⚡️10 Unsolicited Rules To Live By⚡️

💌Unlocking one of Bel's best newsys for you all 💌

My angels!! This week you’re getting a very special diary entry - one of Bel’s! A few weeks ago in her Sunday newsy 💌No News Is Good News💌 she wrote us 10 Unsolicited Rules To Live By and I always knew that I wanted to unlock it for everyone to read - so that’s what you’re getting today!!

I was also blessed by her presence on Culture Vulture this week to discuss these ‘rules’ (and Taylor Swift’s breakup) so if you want to hear them unpacked a little more listen here!!

Finally, if you love Bel’s words and want to read them every Sunday (they go great with a morning cuppa) please consider becoming a paid supporter of the media you love (us!!)

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Ten unsolicited rules to live by

1. Treat friendships with the same amount of energy as romantic relationships

Friendships are the family we choose. They’re the energy we inject into our lives. The bones we build around us. They’re how we feel less alone in the world and how we see ourselves reflected back at us. Treat them that way. Remember their birthdays. Write them notes. Drunk text them funny shit. Don’t be afraid to call on them when you need them. They will change just as much as you will and not always be around forever, but for those windows in time (large or small), they can bring you just as much attention, sense-making and affection as romantic relationships can. Loving people is a verb. Treat it as such.

2. Freedom is the best feeling you can chase

The best moments of your life will not come from the manicured, perfected, sweated-over slivers of time in the limelight. They happen in the green rooms, the side moments, the in-between, hair-falling-out-of-its-bobby-pins, barefooted, spontaneous spirited frivolous times you didn’t plan for or couldn’t reconstruct if you tried. Chase those. Know how fleetingly they arrive. Know they won’t last forever. Know they will come back. Know you’re lucky to feel them when you do.

3. Resolution can only come from yourself

Things will disappoint you. People will disappoint you. You will disappoint you. This is inevitable. But what isn’t is how you deal with it. You can drive yourself wild with anxiety trying to control other people’s reactions and responses to things. You can wind down the window and scream at the apartment block of someone who hurt you all you like. But at the end of the day, making peace with things that have happened that hurt is a destination only you can arrive at. And once you do — you are set free (see note above).

4. Generosity will change your life

Ask questions. Bring an ice cream from the dairy to your friend’s house. Sit on their floor and ask them how they are. Be interested in people’s lives. If you’re married, don’t make your single friends always fit in with your life. Buy your workmate a Coke when they’re verging on a menty b. Read the room when you’re complaining about your kitchen renovation when some people are scraping to make ends meet. Buy yourself a birthday present. Write someone a cute note. Tell your crush how you feel. Make a stranger feel comfortable. Send something in the post.

I don’t want this to descend into a Tumblr-level inspirational quote, but thinking about generosity as a circular energy that goes around, comes back to you, and relays on to other people, when given in the right way, will change your life.

5. Find joy and refuse to rob yourself of it

So often, things will be hard to make sense of. Why here? Why now? Why me? Why this? The most radical thing you can do in the face of disaster, mundanity or a difficult time is to seek out joy and/or not deny yourself of it. You will always be going through something. You will always be in the middle of an era. Things will always be changing. The one single thing that makes life make sense and worth all that feeling are all the way joy manifests. A life’s work.

6. Evacuate your life every once and a while

Living gets repetitive and boring. Get out of your house to get out of your head, and go as far as you can. Eat bleak food for a month and sell your old clothes so you can make it work. Do whatever you can to see a way of being alive that’s totally different from your own. In the meantime, travel with books and movies and art the furthest you can. Your perspective is half a star in the galaxy of the world, but it doesn’t have to be if you can be curious about it. Seek that out in whatever way is available to you.

7. Living well is the best revenge

You will lose yourself at some point (unless you’re one of those few who slide along life unscraped, if so, cool, tell us about it quickly and from afar). It will feel like the worst thing physically imaginable. You will go down into a well. It will be very difficult. Stay a while. Rest a lot. Hours will go by like days. Spend your days scheming a plan to come out. It will feel as though everyone is happy and successful except for you. This is a lie. But one day, the time will come, and all those small plans you made will have formed into steps, and you will find yourself at the top of them, look back, and realise you’ve phoenixed.

8. Break or break

No amount of face masks and weekends away can stop you from burning out. Build rest and retreat actively into your life and let yourself be imperfect. Turn up to the dinner with unclean hair, and no one will die. Understand that not having a single photo or story to share about your life for the last month will not make anyone like you less. Burnout is a sign of boundaries unkept. See it as a sign for change. Self-sacrifice only hurts the person doing it.

9. Leap and the net will appear

Everyone will have an opinion on whether you should quit your job, dump your girlfriend, move countries or buy that pair of expensive pair of boots, and they will all be different. If you have a visceral feeling you need change, do your research, ask around, discount anything that doesn’t feel right, take a leap, and something new will appear. People will always project their own visions, insecurities, hopes and wishes onto you. To know what your own are and to believe in your instincts surrounding them is a gift. Don’t give that up to just anyone.

10. Regret is a waste

Maybe if I didn’t believe I could be a chic ex-pat whose home country ‘simply wasn’t enough,’ I wouldn’t have followed a travelling crush to France to live, only to be told by him on the beach at Cannes that I wasn’t hot enough to be there, and consequently spend the rest of the summer with body dysmorphia. But maybe if I didn’t I wouldn’t know what the Mediterranean Sea feels like to swim in, what the ecstatic impossibility of taking a chance really means, and what happens when you make life truly available to happen to you. Without that, I wouldn’t be here, telling you this.

I hope you liked these, I’d love to hear yours.

Bel xx

This was written by my crush, the refreshing-as-a-house-chardonnay-on-a-steamy-day, Bel Hawkins. She also writes our Sunday newsletter ‘No News is Good News’ which all our paying supporters receive. Upgrade your plan to get her newsy here!

It’s Luce again now - just dropping u some hot recs!!!

On The Web:

• Lululemon Tried to Become a Tech Company. It Didn’t Work Out (The Walrus)

• The Influencer Industry Is Having an Existential Crisis (The Atlantic)

• What Does It Mean To Be a Boy Online in 2023? (Financial Times)

• The Real Hero of Ted Lasso (The Atlantic)

• The Not-So-Secret Key to Emotional Balance (The Atlantic)

• An Attempt to Dissect the Rumor That Kylie Jenner is Dating Timothée Chalamet (Pajiba)

• Is This (HBO) Max News Real or Did We Make It Up? (Vulture)

What I’m reading:

• Just finished Bunny and had more fun reading people unpack it on Reddit (they are much smarter than me)

• Currently reading: A Spark Of Light, Jodi Picoult (she’s my holiday author)

• Reading next: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh

What I’m listening to:

• Almost exclusively Laufey at the moment! Specifically: