50 is Fabulous!!!

For those of you that don’t know, yesterday was my 50th Birthday and I am currently doing a bucket list trip to Lapland in the Arctic Circle to see the Northern Lights. As I write this, I am thrilled to enter a new decade, but it wasn’t always that way.

Earlier this year I was absolutely freaking out over turning 50. It just made absolutely no sense to me and I could not wrap that number around my head.

So I did what I tell you all to do; I let myself have months and months of tantrums and freak-outs. I didn’t judge them or myself, I just let myself melt down and resist the hell out of it. And then at a certain point, I was over that, and I made a brand new decision – that 50 would be fabulous!

Once that happened, a phrase came to me, “If not now, when?” To say that phrase changed everything for me would be an understatement; it truly was transformative.

Here’s why: I am a procrastinator, always have been. I was the kid reading the summer reading books the evening before school started in September, or pulling all nighters in college to get my papers done. I am easily distracted, I’ll admit it. But something about that phrase gave me pause.

Suddenly, after meditating, when glancing at that phrase, I do the visualizing I kept meaning to do. Those stomach exercises that I always felt would benefit my posture, I do them. And the myriad of little things I tend to put off, I do those too. That phrase brought me into the now in ways that nothing else had, and made me realize that in order to create the future I wanted, I needed to participate more fully in my present.

I still need to read that phrase everyday so I have it across from me where I work and meditate. And oddly, it gives me comfort- a total procrastinator finding comfort in no longer putting things off?, wow.

While it’s only been maybe 5 months of this, it is definitely my new motto and certainly the way I am choosing to enter a fabulous new decade.

So, here’s to the now, and here’s to writing new rules for aging. Yes, my 50s are gonna be fabulous!