Halloween: a time for pumpkins, ridiculous costumes and getting together with family and friends. Whether you’re a believer, partaker or appeaser, it is a time to have a bit of fun and enjoy the festivities. Who really needs an excuse to eat treats (even if they are a bit ghoulish!)? I know many of us don’t.
2000 years ago, the Celts that lived across Britain, Ireland and France, celebrated the festival which symbolised the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. People would build huge bonfires to ward off the evil spirits that roamed the lands on the night of 31st October. These days, the opportunity to dress up, have a few drinks and decorate with pumpkins is really as far as it goes. Some of us may go out of our way to scare others with our costumes or play tricks on one another, as the tradition goes. But how else can we relate the festival to today’s society?
Perhaps we could go back to the festival’s routes, and this year consider how a bit of trickery and scaremongering can bring a new meaning to modern day life. It turns out that what really scares us is pretty subjective: one person might be freaked out by camping under the stars, another might be traumatised by the thought of switching careers, and another may simply be terrified of never moving from their home town. There’s the old saying, ‘feel the fear and do it anyway,’ (much less a rather popular self-help book written by Susan Jeffers) and whilst you carve your pumpkins this year, I urge you to think about the wealth in really scaring yourself.
Imagine this: achieving something that really scares you that you thought was never possible. What would that do for your soul, your happiness, your confidence? How amazing would it be to achieve a goal you thought would never be reachable? Sometimes the fear of failing itself is enough to put us off even trying, but think for a moment about the sense of self-achievement that is possible if you thought for a moment – consider that you can actually do this.
Halloween might be an excuse to trick and treat one another, but there’s some merit in really scaring yourself. Think about it: a comfort zone is a lovely place, but nothing ever grows there. Are you the best that you can be? Push your scare threshold to reach your full potential. We love ‘me time’ at Mimosa Beauty, and self-reflection and improvement is just another step to investing in that ‘me time.’