Hello Reader! Do you wish you were more confident? I mean, I’m not alone here, right? Maybe you wish you were confident enough to start a business. Or travel alone. If you’re me, you want to be confident enough to speak in public without turning tomato-red and possibly imploding. (It could happen.) The assumption is always the same: confidence comes first, then action. But how old are we? How much life experience do we have? We already know that's backward—we just conveniently forget it...
11 days ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader! Between the Zoom Wonderfulness Workouts and walking at least a half hour, I can count on being active for at least an hour a day. Subtract eight hours for sleep and I’m left with fifteen hours each day to do…what? A lot of sitting, honestly. I sit while I’m writing this (and in my journal), while working on my laptop, while reading good novels (have you checked out “Yesteryear”?), while enjoying my meals, and while watching tv and YouTube videos about retiring to Greece. It...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Get Stronger After 40 Join The Wonderfulness Community Who Decided Midlife Was Supposed to Be Boring? I’ve written before about how society expects us to shrink with age, to take up less space, and to accept “getting old.” But wait—there’s more… We’re also told that we should become more practical, more predictable, and less interested in adventure. We stop being encouraged to try things simply because they sound fun. Instead we’re congratulated for being sensible. Being sensible and...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Get Stronger After 40 Join The Wonderfulness Community Maybe You Don't Fear Failure as Much as Looking Ridiculous If you ask people why they don't try new things, they'll often say they're afraid of failing. That’s how I would answer, until recently when I realized that I fail all the time. The other day I burned the eggplant into little charred bricks. I frequently forget names—even immediately after hearing them. I’ve started several projects that are now pushed back into corners away from...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Get Stronger After 40 Join The Wonderfulness Community Data Is Useful. Dependency Isn’t. Wearable technology made a pretty irresistible promise: know yourself better. That’s why I bought my Oura ring almost three years ago. I hoped I’d finally be able to figure out what was causing all of the annoying and not-dire symptoms that were mostly summed up by the vague term “fatigue.” And at first, some of the insights were surprisingly eye-opening. I discovered I was getting much less deep sleep...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Get Stronger After 40 Join The Wonderfulness Community Don’t Mistake What You Have Been Doing for What You Can Do "I've never been athletic." "I'm not disciplined." "I'm not one of those women who likes exercise." I've heard versions of these for years. Let me be honest—I’ve said versions of them, as well. Usually they're offered as explanations, but they act more like conclusions. The statements become labels, perhaps even our personal brand. Apparently some women are naturally active,...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Get Stronger After 40 Join The Wonderfulness Community “Listening to Your Body” Doesn’t Mean Letting It Off the Hook “Listen to your body” started as good advice. For a long time, many of us were encouraged to override every signal our bodies sent. Our culture urged us to push harder, wear exhaustion like a badge of honor, and walk it off when it hurt. We were told that soreness was weakness leaving the body. If you weren't suffering, apparently you weren't really trying. So “listen to your...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Get Stronger After 40 Join The Wonderfulness Community Your Workouts Are Teaching You Something More Important Than Strength Show of hands: Who wants to become rigid, closed off, resistant, fragile, predictable, or smaller versions of themselves? Okay. Now who wants to be comfortable all the time? Sorry. If you don’t want the first one, then you can’t have the second one—because humans adapt brilliantly. Unfortunately, we don't just adapt to challenge—we adapt to comfort too. In other words,...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Get Stronger After 40 Join The Wonderfulness Community Congratulations. You've Been Successfully Outsourced. By the time a woman is past forty, she’s tried at least 283 different things that are supposed to help improve her health. Okay, I completely made that number up, but it sounds feasible. Between programs, supplements, challenges, meal plans, morning routines, special equipment, color-coded accountability charts, and trackers that politely inform you that you’re even failing at...
2 months ago • 2 min read