Hilaria Baldwin loves her “skincare routine,” her hair, her nails, and discovering new brands and products. She can walk through the practical rituals that keep her grounded, from washing her face before dawn to squeezing in a daily run before the demands of a household with seven children come calling.
But ask her what beauty means now, and her answer has very little to do with aesthetics.
“I really do think that true beauty is just being a good person,” she says.
That philosophy is one reason Baldwin feels particularly at home stepping into the spotlight as host of the 2026 Gurus Beauty Awards. For her, the event represents far more than celebrating products or trends. It’s about honoring wellness, positivity, and the people who help others feel better inside and out.
“I’m super honored and super excited,” Baldwin says. “Anything that Derek touches is glamorous and fun and supportive and positive, and those are all the energies that I like to surround myself with.”
These days, she’s become increasingly intentional about the company she keeps.
“I’m now in my 40s, and I think that I’ve more recently started just getting more choosy about the people that I want to exchange energies with,” she explains.
Trusting Yourself
That phrase—exchange energies—comes up often in Baldwin’s worldview. It’s part wellness philosophy, part life experience, and part survival strategy. Because while wellness has become a booming industry filled with experts, influencers, and endless advice, Baldwin believes the most important authority in the room is often the one people overlook: themselves.
When asked about being labeled a wellness guru, she immediately pushes back.
“I feel like that is a title that I can’t own,” she says with a laugh.
The reason traces back to her years teaching yoga long before she entered the public eye.
Baldwin recalls watching instructors who seemed more interested in authority than education. It inspired her to develop a very different approach with her own students.
“Nobody is more expert over their body,” she says.
She remembers encouraging students to challenge the idea that a teacher always knows best.
“I’m going to lead a very good class, but I want you to listen to your body and choose the experience that you’re going to have.”
For Hilaria, the highest goal of teaching is not creating followers—it’s creating independence.
“Your students should outgrow you,” she says. “Teaching without ego is not needing to be needed, but rather sharing what has been shared with you. And there’s no one way to do it,” she says of health and wellness. “It’s actually really simple, it’s just not always easy.”
Wellness Is Simple, Not Easy
That distinction may be the most honest wellness advice anyone can offer.
The fundamentals, she explains, are rarely mysterious. Exercise. Sleep. Nourishing food.
Movement. Self-awareness. The challenge isn’t understanding them—it’s consistently practicing them amid the realities of life.
“Our traumas and our emotions and our jobs and our things that we have to do” often get in the way, she says.
For Hilaria, wellness has never been a straight line. In fact, some of her most meaningful lessons emerged from struggle.
“I had an eating disorder as a 25-year-old,” she reveals. Yoga and reconnecting with her body became a turning point. It helped her develop a healthier relationship with food and with herself.
Today, that relationship is rooted in balance, not restriction.
“I want to nurture my body with good things, but I also want to not be afraid of things that I used to be afraid of before, like bread and dessert.”
The difference is profound.
“I realized that that’s not going to make me any less,” she says. “I can eat as much for pleasure as I can for health.”
Mental Health, Healing, and Connection
That same evolution has shaped her emotional wellness routine.
Being thrust into public life, she says, was “extraordinarily underprepared” territory.
“That was not emotional wellness, for sure.”
Over time, however, she began to understand something important about insecurity, criticism, and the pressure many women carry.
“Most people are for other people,” she says. “Most people are good. You just have to remember that sometimes the bad can feel very loud and very big and scary.”
The realization became a cornerstone of her emotional healing.
“There are so many women who feel exactly the same way,” she says. “That pain is universal.”
For Baldwin, acknowledging that shared experience is transformative.
“Once we acknowledge that pain is universal, and we stop being sort of silent and thinking it’s only us, and we can open up about it, it’s a very beautiful, cathartic thing.”
In other words, beauty isn’t perfection. Beauty is connection.
Beauty is recognizing that everyone is navigating some version of the same struggle.
Beauty is refusing to shrink yourself.
“None of us came here to act small,” she says.
The Importance of Self-Care
It’s also one reason Baldwin has become increasingly vocal about self-care—not the Instagram version, but the deeper practice of developing a relationship with yourself.
“I’m very comfortable with my identity as a wife and my identity as a mother,” she says. “But am I comfortable with my identity as me?”
That question, she believes, is one many women are never encouraged to ask.
For years, she worried that prioritizing herself would appear selfish.
Now she sees it differently.
“You have to put your oxygen mask on first in so many ways,” she says.
Motherhood and Finding Balance
The lesson carries particular weight coming from a woman raising seven children.
Asked how she balances everything, Baldwin bursts out laughing, “I don’t.”
Many things, she admits, simply don’t get done every day.
“The list of things that need to get done is always very, very long.”
Her standard for success is surprisingly simple.
“As long as everybody is healthy and happy at the end of the day, then it’s okay.”
The dishes can wait. The laundry can wait. Another day will come.
It’s wisdom she has learned from parents who are further along in the journey.
“I’m the student,” Hilaria says. “I listen to parents who are older than me, and their experience, and I want to learn from them.”
The Rituals That Keep Her Grounded
Her own daily routine reflects that practical mindset.
Among her non-negotiables is running.
“I run every day,” she says.
The run isn’t about chasing perfection or punishing herself. It’s about creating space.
For roughly 30 minutes each morning, before the chaos begins, Baldwin runs, breathes, and thinks.
“It’s a little bit of a meditation time for me.”
When she returns home, she says, “My nervous system is more ready to go.”
Then comes the reality of family life.
Kids. Dogs. Breakfast. Schedules. And coffee.
“Coffee is definitely part of my beauty routine,” she says.
Beauty Is How You Make People Feel
Perhaps the most compelling thing about Baldwin’s definition of beauty is how deeply it centers humanity.
Beauty is being present, it’s kindness, it’s making people feel seen.
“I want people to enjoy spending time with me,” she says. “I want to have people feel that I care about them.”
That, she believes, matters more than any cosmetic trend ever could.
“Beauty is also being a good energy for other people to be around.”
It’s a message informed not only by success but also by hardship. During difficult periods in her life, Baldwin says she was lifted by strong women who showed up for her.
“They knew how to be there for somebody who’s going through a hard time.”
Now she hopes to do the same for others.
“Hurt people hurt people,” she says. “But hurt people can also heal people. And I am choosing to be the latter.”
That choice may be her most powerful beauty secret of all.
As she prepares to host the 2026 Gurus Beauty Awards, Baldwin’s message feels remarkably clear: Beauty is not a product. It is not perfection. It is not the impossible standard society often demands.
Beauty is taking care of your mental health, living a healthy lifestyle, finding balance, being yourself, and, perhaps most importantly, beauty is how you make other people feel.
“Beauty comes from not only loving yourself,” Baldwin says, “but how you love others.”
More than anything, Hilaria Baldwin hopes to leave people feeling seen, supported, and valued. It is a philosophy that guides her approach to motherhood, wellness, friendship, and life itself.
As she steps into her role as host of the 2026 Gurus Beauty Awards, her message remains beautifully simple: true beauty is not found in perfection, but in how we care for ourselves, how we show up for others, and how we choose to move through the world.
