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Search anywhere online and you’ll be surrounded by a bazillion opportunities to reduce your wrinkles, anti-age your skin and freeze your face in time. While it’s nice to know you’re taking the best care of yourself possible, it’s also nice to remember that wrinkles are normal, wrinkles are your story and wrinkles can be fabulous.

Take this for instance.

Tribes in Uganda believe a full, voluptuous figure is the most beautiful one possible. To them it symbolises health, fertility and wealth. On the other hand, being skinny, symbolises all of the opposite. Being unhealthy, being unfertile and being unable to afford food.

Mind changing ‘eh. What’s beautiful to us, can be considered the complete opposite to someone else.

… it doesn’t stop there.

If like me, you live in the west, you’ll likely see a tan as a symbol of health. You might feel a tan makes you glow like nothing else can. You might believe everything looks better with a tan. You might even find yourself competing for maximum bronzeness. If however you live in Asia, you’ll believe the complete opposite. You’ll see tanning as your arch nemesis, wearing head to toe coverage on the beach, using umbrellas in summertime and layering on the SPF thickly and often. In the east, tanning is seen as a show you worked in the rice fields all day, in the west tanning is a show you can afford to sun bask for a day!

What you value as beautiful, is what you decide is beautiful. You have the power my friend, which is why today I wanted to share with you these 7 reasons why your wrinkles are fabulous…

1. Wrinkles Let You Communicate Without Saying a Thing

Your boyfriend reaches for the last strawberry cream chocolate and without saying a thing, your opposite of come to bed eyes tell him this is a completely unacceptable move. Reversing his chocolate foraging crane hand, he de-selects the last remaining strawberry cream giving you a cheeky glance that communicates, ‘yes I know I’ve eaten more than my fair share, but I thought I’d give it a go anyhow, but you know, since you picked me out on it, it’s fine, you have it, you deserve it oh beautiful one’…

The best communication needs no words and all of your tiny micro-wrinkles, let you chat in infinitely different grades of happiness, confusion, contentment, joy, curiosity, gratitude, love.

Imagine trying to read someone whose face had no ability to wrinkle. Are they showing you love or hate? Are they telling you they’re happy or sad? Are they bursting with excitement or do they just need the toilet? Truly, without the ability to wrinkle, it’s like trying to crack a 1,000 digit combination lock.

Your wrinkles are fabulous because they unlock the ability to communicate on a much deeper level than words ever will.

2. Your Wrinkles Are Your Story

Imagine if all a palm reader had to work with were a wrinkleless hand of skin and nails. It’s be like your story never existed. They’d be nothing to separate yours from the 100 other wrinkleless hands that surround you. Your wrinkles are your story and you deserve to be extremely proud of this.

I don’t know about you but things I’m proud of are usually the things I like to lead with.

Instead of thinking about your wrinkles as a sign of age, try thinking about them as a sign of all the things you’ve accomplished. A degree, children, being accepted into a sport’s league, learning to salsa dance in 6 months, buying a house, cooking dinner from scratch every night this week, helping your best bud through a tough time (meaning 2am best-bud counselling calls), having the courage to confront your worst fears, partying until the wee hours of the morning with your most valued family and friends.

A wrinkle isn’t a sign of age, it’s a sign of experience. A sign that you’re travelling a path laid full with memories and achievements.

3. Wrinkles Show You’re a Natural Beauty

You are fabulous, why cover up that fabulousness by trying to look like someone else? By trying to look like something that doesn’t naturally exists? Last week I saw this stunning picture of Meryl Streep, she’s 67, she’s a natural beauty and my oh my does she look like she’s enjoying it! Meryl’s natural look shows grace, elegance and a super-sized spoonful of inner confidence.

