When I saw this little saying on Pinterest I was all “That’s me!” Then sadder and quieter, “That. Is. Me.”

Here’s an honest list of the things I’m guilty of telling myself I’m not.

I’m not…

pretty enough, as pretty as her, any combination of statements about pretty where the conclusion is, I’m not.
smart enough
bold enough to… (fill in the blank)
that girl
the kind of person who wins things
the kind of person who works out regularly
good at math
smart enough
good enough
popular enough
worthy
young enough

Any of these sound familiar? Unfortunately, I could go on and on. And on.

So this little image I saw on Pinterest has challenged me to acknowledge the truth about the internal dialogue I entertain and begin a new conversation.  I’ve spent an awful lot of my life convincing myself of who I’m not, instead of reminding myself of who I am.

Among other things, I know that I am…

a child of God, made in his image
smart
kind
funny
loving
a good cook
creative

…and now the things that are true, but much harder for me to say out loud (or out blogged), but I will say them, over and over, until I finally believe it. All day. Every day.

pretty
sexy
worthy of being loved
a great catch for the right fisherman
brave
confident
strong
powerful

Whew…

What are some of the the things you tell yourself you aren’t? And now, who are you really? Not the sum of all the things you aren’t, but all the things you are? Share your thoughts in the comment section or on WAF’s Facebook page.  And, I’m just getting in on this Pinterest craze, so join me over there too and add your visual goods to the WAF Pinterest Boards.

It’s a good thing too, because in the first month of the new year, my workload has unexpectedly increased, a couple of unanticipated projects have come my way and…my laptop crashed. Died. Destroyed. Failed. So there go my big plans for January, 2012 …except I hadn’t really made any. For once.

Instead, I’d been making small changes to get rid of bad habits and replace them with good ones. Every single day – not declaring intention, but instead heading in the direction of the place I want to be.  And no, (ok, very few) goals. In his guest post on Zen Habits, Jeff Goins wrote about what to do instead of setting goals…

There is an alternative to setting goals that will bring you closer to the life you want. Focus on a few practices you can enjoy doing on a regular basis. The trick here is consistency. These four helped me:

• Get up early. When the world wakes up, distractions abound. If you are going to focus on creating a new life for yourself, you’ll need to find the time. The best way to do this is to work while others are sleeping. At first, I didn’t like waking up before the sun, but eventually my body adjusted and I began looking forward to the solitude.
• Over-commit. The adage “under-promise and over-deliver” is a farce. It only propagates the status quo. Real difference-makers push boundaries. They test, prod, and poke until something gives. You can do this, too, by saying “yes” to more things than you’re comfortable with. Learn to stretch yourself. You might be surprised by what you’re actually capable of. Your confidence will grow, too.
• Talk to strangers. Relationships are what make the world go round. This is true for your career, personal well-being, and inner life. When you meet new people, you make connections that can lead to all kinds of future breakthroughs. Even when it’s uncomfortable, reach out and introduce yourself to new people. The worst they can say is “no.” Fortunately, many won’t.
• Practice generosity. Give away your time, money, services, and ideas. When you do this, you will get a lot more than you give. People will learn to trust you, and if you really help them, they will tell others about you. This will build your reputation, and you will have more friends than you know what to do with. And as the saying goes, what goes around really does come around.

You can read Jeff Goins’ entire post here. How much closer are you to giving up the life you’ve planned for the life that’s waiting for you? Share your thoughts in the comment section or on our Facebook page.

Editor’s Note: I wrote this early in 2011, a little past the halfway mark of my 40th year. It’s about how differently the 40 I’d planned was turning out to be. I’m 41 now, and a lot of this is still true. Maybe it will serve as a reminder that life isn’t in the planning, it’s in the living.

A funny thing happened on the way through 40 – nothing went the way I planned. Well almost nothing. But considering the previous 20 years, it really shouldn’t have come as a big surprise. One of my favorite quotes is by Joseph Campbell and it’s “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” So you’d think that by now I’d get it, yet I keep designing these elaborate plans only to have them morph into something they were probably supposed to be anyway.

Let’s see, my plan to grow the biggest-bad-ass-est blog to ever hit the blogosphere (and retire at the age of 40.5 from the tremendous rush of advertisers and sponsorships,) morphed into a nice, quiet little blog which gets pretty good notice, decent traffic and most importantly has a following of phenomenal woman (and men) of all ages, from all over the world.

