Kate Bosworth is calling in from her morning walk, it’s a multi-tasking demo of her busy life as actress, humanitarian, fashion ambassador, founder of her blog KInd.est, and committed step mum to Jasper. A role she took on aged 28, now 37.
Kate’s instant warmth and openness makes me think she’d be the friend you’d call when you’re in need of ‘you got this’ motivation. The clear willingness to let friends and her followers in to all aspects of her life, plus her LOL posts on Instagram (see her hydration tip below), reveal she’s the one you’d have a laugh with, too.
We’re reflecting on this year like no other and her experience of lockdown. Like for many of us, she admits it was a mixed experience with periods of anxiety, reflection, personal growth and productivity.
She reveals in quarantine she took up meditation to train her mind, kept fit with low impact exercise and used the ‘now or never’ time to work on her lifestyle blog, where she shares everything from her skincare favourites and at home recipes, to her feelings on love and grief. The idea was born after the death of her grandmother and she says she wanted to create, “A little corner of authenticity on the internet, a place to connect, to smile, to be curious, to discover.”
As a self-confessed A-type and perfectionist, she’s happy to admit she finds it hard playing out of her comfort zone, but putting yourself out there often pays dividends. Here, she shares the life and wellness hacks she’s learnt along the way and it’s giving us ‘you got this’ vibes…
Feel the fear, take the leap and welcome the reward
“If you have an idea, just go for it, because it’s likely the reason holding you back is fear and I’ve realised it’s pointless to not do something because you’re fearful. You might as well take the leap. I say that to myself often, and I’m far from perfect at it, as I get those very normal feelings, but my experience is that every time I’ve taken a leap, where I really believe and stand by what I’m doing, the outcome always has a reward. It might not be exactly what was expected, but there’s a reward of some sort.
“It makes me think of the first [blog] post that I wrote about the passing of my grandmother. It was a very intense experience for those of us with her when she passed. I then found it very difficult to engage with the technical parts of modern day life, having gone through something so life-altering and deep and important.
“I thought in order to be able to discuss the things that I wanted to discuss [on the blog], I’m going to have to really walk the walk of vulnerability and expose myself. The letters that I received in return were so beautiful. It really allowed me to feel like I was on the right track. Now we have members signed up to the newsletter from almost every country in the world.”
You can train your mind to deal with negativity
“I think it’s as important to be mentally sound as it is physically sound. I know meditation has been a huge help over quarantine for a lot of people who have had feelings around fear and anxiety, myself included.
“I picked up meditating [in lockdown], which is funny to hear myself say! My 20-year-old self would never believe me. I’ve tried picking it up a few times before, but I always labeled myself a self professed terrible meditator, but now I’m learning to embrace the stiller parts and create space with mindfulness.
“I’ve been using an app called 10% Happier. The A-type in me is like, I don’t get it, but I think this app was really created with that type of fast paced brain in mind. Rather than just being silent and feeling like you’re calm and together with the universe, I mean, look, if people can get there, that’s wonderful, but for me, I see it as healthy mental exercise.
“Creating mindfulness allows you to create enough space around what it is that’s coming at you, so that you’re able to acknowledge what it is. Rather than just reacting to it and ending up in a domino effect of unhealthy decisions, it allows you to create a different response mechanism, rather than fear.
“If you’re able to look at your mind, and work with it, training it like we do our bodies, I think you can pick up any habit. You can literally train yourself to do anything, as long as you do it in a consistent way.”
Be kind to your body, it’s a marathon not a sprint
“I’m a real A-type kind, motivated and ambitious, and I felt for a long time that my exercise needed to be comparable with the pace that I was running myself professionally. I was a runner for many years and I felt like the more I ground myself into a pulp, the fitter I would be. I never thought I’d give up running because it always made me feel great.
“But the truth is, it was really hard on my knees. I started to learn a lot more about how to take care of my body from a longevity point of view and how muscles are much better nurtured through low impact exercise. I’ve been doing low impact now for a couple of years and it’s truly amazing because even if I take a week off, the muscle memory is incredible.”
Exercise works best slotted into your day to day
“I first discovered P’Volve on Instagram about a year ago [a low impact exercise system and online streaming platform and app with 200+ workouts; from £16 per month] and I was intrigued by the equipment, the p.ball and p.band. It took my love of resistance-based, low-impact workouts to the next level. The movements, together with their innovative and unique equipment, tone and lengthen my body in such an effective way.
“You don’t have to kill yourself and commit to an hour of something crazy, if you’re at home working, you can just take a quick 15 or 20 minute break. It’s the kind of workout where I can literally go to a meeting straight after. I think probably the biggest misconception sometimes is that people will go, ‘I don’t feel like this is doing anything.’ Then all of a sudden, the next day you can feel it and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m sore’.
“I’ll train on average three times a week if I’m being good. Some days I focus more on core, some days I focus on glutes. Glutes is a big one for me. If I can sneak in a few minutes here and there to just stretch, I will. It’s really about taking the time when you can.”
Allow yourself the courage to feel vulnerable
“Feeling vulnerable and out of your comfort zone feels like you’re like running through the streets naked or putting on the most itchy, horrible, tight sweater and walking around in it, while thinking ‘I never want to put on this sweater again.’
“But the truth is every time I allow myself to be vulnerable, whether it’s in my relationships, my work, or my relationship with myself, if I can move past the typical hot feelings of ‘wow, I’m really angry,’ or ‘I’m really frustrated’. If I can dig deep and say, ‘Okay, what’s the vulnerability here?’ I can recognise my feelings were that of hurt or that I just really wanted to be liked.
“So I think one of the beautiful feelings and the result of truly allowing yourself to be vulnerable is that you feel truly courageous as well. That’s been my experience, but I also will say, it’s never easy. Not once, has it been easy.”
Enjoy the journey, even the hard parts have a role to play
“I think we always think there’s some kind of grand destination. If I get this, if I do this, if I achieve this, I will get to this result.
The truth is, there is no grand destination. I mean this is going to sound really cheesy, but it’s true. It really is about the journey. It is about the failings. It is about feeling the really difficult things and working through them. That is the achievement and I have to remind myself of that all the time, because I was born an overachieving perfectionist in many ways.
“I mean, look, I very much always feel like a work in progress, to be honest and I try to be okay with that, even if that’s also a vulnerable thing to admit.
“I’ve had to really be able to look at myself in the mirror to identify the parts of myself that I like and appreciate the most and I have to say they are from the hard parts. I think you have to find your appreciation for those things and stop reaching for the dangling carrot, because the truth is you’ll never get it. That leads to a lot of dissatisfaction. So to appreciate all the things that are integral along the way, I think that’s really the victory.”