If you’re anything like me and feel practically nude without a faux-tan on, you know that sunless tanning technology has made major progress in recent years, making it so much easier to skip pricey in-salon spray jobs and give yourself a somewhat professional-looking sunless glow yourself, and right from the comfort of your own bathroom. Despite this progress though, DIY self-tanning isn’t exactly beginner-friendly, and even if you do happen to consider yourself a pro, it’s definitely not fool-proof either. Fortunately, there are several self tan hacks and plenty of newly launched ( and utterly game-changing) sunless bronzing products to ensure you end up with an even bronze glow, and not a streaky orange mishap that you’re stuck with for up to a week.

Whether you’re looking for an option that delivers instant-gratification results by way of an imperfection-blurring wash of color that’ll last for just the day, or are on the hunt for a gradual glow that will survive your week-long beach vacation, there are plenty of unusual alternatives to test out this summer (and beyond) that are much more user-friendly than the gold standard foam and lotion formulas we’re used to. There’s even a new trend surfacing as of late that combines skincare with self tanner, and I am totally here for it. While gradual tanning products often tend to be either too pigmented (hello, orange palms and ankles) or are overly subtle, these effective solutions get it just right. I will say that some of the product mentioned (including my personal favorite, the Tan-Luxe serum) will stain your hands though, so make sure to rinse with soap and warm water after you apply it to your face.

Revolve.

It’s no secret that I find Tan-Luxe self-tanning skincare mix-ins to be nothing short of genius. While I love their original formula (which you simply drop into your favorite serum or moisturizier before bed), this hyaluronic serum knocks out both in one fool-proof product.

Target.

Self tanning can be messy, and it’s not exactly always transfer-proof. While a golden bronze looks great on your body, no one wants to see it on their cream-hued sofa. This genius tanning water is completely clear upon application, and gradually transforms to a brown glow as it develops, meaning your furniture and white sheets won’t get destroyed.

Amazon.

Buy: Ethique Self Tanning Bar $32.00

This one-of-kind solid self tanner is actually genius. It glides on the skin evenly, effectively eliminating the potential for unsightly streaks, and color develops in about 4-6 hours. It also lasts for up to 10 days, which is a pretty extensive wear-time compared to other alternatives.

Revolve.

The convenience of virtually any beauty product packaged in an on-the-go-friendly compact is alluring, but I’ve never before seen a self tanner in this form. It’s a super buildable gel-like formula that gives you a super natural looking bronze without the hassle or mess. I’m packing this one with me for all of my future vacations going forward.

Amazon.

Buy: Dr Dennis Gross Alpha Beta Glow Pad $49.99

One of my favorite skincare products is my exfoliating pads — I use one basically every morning. When I discovered these self-tanning-infused Glow Pads, I was instantly intrigued. They deposit a wash of non-orange and streak-free color while also exfoliating away dead skin for a radiant glow.

Beautycounter.

This spray-on SPF is not only a solid mineral sun protectant, it also doubles as an instant body bronzer, with major imperfection-blurring properties. It kind of reminds of Sally Hansen’s infamous Airbrush Legs body makeup, but I like this formula even better. It’s pretty pigmented though, so make sure to apply before you hit the pool to give it adequate time to dry down.

Amazon.

Buy: St. Tropez Self Tan Remover $19.00

I wish I had known about this genius self tan remover much sooner. Most of us have suffered from a self tan gone wrong at some point in our lives, and DIY removal hacks aren’t always the most effective, but this one is. It also doubles a pre-tan prep, too.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

Oh, the joys of retirement! No bosses or supervisors, no deadlines, no meetings or annual reports! What a luxury to find yourself with endless hours of free time and nobody telling you what to do.

I’ve been retired from my full-time career for four years, now, and I love it! In retirement, I find reduced stress and responsibilities along with a new sense of freedom.

Although the freedom to float along on a cloud of relaxation is tempting, I find that I do want to stay active in retirement. I do sense a desire to pursue learning goals and to work on interesting projects. Relaxation is fine, but I don’t want to turn into a hopeless couch potato.

Are you retired or approaching retirement? Like me, you probably want to stay active and growing mentally, physically, and spiritually during retirement. After all, we worked hard for many years to reach this golden opportunity. We don’t want to squander it.

Retirement: Time for Self-Direction

With freedom from the responsibilities of a fulltime job, we find ourselves in need of self-direction. We no longer have a boss or a paycheck motivating us to be productive. We need to find motivation within ourselves.

That’s why it’s worth exploring the idea of motivation.

• What is motivation?
• How does it work?
• Are there different types of motivation?
• What type of motivation can we employ to create a happy retirement?

