Friday 30 March 2018

How To Build Confidence With These 5 Self Confidence Tips


Do you ever feel as though you have no confidence? Maybe you try not to bring too much attention to yourself, and find it hard to be in certain situations in fear of being judged? Do you feel as though you may have low self-worth? If so, the chances are that you have very low confidence.
This article is going to help you find ways that you can build up your confidence and start living your best life. I am going to talk about how you can build confidence and self-esteem. Before I go into that, let’s take a look at why having confidence is important.

Why Is Confidence So Important?
It is important to have self-confidence for a lot of reasons.
Firstly, when you have self-confidence you will start to feel more positive in life and will be more likely to do new things or return to things that you enjoy that you may have stopped doing. You are also likely to have better self-worth, which is the key to having good confidence.
Having great self-worth will also help you find things easier when it comes to being confident. When you are confident you are taking back control of your life, and help yourself to achieve what it is you want to achieve in life.

Ways To Boost Your Confidence

We are going to be looking at ways that will help you to build your confidence. You will learn more about yourself and hopefully, will start to feel more positive and do more things that used to scare you. Building your confidence can lead to many new possibilities as you will be in a different mindset to achieve your goals.

For now, let’s look at 5 ways you can boost your confidence.


1. Kill Negative Thoughts

If you had a friend who had been going through a hard time and constantly put themselves down, would you talk to them the way that you talk to yourself?
If the answer that that question is no, you need to start getting rid of your own negative thoughts. When you are constantly having negative thoughts about yourself or the situation you may be in, it can really affect you from achieving your goals and building your confidence.
You need to kill these thoughts, they will come into your head as this is normal, but you must not dwell or listen to them, instead, acknowledge them and then let them go.

2. Get To Know Yourself

When you can understand yourself, your thoughts and your self-worth, you can start to work towards improving it. If you have negative thoughts, acknowledge them and write them down, you can then reflect on it and see what you can change to make your self-worth grow.
If you do not take time to listen to yourself and understand how much you put yourself down, you will not know how to change it for the better.
This is why it may be good for you to write in a journal, as you will be able to see your thoughts and the way you treat yourself physically in front of you and can work on improving it for the better.

3. Change Your Body Language

It is true that changing your posture, smiling or even making eye contact can instantly make you feel and look more confident. Others will also see that you look more confident too.
If you can imagine a confident person, you would normally envision someone who is happy, gives good eye contact and is standing up straight with their head held high. If you are talking to someone while not giving them eye contact, staring at the floor and maybe fiddling with your bag or hair, you will give off the impression that you are not confident, making it known to others but also to yourself.
Acting as though you have great confidence can actually help you to build it.

4. Create A Positive Support Network

If you surround yourself with people who make you feel bad or knock you down, you are not going to be able to build your confidence.
Being around negative people will only bring you down, and make you lose more confidence. You need to surround yourself with people who lift you up instead of bringing you down.
Having a supportive network is a great way to boost confidence as they will make you feel more positive and start to feel better about yourself. This will help you to gain confidence and start to improve your self-esteem.

5. Practice Self Care

You need to look after yourself in order to feel good and have great self-worth. Being able to look after yourself and practice self care could be having some ‘me time’, which could include a bubble bath, pamper session or reading your favorite book.
Looking after yourself will help you feel so much better, and when you are feeling positive and in a good headspace, you can start to work on your confidence. Doing things, you like to do and treating yourself with respect is great self-care, and self-care determines the self-worth you have. All of these things come hand in hand and are needing to help build confidence and self-esteem.

RE-BLOGGED FROM HERE.

Thursday 29 March 2018

Emi - how we make our jewellery!

I launched my brand, Emi Jewellery back in 2009. For me, to create an ethical fashion brand was always at the forefront of my mind. Almost 10 years ago, the focus of my business was on workers rights and how we are treated as human beings. It was obvious to me that I had to create a honest & transparent brand. I needed to know all steps in my a critical path and I needed to know WHO it was that was making my products.

