I have heard people say “life begins at 40” but I truly
didn’t believe it until I reached that milestone last year. Allow me to share
with you the best year of my life so far…
I’m going to pretend to be Sophia from The Golden Girls
right now and say, “Picture it, July 2018”…I was only 5 months into being 40
years old and I was depressed, anxious, overweight, and desperate to make a
positive change in my life. I was literally consumed with worry every single
day; mostly I was obsessed with the fact that my life was half over. Turning 40
had flipped a switch in my brain and it made me feel lost and completely out of
control. Yes, I was the epitome of the clichéd mid-life crisis.
I remember one day as I was getting ready for work, I looked
over at the bookshelf in my bedroom and was struck with a devastating and
terrifying thought: I will never get to read all of the books in the
world! I started freaking out and immediately dove into a panic spiral: I have wasted half of my life and I could
have been reading – now I have missed my chance to read all of the books! I am 40 and I’ll be lucky if I can even read all
of the books on my personal “to read” list before I die, never mind anything
else. Think of all the amazing literature I will never have a chance to see
because I won’t have time to read it all! It’s so unfair! I need more time!
And so on and so on…
Crazy, right? I mean, no person can read all of the books in the world, nor would
they want to. I don’t even want to.
But the realization that suddenly I couldn’t
possibly read all of the books in the world set me off. It doesn’t take a
genius to figure out that this particular example of panic was really about my
mortality. Like I said, turning 40 flipped a switch in me, and it was not
pretty.
After the weird book panic attack, I knew I needed to make a
change and fast. If my life was truly “half over” as I kept telling myself, I
certainly did not want to live the second half of it in a constant state of
panic and despair. That was just unacceptable
to me.
In a world where you have almost no control over anything,
it’s important to find the little things you know you do have control over and focus on those. For me, it was my health. To be clear, I
understand I don’t have FULL control over my health (as I’m aware that a person
can do everything right and still get sick), but I also know there are
proactive actions one can take to reduce sickness and to prolong life. At that
point in time there were specific aspects of my own health that I knew needed
to change and they were definitely within my span of control, so I got working
on them. Over the span of 7 months I slowly and steadily removed alcohol, sugar, and flour from my diet. I reduced my
caffeine intake and started taking vitamins every single day. I also started
incorporating regular exercise into my routine and I began practicing yoga and
meditation.
I didn’t just make physical changes to my life, I worked on
my attitude and my perspective as well. I stopped telling myself that my life is half
over because that is a terribly negative way to look at things. Instead I am
trying to be more mindful by focusing on what’s directly in front of me,
soaking in every experience (both good and bad). When worry starts to creep in about the
frailty of life, I acknowledge it and then gently remind myself that I am a
vibrant, healthy, strong person who is going to do her best to live the longest
and best life possible. It might sound silly, but it totally works.
Over time, I started noticing that I felt less and less panicked
and those weird freak outs about my mortality became less and less frequent. In fact,
I started feeling happy most of the time. Two days ago I realized that I was
smiling to myself as I was driving into work and I caught myself thinking,
“Wow, I genuinely feel really good today”. It wasn’t a particularly special
day, just a regular Monday, but I still felt elated. It was nice.
This past year has been the best one in my life so far
because I feel like I finally figured out who I am – and best of all, I am
happy with what I discovered. I spent a lot of time as a teenager and in early
adulthood trying to please others – my parents, my friends, my teachers, my
bosses, etc. I wanted the world to love me and accept me and because of this I felt empty most
of the time. Now I am just focusing on loving and accepting myself and no
offense, to hell with everyone else. J
As long as I have me, I will be okay. I also stopped trying to mold myself into the person I think others want me to be.Sometimes that means I am anxious or grumpy or silly or quiet. But now what you see is what you get with me, no more trying to be the best version of me for everyone; now I am allowing myself to just be...me.
When I first turned 40 last year I was afraid of what the
next half of my life would be like. Now I am excited for it. I have a knowledge
and peace of mind that I could never have achieved in my 20s or even my 30s. I
needed all of that time leading up to now – it was time well spent (even if I
didn’t read all of the books in the
world, ha ha!) figuring out who I am and what I want from life. And for me
personally, making important health changes, like abstaining from drinking alcohol,
made a huge positive impact in my journey. It gave me clarity and peace. It
might not be the right path for others, but it totally was the right path for
me.
A lot can happen in a year. I am grateful for my cliché mid-life
crisis because it forced me to really look at my life and make some important
changes. When I turned 41 in February of this year I didn’t fall into a funk or
spin out into a panic. I ate some birthday cake and congratulated myself on
another amazing year being me.
