies and shapes and so it may be to your benefit to enlist the help of a good friend or an experienced large department store sales person. Once you have your body type identified it is then easy enough to determine which type of clothing looks the best.
And finally, your self-assurance and self-confidence are a part of your overall personal style package. These are factors which cannot be purchased or acquired through the application of another person’s experience. Instead, those individuals who are high on the scale of self-assurance and self-confidence are there because they actively sought after ways in which they could achieve this goal. No one becomes self-assured and self-confidence by accident. These are characteristics and character traits which are nurtured and developed over time through action, focus and purpose.
Each of these individual factors, hair, skin, clothing, self-assurance and self-confidence, play a large part in the development and expression of personal style. How you determine your own personal style is totally in your hands. It is the one thing that we can determine our own hands, through a short period of self-discovery, can express a personal style that appropriately communicates our character and personality to the world.