What does it mean to live beautifully? Recently, this question has been top of mind for me ever since I was invited by one of the leading health and beauty retailers today, to accept the challenge of their “Live Beautifully” campaign. The mission given to me was simple: choose your favorite products from the store that will inspire you or a friend to “live beautifully”.

What an awesome challenge right? I never say no to retail therapy. I must say I had a lot of fun going around the aisles of the store in search of the perfect products to inspire. As a person that frequents Watson’s (who doesn’t?), I kind of already had a mental rolodex of the items I was thinking of adding to my cart, plus the fact that having built my career around the fashion and beauty industry, I know exactly what things people need in order to live in a clean, hygienic, and beautiful way. Funnily enough however, the most surprising part of the whole exercise was the discovery of a world of items that for some reason flew below my radar! Lovely things such as a local brand called One Naturales, specializing in body care made of natural ingredients. I couldn’t resist their hand and body lotion in Cloud 9, a heavenly scent. Or how about Beyond Bath, another local gem with a very complete, extremely affordable range of organic body products?

The Watson’s brand itself also had a couple winners. I discovered their Herbal Mouthwash in Mint Lemongrass sans alcohol and an exfoliating body scrub in grapefruit and peach. Intoxicating.

Other interesting discoveries were made by people doing the challenge alongside me like blogger Cecile Van Straten of chuvaness.com fame, who quickly pointed out, what was in my opinion, the winning product of the day: a whitening toothpaste that suppresses hunger.

About an hour and three huge bags later, I got to sit down at a nearby café and wax poetic with Watson’s Vicky Encarnacion and PR maven Jenny Yrasuegui about the experience. We talked about each item I chose, why I chose it and for whom I intended to give it. I told them that the basis of my selection process was that I wanted to make sure that everything in my basket would be able to make over a person from head-to-toe. From hair serums and facial sun blocks to pedicure sets and body scrubs because for me, in order to take care of yourself, you have to think about the totality. In other words, if you religiously moisturize your face, you must also religiously moisturize your feet and everything else in between. Anything less, you cheat only yourself.

And when we think “totality”, one must also reflect on the inside and not just the shell, which is something else that this challenge forced me to assess (deliberately or not) within myself and so I thought: How else, aside from the aesthetics, was I living my life beautifully? And better yet, what can I do to be better? And then I remembered something written by Audrey Hepburn, one of the most beautiful women the world has ever seen. She said:

For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness.

For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day.

For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.

People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others.”

And that, dear readers, is the best way to live a beautiful life.

I’d like to share all my beauty loot from the Watson’s “Live Beautifully” campaign with all of my readers. Please share with me what you did today to help you, or someone else live beautifully. Send me your answers through Twitter. You can follow me @celine_gabriel. I have 35 products to give away so the first 35 people that send me a note wins.

Comments, questions, suggestions? Please email me at [email protected]