On the 24th April 2013 - 1138 people were killed and many more injured when the Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh. A year later, Fashion Revolution was created and #whomademyclothes began to trend online. Each year, this date is marked in a week long campaign for raising awareness  about the factories companies use (23-29th April) and sets as a reminder that we must have transparency in our businesses and be open and honest about the work we do.

In the fall of 2015, when I first started to supply Freemans.com with my collection, I sent my Chinese agent, Juan Juan back to the factory to document the process of how our jewellery is made and to bring light on the small team of people that we work with in China who makes the jewellery for my company. 

Some of my favourite images are as below. I love the first image where you can see exactly how it is that this necklace is made and how it looked on the website, for sale to the public. As you can see, each stone is set by hand, and the amount of work that goes into just making 1 of these collars is enormous. It makes you question at times how something so intricate can cost so little? I like to think that the prices that I sell my jewellery & accessories for, across the board are fair for all.

I pay the factory workers a fair price and I pay my employees a fair wage. (there will be more to come on this in future posts)


Packing & bagging of the jewellery

Intricate stone setting

To read the full interview with Lookagain & to see more pictures of what Juan Juan saw, you can visit the original blogpost here



My Lifestyle
I have lead a plant based lifestyle since I was 14/15 years old (In April, I will be 31!). Originally I became vegetarian cutting out meat & fish from my diet. When I used to eat meat, about an hour  or so later, I would become really bloated, lethargic ...that sort of thing. I worked with a doctor to try and understand what was causing me to become so bloated, and slowly we realised that it was the diet I was eating. Meat was actually making me ill. When we discovered this, I cut out both meat & fish from my diet and almost instantly, I started to feel a lot better. The bloating subsided and I was able to eat normally for the first time in my life.

As I have grown older, I tend to lean more towards a vegan diet. I wouldn't class myself as vegan, but I'm near enough there.  My partner doesn't like cheese, so it makes cooking easy in our household. We don't buy cheese, and as for milk, I stopped drinking cow milk almost a year ago now.

The more that I learnt about the dairy industry, the more it didn't sit right with me. Stopping drinking cow milk and switching to alternatives was a pretty easy decision for me to make. 



Work Ethic
I was never interested in working with leather, I don't wear it and I don't own anything in leather either. This was the same for suede. I couldn't grasp not eating meat and then using it in my work. It didn't seem right so I never considered it as a material to use. Not that animals are materials, but you know what I mean.

I will admit it, I was ignorant to the fact of how feathers were "collected". I didn't think about sourcing them and really, where they came from. HOW were they obtained? For me, the animal was still alive, so that was OK. It wasn't.

It's been an interesting road of growth and discovery which has lead me to where I am today with my company...

A few years ago I switched from using real feathers to synthetic which really, was the last tie that I had to using any animal products when creating my collections, so we're becoming an (unapproved) vegan brand.

Generally speaking, I am just trying to be as environmentally friendly as much as I can, whilst minimising the impact that my work has on the environment around us. We only have 1 planet and we need to love, show respect to Mother Nature and all beings with kindness. Animal or human.

Thanks for taking to the time to read a bit about me and the company. 

Cheers!
Xander


Tuesday 27 March 2018

Ethical jewellery UK - Emi Jewellery - in partnership with PETa - A Vegan brand


Part of my strategy for 2018 is to get my company, Xander Kostroma Fashion Ltd approved by PETa as a vegan recognised organisation. What does that mean for Emi Jewellery? Well, it means that my brand would be listed on the PETa website as a recognised, vegan brand ...and we offer great vegan gifts too!

As a director, it doesn't sit right with me that animals have to suffer for us to look fabulous. 

As part of the process of becoming PETa approved, I have teamed up with vegan bloggers to combine 2 of my favourite passions together: cruelty free eatings ...and guilt free shopping!

The first post comes from GingerVegan over at Instagram. For more info on the strategy I am creating, you can follow us via social or at our website: www.emijewellery.com.

Stay tuned for further updates as we continue to collaborate with PETa on this very important issue.

Thanks,
Xander :)