Do we dress for ourselves, for society, for a target audience, for power plays or for convenience?
Does choosing what to wear create stressful reactions in your mind and body, or does it flow with ease and contribute positively to your life and living?
When I asked people why they dressed the way they were on that day, some took offense at the question and assumed judgment, some took it as a compliment, and some simply took it as a genuine curiosity, but everyone had a rationale or reason for their current or regular style of dressing.
For myself, my earliest style of dressing that I can recall, was prescribed. We had a school uniform, dressed out socially based on what my Mother bought for us, then came the army which definitely had a uniform, then came university and hospitals, which also prescribed a basic dress code with specific uniform items.
Many people identify with a particular group. The movie Grease epitomised dressing to identify which social group you related to and were a part of (or wanted to be a part of). Many people emulate characters from a favorite book, movie or band.
Of course there are those that dress contrary to the social norms, as they don’t identify with any particular group, but as the old meme from my childhood said “we want to be individuals, that’s why we all wear jeans”.
How does how you dress affect your stress levels?
One would think that identifying and conforming to the norms of a particular group of society that you live or work in, would lower the stress levels, but even within the norms, is a competition and judgment based on where you land up within the hierarchy of that group.
For a while I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, where it was prescribed that when you visited doctors, you wore a suit and tie, so you would think there was not stress involved (beyond being too hot in summer and possibly cold in winter). But some reps wore better labels than others, quality fabrics, expensive shoes and the right accessories like cuff links and tie pins, and access to doctors often varied based on how you dressed for the appointment.
There is only one formula to take the stress out of dressing and that is by a conscious choice, to either dress to suit the occasion (follow the prescribed or social code of the venue or event) or dress in what makes you feel comfortable. Both of those also work when the final decision is based on how it makes YOU feel on the inside, not what others may say about you, good or bad.
When you wake up in the morning and stand before your cupboard, with the day ahead of you, you have a unique flow of energy through your system in that moment. As you look through the possible items for the day (based on the social norms or your preferred mode of dress for that day), notice how your body responds to each item. Try not to tune into the process mentally, identifying if the shoes match the top, but rather tune into your body and notice what makes you feel lighter, not heavier.
Chose the outfit within the social norms you’ve chosen to conform to, that makes your body feel light.
When you dress based on the effect those clothes have on your energy, as the Heartmath Foundation show, the energy field you radiate will be coherent with that light feeling, and it will attract positive interactions, agreements, coincidences, successes and ease of functioning throughout the day.
Trust and honour your inner conscious knowing over your cognitive knowledge based computed computations.