Being your best self
Hands up who doesn’t want to be their best self?
Emotional well-being is something that blokes in particular are crap at dealing with. I’m not sure if it’s part of our evolutionary journey, where emotions and emotional expression simply fell off the radar, or the fact that we spent eon’s being all manly, or what we were told was manly - beating our chests, alpha style - trying to live up to the images we’d seen in films, TV and comics growing up?
We’ve always felt that a really important part of what DressCode provides involves empowering people – we’ve blogged about it.
Are you listening to negative voices that prevent your achieving your dreams? A guest blog from David Brown
What are your clothes saying about you? The messages you send outwards to others and inwards to you.
What to wear! Clothes are your secret superpower. A discussion with Jeremy Blain and Suzie Rice.
The clothes that you wear have a huge impact on your emotional well-being every day. It’s a great privilege to play a part in that process, sharing our common geekiness in style, it lifts your confidence and well-being.
Back to work
No, we're not talking about us (for once), what we want to talk about is your emotional health and well-being because they are central parts of what we facilitate and they are forever present in what we do. So we're talking about you! After an incredibly hot summer we’re all getting back into the groove this week as the holiday season finishes and the demands of work come to the fore.
We’re all back on a natural high
Sunshine does amazing things to your body (note of caution, always remember Baz Lurhman’s immortal words – Wear Sunscreen), in particular the chemical balance of your brain. All that Vitamin D is one part of why we need to take these breaks. We come back into the work place (in whatever form that takes these days) with beaming smiles. We feel refreshed, we’re happy and we’re here, present and ready to go.
So why are we talking to you about ‘being your best self’?
You’re just back from holidays and feeling great, right? The truth is we had planned this newsletter about 3 months ago as it felt like a nice way to say ‘hello’ after the summer holidays. We also felt it could be genuinely helpful for a few people to know that there’s different ways of looking at things, little tips that can help make all the difference to your day.
The plan changed
We still developed this blog and newsletter, but our motivation moved, we listened to friends and family and felt there was a more important job to do. Right now, everyone is feeling the pressure, sometimes it feels like it’s coming at you from all sides and that can be a real challenge.
A challenge that often we don’t acknowledge exists and then one day ‘Bang!’ it smashes you to the floor in seconds and you’re like WTF just happened? So we’re hoping to help you before it gets to that point.
No agenda, no preaching. Just open, honest, help and advice.
There is no hidden agenda, we got involved with BYBS because it’s something that we believe in. We’ve seen too many people, particularly men, fall foul of mental health because they think, ‘that’s not me’ or ‘I’m better than that’. Unfortunately none of the stories that you tell yourself about this are true. Sorry about that, but it’s a fact.
We are here to help
We design and make shirts, so how can we help you be mentally fit? It’s a bloody good question and one that we have asked ourselves as well.
Or, to be more accurate, a question we’ve discussed with some great people. Here are 6 topics that we’ve chatted about on BYBS, they cover a wide range of things. We’ve spoken with men, women, LBGTQ+ and non-binary people about a wide range of common feelings and situations.
We hope that there is something here for you. We’ve tried to keep them short and to the point, each video is around 5 minutes long, but if you want more there is more on the YouTube channel.
What is BYBS and why are we doing this?
The most important relationship you'll ever have is with yourself
What does it mean to be a 'superhero'?
Being authentic, dressing as you
How’s this work?
Andy and Nathan refer to BYBS as both ‘paying forward’ and ‘paying back’. It’s completely voluntary, there is no commercial aspect to these chats. They get together with like-minded people to discuss the mental health challenges that we all face. Why? Because they recognise these things just aren’t talked about as often or as openly as they should be. So let’s change that.
Our other tips
I wanted to remind you about the blogs that we’ve produced around important things like ‘enclothed cognition’, ‘starting the right way’, ‘sharing your geekiness’ and more. Some of these things you’re probably already doing, others may be new and offer new perspectives that will help you be the best version of you.
We're all suffering from enclothed cognition. What is it? And how does it affect you?
Digital detoxing with Brian Solis and his Life Scale project
What are your clothes saying about you?
Live I.T Love I.T Wear I.T