Two Types of Motivation

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines two main types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic. We experience extrinsic motivation when we do something to receive an external reward, such as a paycheck, praise from the boss, or validation as the family breadwinner.

On the other hand, we experience intrinsic motivation when we do something because of an internal reward such as pleasure, enjoyment, or enthusiastic interest in the activity.

When we’re employed in a career, we experience external motivation in the form of financial security, prestige, and the ability to honor commitments to our families.

After we retire, we no longer have external pressure from a boss to work on projects and meet deadlines. Instead, we’re free to set out own goals. We can use intrinsic motivation to keep ourselves on track and move forward to meet exciting, new challenges.

How Intrinsic Motivation Works

When you’re intrinsically motivated to do something, you feel fascinated by the activity and feel pleasure to be engaged in it. Your incentive to do the activity comes from these internal feelings, not from a hope for external rewards.

Some psychologists give the name flow to this pleasurable state of being. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, describes flow in this way:

“The flow experience is when a person is completely involved in what he or she is doing, when the concentration is very high, when the person knows moment by moment what the next steps should be…”

Intrinsic motivation causes you to do activities that you enjoy in the moment. Sometimes we confuse extrinsic motivation with intrinsic motivation. Two types of extrinsic motivation might appear (on the surface) to be intrinsic.

Identified Extrinsic Motivation

Identified extrinsic motivation causes us to act in a certain way because of an important value or belief that we hold on a personal level.

For example, I try to make my bed every day because my mother taught me from early childhood that it’s important to keep my house in order.

Integrated Extrinsic Motivation

Integrated extrinsic motivation is an incentive to behave in a certain way because of values and beliefs that are part of an over-arching network of personally held principles and commitments.

One example is: I attend worship services at a church because of spiritual beliefs and values. These extend to a network of guiding principles and commitments to the larger community.

You can see from my examples that these types of motivation appear to come from within, but they are actually internalized types of extrinsic motivation.

Put Intrinsic Motivation to Work for You

I remember the adrenaline rush of hurtling downhill on my bicycle at age nine. On summer evenings, I’d join the neighborhood kids to ride pell-mell down our street. What a glorious sense of freedom!

Time stood still and the world consisted of just us, our bikes, our street, and the emerging, magical lightning bugs. That’s the kind of scene I conjure when I think of flow or intrinsic motivation.

Now, I think of different types of intrinsically motivating activities. In retirement, reading good literature and puttering in my yard seem to fill the bill just fine, thank you.

If you want to use intrinsic motivation to enrich your retirement experience, you might want to start by brainstorming a list of activities that would be intrinsically motivating to you.

Here’s my list:

• Reading good books by excellent authors
• Crafts – making DIY jewelry, wreaths, decoupaging
• Music – singing, playing the piano and organ
• Exercise – walking, jogging, stretching
• Lifelong learning – taking courses online or at the local senior learning center
• Gardening
• Traveling
• Solving puzzles: jigsaw, crosswords, and Sudoku

Set Goals for Life Enrichment

After you make a list of things that are intrinsically motivating to you, use it to set goals for learning new skills or seeking new experiences that give you pleasure.

These are a few of my goals:

• Travel to places I’ve never seen.
• Learn new skills for writing and blogging (I’m taking some online courses).
• Learn new repertoire to play on the piano and organ.
• Clear out the weedy areas and plant new shrubs in the backyard.
• Read more good books.

As you can see, my goals are based on the activities that I find intrinsically motivating.

How about you? What motivates you intrinsically? What does your list of intrinsically motivating activities look like? Can you put intrinsic motivation to work in your life? I’d love to read your ideas and learn about your goals. Simply leave a comment below to start a conversation.

Although this summer might look a little (or a lot!) different from last summer, there’s a good chance you still need a refresh on your sunscreen, favorite shampoo and trusty acne cleanser. Now’s the time to stock up on essentials during the best Fourth of July beauty sales for 2020. Even if you’re not traveling anywhere exciting just yet, there are everyday essentials discounted to make your daily routine easier and more effective. Oh, and of course some fun products thrown in the mix.

Take a look at each beauty sale‘s details carefully. Some have already started and others begin during the 4th of July weekend. Some sales feature discounts off an entire site, while others are just a certain line or product. A few sales are more of a gift-with-purchase deal but a great way to try a new product for free while stocking up on a trusty favorite.

There’s something for everyone. If you’re looking specifically for makeup, try BareMinerals, Cover FX and Physicians Formula for deals. If you’re anything like us and cannot get enough skincare, there are must-see sales from Kate Somerville, Skyn Iceland, Elemis and more. Shop our favorites below and check back as the list is sure to keep growing.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

bareMinerals.

