Lifestyle Choices

First, take a good look at yourself (body, soul and inside skull). Decide what areas could stand a little pleasant improvement. Decide what your life lacks. New friends? Less weight? More fun? Once you’ve decided what you want, stand up, take a deep breath, and S TART.

What you can do inside your home

Make yourself more beautiful: This is basically taking better care of yourself, encouraging healthy narcissism, learning to love and take care of your body, condition your skin and hair. Learn to relax. Take care of yourclothes.

Make yourself healthier: Do exercises every day — find the sort that work best for you. Grope your way out of bed and do them straight away.

Get better educated: Home can be the best place to study. Do you want to know more about anything? Did you get enough 0 and A levels? Do you need a degree, in order to get out there and work at something that is fun and lucrative? Write to the Open University, PO Box 4⁸, Walton, Bletchley, Bucks.

What you can do outside your home

Go to evening classes or daytime classes: Do you realize just what you can learn in the evenings? Wouldn’t you like to know just a bit more about at least one of the following? Antiques, art, astronomy, beauty culture, boat-building, chamber music, chess, citizens’ rights, cookery on a shoestring, drama, dressmaking, French, Russian, German, Greek or Italian, guitar-making, jewellery, model engineering, photography, pigeons, psychology, toy-making, wine-making or woodwork.

If you can’t find locally the class you want, you and nine friends or family members can persuade your local council to run an evening class on anything — they’re likely to operate quite a selection anyway. Ask in the town hall or library for the appropriate leaflet.

If you can spare a lot of time you could sign on for a full-time course in something you like and/or something useful; you may even be eligible for a grant to help you study. You can also sign on for plain recreational courses of lectures on the arts, archaeology, music or whatever; again, badger the town hall for full details.

Get into physical activity: By which I don’t necessarily mean play netball, unless you really like netball.

Visit your local library or town hall to find out what’s on. Admittedly I live in a city, but there’s a local council-sponsored choice of eleven sports, including judo, golf and fencing to Olympic standard.

If you were always hopeless at games at school don’t allow yourself to continue your career as a physical wreck. Go in for something gentle and uncompetitive like yoga or dancing. Your local council might easily offer classical ballet, modern ballet, ballroom, Latin American or `Old Time’ dancing, so check on it.

Half the battle is forcing yourself to organize it. If you want to, do it now.

Help somebody who needs you: Allcharities are gasping for your help. Working for others can be the most fulfilling of all out-of-home activities — it can also be the most demanding. Most good causes are well advertised and all you have to do is turn up or telephone and offer your services. If you would like to do charitable work and really don’t know where to offer, ask your local vicar for advice. You needn’t be a churchgoer.

Meet men: If this is your specific aim in your free time, just go about it methodically and intelligently, like any other project. Lady Docker who was once a salesgirl at Debenham and Freebody said that she married millionaires because she mixed with them. Go where the men are: to work first and foremost; to educational courses in man-filled areas such as accountancy, science, maths or engineering, to two-sex sports that men prefer, such as skin-diving or fencing. Do not allow yourself to be conned into amateur dramatics, tennis clubs, charity work or artistic evening classes for the purpose of meeting men — all these areas are full of beady-eyed man chasers (not like you, of course) and weedy unchase worthy men.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
What to do with the time you’ve saved

• Makeup must follow tips: for Beauty not Beast
• Preoccupation with food
• Lost Beauty, Cosmetic Surgery
• Beauty Products: are Cosmetic Ingredients really good? Read the label, ladies!
• Health and conservation
• Fresh Eyes Look
• Invest in Good Tools
• What Goes Into your Skin?
• Toxic Ingredients and Your Skin, That Goes Onto Your Body