Annie's Story

Annie Lobert's life story gives me tears in my eyes as I listen to it. Annie grew up feeling unlovable and was desperate for love and attention. She graduated high school heartbroken and with a resentment towards men that made her long for revenge. As a young adult Annie became convinced that money was the answer to all her problems and she was willing to cross many of her own boundaries to get it. After years of pain and sorrow Annie ended up having a near death experience, she nearly died of a cocaine overdose, this experience became the turning point in her life. Today Annie has found the peace, freedom, acceptance and love she always longed for in her life.

The Beauty Ideal & the things we pursue

All young women, welcome to the world of adults! Let me introduce you to our beauty ideals. Step 1: Make sure you have no wrinkles, not even one. Get Botox early, you should probably start injecting it at age 19.

Step 2: The thinner you are, the better!

Step 3: Don't think you are off the hook because you are older than 40, even older women can have a face completely free of wrinkles, so don't you dare settle for anything less!

This morning I started my day with a cup of coffee and the Toronto Star as usual. Today’s sad news was an article in the Star that reported that Botox use among people under the age of 30 has gone up significantly. It’s becoming more common for Millennials to start taking Botox early to prevent aging. The Toronto-based plastic and cosmetic surgeon interviewed in the article explains that when the Millennials start to see signs of wrinkles it freaks them out and they decide to start taking Botox to prevent aging.

Toronto Star reporter Azzura Lalani reports in the article called “Millennials using Botox to hold on to young look, surgeons say” that the use of Botox has increased with 41 % among Millennials. Azzura Lalani writes the following in the November 22, 2016 issue of Toronto Star:

“The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported that Botox treatments for people between the ages of 19 to 34 shot up by 41 per cent between 2011 and 2015.”

As I read the news I was saddened by how beauty obsessed our society has become. What made me react to the article was that I had those same feeling in my early twenties. When I was 20-years-old and started getting my first fine lines I remember freaking out about them. I remember thinking that I wish I had more money so that I could get Botox. Luckily for me I was a poor student and Botox was never even an option available. I grew up and the more documentaries I watched the more convinced I got that there was nothing wrong with my face. I finally realized that my face and body wasn’t the problem, but that the beauty ideal was a real problem. I learned that contentment doesn’t sell products. Advertisers want me to think that I need to look younger, be thinner and that I need to update my wardrobe constantly, contentment doesn’t sell.

It’s easy to read news like the article about Botox and feel that there is no hope for a culture that seems obsessed with beauty, power and money. Later in the morning I checked my Instagram account and I was reminded that the obsession with money, power and beauty is not the ideal everywhere. I checked the Instagram account for The A21 Campaign and read about how these people had rescued a girl from sex slavery in the US last week. The people who work for A21 have chosen to pursue something different in their lives than the ideals we are sold. I also checked the Instagram account for Amazima ministries and I was reminded once again that not all Millennials worry about wrinkles and beauty. Katie Davis was 18-years-old when she decided that she wanted to spend her life towards helping other people. Katie moved to Jinja, Uganda one year later and started helping poor children get food and education through her ministry Amazima.

Katie Davis grew up in the same culture as me, surrounded by messages that tell us beauty, money and power matters, but she chose a different path in life. Katie Davis chose to give up her comfortable life in a wealthy Nashville suburb to live in a much poorer neighborhood in Africa because she wanted to make a difference during her days on Earth. In a world that tells us that we need to pursue beauty, money, status and power Katie Davis chose something different. Katie chose to spend her life loving other people, to serve the poor and needy in the world. Today Katie Davis is 27-years-old and if you look at pictures of her you can see that she has a few wrinkles around her eyes, but I don’t think she worries about wrinkles or beauty. Katie Davis Majors is busy caring for and loving her adoptive daughters, her newborn son, her husband and all the poor families she is helping through Amazima. The A21 Campaign features a quote on their Instagram account that I like:

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Jane Goodall

“People tell me I am brave. People tell me I am strong. People tell me good job. Well here is the truth of it. I am really not that brave, I am not really that strong, and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am just doing what God called me to do as a follower of Him.”

Katie Davis Majors

How to deal with credit card debt

Living in a responsible way when it comes to money is important but it can be very difficult at times. We learn a lot of good things in school but sadly nobody teaches us about important topics like work-life balance, mental health or how to handle money in high school. One thing that makes me mad is that when young adults start college they get bombarded with offers to get credit cards from different companies that visit the college campuses. I have a friend who took every single credit card she was offered in university and quickly ended up deep in debt, it took her many years to get rid of that debt.


Young adults who we're not lucky enough to grow up with parents who taught them about money and responsibility easily end up deep in debt during the earlier part of their adult life. I'm happy to see that Youtubers like "Sugar Mamma" offer good advice for free about money and financial planning that can help young people. Few things can steal our freedom and add more stress to life than living with a lot of debt.