BareMinerals

Take $10 off $75 and $20 off $100 from June 30-July 6 with code FIREWORK. Also score free shipping.

Bed Head By Tigi

At Ulta, take 15 percent off Bed Head tweens and buy two, get one free on all Bed Head styling and finishing products.

Kate Somerville

Get a free ExfoliKate Treatment Full Size (an $85 value) with any $120 purchase from July 3-5.

Face Kit

Take 15 percent off your entire order plus get free shipping with code SUMMER from July 3-5.

Image: Elemis.

Elemis

Enjoy 20 percent off sitewide, plus, a free 3-piece gift with orders of more than $100 with code JULY4 until July 5. You can also get a free Papaya Enzyme Peel with orders of more than $125 from July 1-5.

HUM Nutrition

Take 20 percent off your first order of $29 or more until July 6 with code JULY4TH.

OGX, Maui Moisture and Aveeno Hair

At CVS, there’s a buy one, get one 50 percent off deal from these three brands. Plus, if you buy thee products, you get $5 in Extrabucks. The sales run until July 4.

Indie Lee

At the Detox Market, get 10 percent off orders of $150 and 15 percent off orders of $250, plus a free full-size Indie Lee CoQ10 Toner (a $34 value). The sale runs from July 3-5.

Image: Cover FX.

Cover FX

Get 20 percent off sitewide plus free ground shipping on all orders with code HAPPY4TH until July 7.

Skyn Iceland

Take $10 off $75, $20 off $100 and $30 off $125 from July 3-6.

OleHenriksen

Get a free mini 3-piece set with every order of $50 or more. The set includes Banana Bright Vitamin C Serum, Banana Bright Eye Crème and Goodnight Glow Retin-ALT Sleeping Crème.

Physicians Formula

Take 35 percent off sitewide, plus free shipping on all orders of $10 and more using promo code PF35. The sale runs until July 6.

La Roche-Posay

Get 20 percent plus a Vitamin C Serum Sample with orders of $65 and more.

eos.

EOS

Score 20 percent off sitewide until July 7.

Ascention

Take 20 percent off sitewide plus get free shipping with code GOFOURTH from July 2-7.

Saint Jane Beauty

Shop The Ideal Duo (which includes Luxury Beauty Serum and The C-Drops) for $15 off the retail value of both. Plus the first 50 customers to purchase the set and use the code SUMMERGLOW will receive a woven straw sun hat (worth $50).

Image: Hot Tools.

Hot Tools

On Amazon.com, the Signature Series Detachable Volumizer will be $15 off from July 4-6.

BaliBody

Take 20 percent off of all SPF15 Tanning Oils on July 4 and July 5.

A couple of days ago I was at the computer when I heard a knock at the window. I looked out and saw it was my daughter, her partner, and my three month old grandson, Anteo, at the door surprising us. The three had driven up from Southern California.

Our daughter said it was time for me to meet Anteo face-to- face after daily screen encounters, watching him grow and change each day. Heading to the front door, I burst into tears of joy and welcomed them into the house.

We moved to the backyard where I was able to laugh with him, feed him, and hold him while he slept. My husband and I were in seventh heaven.

For the last three months, I have been quarantining at home. Nobody had entered our house. The only person, outside my husband, who came within three feet of me was the CT scan technician who monitors my post-chemo treatments every three months.

At that moment when Anteo appeared in the flesh, nothing else mattered.

To Judge or Not to Judge

Later, after they left and drove back to their home eight hours away by car, I was able to reflect on all my feelings. I was thrilled. But also I felt a bit guilty, a bit worried, and a bit unsure whether I had made the right decision. Yet I can say with assurance, I would do it all again.

As I reflected, I realized that this phenomenon was happening to everyone I knew. My sister-in-law invited a friend to cook with her. Some friends had their adult children come to stay with them. Another friend also could not resist when her grand-daughter flew into her arms.

My husband got an “illegal” haircut. It has been easy for us to judge each other’s choices. Now I, too, was subject to such judgments.

One shocked friend asked, “You didn’t wear a mask?”

“No, it happened so fast,” I replied.

Especially those of us in my category of “vulnerable” people are faced with many choices as the world opens up. The question we ask is, “What should I do now?”

A Grand Reopening

In our different localities, the reopening phase has begun, yet amid tremendous uncertainty. Contradictory messages abound regarding effective medications, the availability of tests and beds in hospitals, whether or not you can get Covid-19 from surfaces, and more.

Reading the news each day is like a roller coaster: Covid-19 rates are going up in many places; a mysterious childhood disease linked to Covid-19 that burst into our in-boxes in mid-May then completely disappeared from the news; potentially a vaccine will be ready in September – that is, if in July they have positive results from the clinical trials.