4. Imperfections Are What Make You Beautiful

What I love about this image most is Meryl’s smile lines and really isn’t that such a positive way to think about wrinkles. Not as wrinkles, but as lines of happiness? Would you give up that night you laughed so hard you might of temporarily lost bladder control for a wrinkleless face? Would you trade the evenings of hard work you spent achieving your calling in life for a wrinkleless face? Would you swap interrupted nights of sleep spent caring for your newly born daughter or son for a wrinkleless face?

Dimples, smile lines, eyebrow furrows, a squinty wink, freckles, beauty spots… you my friend have a unique mixture of imperfections that are exactly what make you beautiful. Wrinkles are just one of them. Have you ever head this saying, ‘by trying to fit in, you are literally covering up what makes you stand out’. Imagine if you didn’t have those cute dimples your perfect partner found knee droppingly gorgeous. Imagine if your stand-out squinty wink didn’t exist to inspire cackles of friendly giggles wherever you went? Imagine if you looked exactly like everyone else and there was absolutely nothing to make you unique.

Wrinkles are just one kind of imperfection that make you uniquely beautiful.

5. Winkles Are Human

Despite what air-brushed magazine images try to tell us, wrinkles are natural and wrinkles are human. By trying to avoid wrinkles by using the most drastic treatments available, you’re literally trying to avoid being human. Avoid being a recognised member of the human race and attempting to join clan frozen.

…and whatever you achieve in life, wouldn’t you rather be a relatable human being? Wouldn’t you rather let everyone know that yes you achieved all this and yes you are human and yes they can do it too? Whereas if you’re a member of clan frozen, how is a normal human being supposed to be inspired by you? How could a normal human being take a walk in your footsteps?

Your wrinkles are fabulous because they make you human, they make you relatable and they give you the power to inspire others.

6. Your Wrinkles Allow Connection on a Much Deeper Level

The how – mirror neurons. The why – because you can wrinkle your face. Have you heard of them? Mirror neurons are a type of neuron found in your brain, when you like someone, they naturally let you mirror that person’s body language. That mirroring unconsciously lets the other person recognise that you like them, that you relate to them, that you feel comfortable with them. If you find yourself catching a yawn, or smiling because someone smiled at you or lifting a cup of tea just as your best bud did, it’s likely your mirror neurons are to thank.

It’s estimated only 7% of what another person understands from you, is based on what you say. The rest comes from things like tone of your voice, body language and facial expressions. Sounds kinda crazy ‘eh, but imagine someone telling you they loved you with a scowl on their face, imagine your partner telling you they find Americas Next Top Model interesting and then yawning, imagine a new date telling you that home cooked meal was fantastic when they left half on their plate. Mixed signals ‘eh.

Being able to mirror someone’s facial expressions creates friendship, inspires trust and forms lasting bonds going much deeper than words. Your wrinkles are fabulous because they allow you to do this, they allow you to make human connections on a much deeper level than words ever could.

7. Your Winkles Show Confidence

The best kind of confidence you can find in life, is to be true to yourself. To match up the life you live on the outside with the one you want to live on the inside. When the two match, everything else can’t help but fall into place. Usually when we start to find ourselves fixating on what we see as flaws e.g. wrinkles, we’re trying to find a way to make ourselves feel a different way.

‘If only I didn’t have those smile lines, I’d be happy’

‘If only my eyebrows didn’t furrow like that, I’d be able to find a partner’

‘If only I could lose 5 pounds, I’d love my body completely’

Really, those changes are band-aids, because what you really want to find, is a different feeling. What you’re really needing to build on is confidence in yourself. Your wrinkles are beautiful, your wrinkles are confident and your wrinkles are fabulous. You don’t need to change yourself, because as Colin Firth once said to Bridget Jones, ‘I like you just the way you are’.

Your wrinkles are fabulous because they are you and you are them. There’s no-one else out there exactly like you and finding love and acceptance for exactly who you are brings the best kind of happiness’.

There you have it dear friend, your wrinkles are fabulous. YOU are fabulous. Tell me your story’s below, tell me how you’re able to see yours…

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