The Materialism Trap

Most of us are aware that materialism is not a sustainable way of life, but it's so easy to get stuck in the materialism trap. We often find ourselves buying way more stuff than we need and spending more money than we want to spend, mostly because it's the expected "normal" way to live in our modern society.

If one of your goals for 2016 is to become less materialistic then I bet this video by Erin will give you the inspiration and motivation needed to make a few lifestyle changes. Whether your passion is animal rights, human rights or something else we could all benefit from becoming less materialistic in our approach to life. Erin Janus is a youtuber who is a passionate vegan, activist and writer.

Possessions, Power & Perfection

New Year’s Eve is coming up and a lot of people are thinking about what their New Year’s resolution should be for 2016. I have a few ideas myself, but today I wanted to write about my resolution from 2015. My New Year’s resolution last year was what I called “Finding Freedom”. I decided it was time to choose freedom in particularly three different categories in life: possessions, beauty and career. On the other hand, it is almost impossible to break free from the culture’s expectations on us unless we replace each cultural ideal with something new.

The three cultural ideals I wanted to break free from were: materialism, perfect beauty and power&money. When it comes down to possessions we are constantly fed that we should buy more and newer stuff. Beauty is extremely important in our culture and the ideal we are all encouraged to strive towards is perfection. Our careers are one of the main things in our culture that define us and give us our value as a human being. The more power we have and the more money we make the higher value we get.

I see a lot of people talk about these negative culture ideals on social media, the biggest problem is how do you break free from the negative ideals? I see women talk about how they won’t tolerate the negative beauty ideal for example, but the following week they are considering if they should get plastic surgery. I don’t blame them, it’s almost impossible to not follow the ideals in our culture, unless we replace them with new ideals. We can’t just hate that the culture is telling us to strive for perfection, we have to start striving for something else. If we decide to stop striving for perfect beauty, power and materialism we will still move towards these ideals subconsciously. We are fed these ideals daily through commercials, advertisements, magazines, TV and social media.

Our survival instinct will naturally adapt to any surrounding, if we are surrounded by magazines that tell us we need botox we will soon be convinced that we need botox. If we are following tons of people on Instagram who believe that perfect beauty is what we should strive for we will also start striving for this ideal, whether we like the ideal or not. “You are what you eat” they say, the same is true when it comes to what we look at. Your environment will always form you, so if you don’t want to become like it, change your environment.

 

I didn’t want to waste any more time in life striving for cultural ideals I don’t agree with, I needed new ideals to strive towards. I decided that instead of materialism I was going to strive for the opposite: Minimalism. I changed out the perfect beauty ideal for natural beauty. I didn’t want to strive for power and money in the career category since research is showing us that neither one of these things are what bring joy and satisfaction to human beings. I decided I wanted to strive for what I call loving work in the career category. I want to love the work I do, and I want my work to give me opportunities to love others. I personally believe that’s the whole point with work, to love others as we serve others through our jobs.

As I googled the new ideals I had chosen I found out I wasn't the only person who was tired of our culture’s negative ideals. There are already a huge movement out there on social media with minimalists, women who strive for natural beauty rather than perfection, and people who want to do work they love. I personally believe that the change this world so badly needs right now is going to come through the younger generations, I’m so proud of what the millennials are doing around the world.

What I needed to do to be able to stay free from the negative ideals that I had been striving towards for so many years of my life was to make some changes to my environment. I threw out all the catalogs that came in the mail (I already have enough stuff) and I stopped reading women’s magazines filled with headlines like “When is the right time to start taking botox?”. I started reading blogs by inspiring people who love the work they do and I stopped following people on social media who strive for perfect beauty and materialism. These changes made it a lot easier to resist the urge to shop more, want to change the way I look, or choose the job that will make the most money.

During the spring of 2015, when all the magazines in the grocery store had headlines like “get the perfect body for summer”, I would think to myself “I’m perfect just the way I am, I don’t need to change a thing”. That’s a huge change for someone who has been on the border to developing eating disorders for many years. I wish I could have felt that way already ten years ago. I hate that so many young women dislike the way they look because of the negative beauty ideals our culture still feeds them.

My possessions have become a lot fewer during the past twelve months, and our home has become a lot more organized as a result of that. I love sticking to fewer pieces of clothing in my wardrobe. It’s so easy to get dressed when I love every piece I own, because nowadays I only buy something if I truly love it. When it comes to career choices I’m excited about all the new opportunities that open up when you stop looking at work as only something that will give you a paycheck at the end of the month. There’s so much more to work than making a lot of money and building up a good retirement fund. Work is our chance to leave a legacy on this Earth, to change the world as we love and serve other people. I’m excited to see what year 2016 will bring!