Many school districts have not made decisions on how they will move forward because state guidelines seem impossible to follow. With all this cacophony of information, what are we to think?

After three months, many of us have finally gotten used to the new normal – leaving the house in masks, keeping distance, talking on screens, long phone calls to stay connected and for many of us, hour after hour of Zoom meetings/book clubs/graduations/religious services etc.

I have learned how to “dodge walk” around the neighborhood – a new term I invented for defensive walking to get out of the way. I know how to look around me at all times and hop into the street or onto lawns to avoid careless joggers and others zipping by on bikes, often without masks.

In this new phase, the game has changed. It seems like many people are in denial, wanting to believe it is over. Maybe others have just gotten tired of the restrictions.

This leaves us facing all kinds of decisions. Is it time to meet up with family? Do we go for a manicure? Is it time to go to the dentist – which we had avoided until now even when our teeth hurt?

Something We Need to Acknowledge

Well, I can offer no guidelines. We each have to weigh our priorities, our risks, and make our own choices. My purpose for writing this is to name this new phase and acknowledge the stress it brings, especially for those in our age group.

Whenever I acknowledge or name a situation or feeling, I can make more sense of it. I feel better. I am less likely to beat myself up about it. I share these thoughts with all of you in the Sixty and Me community because just by our age, we more likely fall into that vulnerable category.

You are probably asking some of the same questions. As we move into and through this next phase, my best suggestion to you and myself is to continue to be patient, flexible, compassionate with ourselves and others, and grateful to have arrived at this moment – as uncertain as it may be.

How has it been for you?

Is your state or country getting ready to re-open social life? How does it work where you’re located? What difficulties does reopening pose? Are you ready to get back to a semblance of normalcy? What would that mean to you? Please share your thoughts with us!

The show must go on. At least that’s what the BET Awards believed when it decided not to cancel the 20th year of the award show. But because we’re all not gathering in groups thanks to this global pandemic, the award show went off virtually. And it was a big success. You never really know how these things are going to work but from the BET Awards 2020 makeup, to the outfits, to the performances, the show was still a lot of fun.

Actress and comedienne Amanda Seales hosted the night with multiple outfits and hair changes. At one point, she wore all Black-owned brands and her perfect red lip was from Black-owned beauty brand, The Lip Bar. Her hairstylist, Nicole Newland, noted on Instagram that she walked her client through each hairstyle virtually. It seems many stars did their own hair and makeup at home to continue social distancing protocols. This is a new time and a new time of award show.

Of course, each star had a different approach to the night. Beyoncé pulled off soft glam but still looked red carpet ready. Former First Lady Michelle Obama (we miss her!) went a more natural route with her gorgeous bouncy curls we don’t get to see very often. Tracee Ellis Ross used her own Pattern haircare brand to give her “grown woman hairs” some “cursive extravagance.” She added a pink lip because it wouldn’t be a Tracee Ellis Ross look without it.

Relive some of the most stunning hair and makeup looks of the night.

Source: Instagram

Amanda Seales

The host switched up her looks, even virtually! One of our favorites is this gorgeous red lip and braided updo.

https://twitter.com/yonceir/status/1277436352129310722

Beyoncé

The queen accepted the 2020 Humanitarian Award with a soft glam with a glossy nude lip.

https://twitter.com/BET/status/1277399204374200321?

Marsai Martin and Megan Thee Stallion

The always-chic Marsai Martin looks adorable with wavy blonde hair and silver frames. She presented Megan Thee Stallion with the Best Female Hip-Hop Artist award. Megan looked her usual glam self at home with waist-length waves and a red lip.

https://twitter.com/TraceeEllisRoss/status/1277408525933670401

Tracee Ellis Ross

We can’t stop thinking about this perfect bright pink lip on Tracee Ellis Ross.

Source: Instagram

Lizzo

Lizzo accepted the Best Female R&B/Pop Artist award with natural-looking makeup (another nude glossy lip!) and a sky-high pony.

https://twitter.com/BET/status/1277409770413187073

Jennifer Hudson

One of the most beautiful performances of the evening was from Jenner Hudson. She looked stunning with her locs piled on top of her head. Watch up close and get a view of her dramatic winged liner.

Source: Instagram

Alicia Keys

Keys performed an emotional song about police brutality that had everyone transfixed. She did so wearing a little more makeup than we’re used to seeing from her, as well as geometrically patterned hair.

https://twitter.com/keezuswalks/status/1277427114892054528

Michelle Obama

The former first lady wore her natural curls while presenting the award to Beyoncé.

https://twitter.com/BET/status/1277424030186901505

Chloe x Halle

The duo dropped two songs while wearing half-up hairstyles and sharp eyeliner.