My plan to be fit at 40 was sidelined by a ridiculously unbelievable but very real knee injury, and it’s taken longer to get back to the place I was before I tripped on the way to my printer (it’s funny now, but not so much when I heard my knee pop.)

Let’s see, there was also the plan NOT to go back to work but to make WAF my employer – the WAF being my employer thing worked out exactly as planned, the part about it paying me…not so much. Not yet anyway. But the ideas are still coming, the desire to hear and share stories remains, and hundreds of thousands of women turn 40 everyday – my audience, thankfully, isn’t going anywhere.

I also planned to return to Italy sometime during my 40th year, and while the year’s not over, as of today, the chances of that happening are slim to none. But like women turning 40, Italy isn’t going anywhere, and God willing I’ll get there one day soon.

So the funny thing that happened on my way through 40 is that I realized that sometimes the things we plan evolve while we’re in the middle of them, and we can go with the flow and evolve with them, or we can moan about the things that didn’t happen. I choose to appreciate the 600 plus Facebook followers the site now has and the truly awesome women I’ve met along the way. I‘ve chosen to use the knee injury as an opportunity to focus even more on a healthier lifestyle, not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally as well…and to be more careful when retrieving items from my printer. As for the job, I’m writing and editing and doing things I enjoy doing every day, for a company that’s making a real difference.  I’m slowly learning to move the life I’ve planned over to the side to make room for the life that’s waiting for me.

Update: That Italy trip, it’s happening in 2012 – God willing and the creek don’t rise

The Half Step That Will Change Your Life – by Leo Babauta

You’d be surprised to know how many emails I get where people are stuck in their lives.

They’re broke, or unmotivated, or in a job they hate, or they can’t find their passion, or they can’t get motivated to get healthy.

And they don’t know where to start.

It hurts to read these emails. It brings back to life the pain I lived through not too many years ago, when I too was stuck.

I know the feeling of despair when you are unhappy with your life and don’t know how to change. When you’ve tried lots of changes, but couldn’t find the discipline to make them stick. When you feel crappy about yourself because you know you should get off your butt and start improving your life, but you’d rather put it off for another day.

Problems go away when you ignore them, right?

I also know that there is really only one way out of this mire of despair.

It’s to take an action, no matter how tiny.

You don’t need to fix everything in your life right now. You don’t even need to fix one thing.

You just need to do one little, miniscule, almost nothing thing.

Make a list. Go outside and take a walk. Get rid of some of your junk food. Clear off your kitchen table. Cancel something tomorrow so you can make time to create something, no matter how small.

Don’t do all of these. Do one. Or half of one, or one thousandth. It doesn’t matter how small — the smaller, the better.

Take that first step. Celebrate that first step. Love the step, not the destination. That step, even the motion of taking the first foot off the ground and moving it forward — that’s everything.

That’s the truth, and you’ll not read it in many self-help books: put every microparticle of your existence into that half step, and be nothing but that half step, and love it with all you have … and your life has changed.

With this half step, everything is different. You haven’t achieved any goals … but you’ve moved. You haven’t created something amazing … and yet, more than ever before, you have.

You’ve created beauty and joy and movement where none existed before, where previously only constriction and paralysis and confusion lived. You have changed the world.

The First Habit

Choose one little habit to add joy to your life. Just one, and tiny is miraculous.

It can be writing or painting or making music for 2 minutes a day. It can be a ridiculously easy walk or jog or enjoying a bowl of fruit. It can be 2 minutes of meditation or reflecting in a journal.

Enjoy the hell out of it.

Create this one habit, and you have a success. This is a foundation, a first step, to build on.

Then you can do a second, and a third, but you can’t do those without a first.

Don’t change your entire life. Just change this one little thing.

You’d be amazed how much that matters. I was.

What’s one little thing  you can change in your life today? Will you take that half step?

Read Leo Babaut’s original post on half stepping here.

Barry’s list inspired me to write my own…

I feel like I’ve truly learned something when the lesson stops repeating itself. I stop dating that guy. I don’t like the way I feel around certain people so I change the nature of those relationships and never experience those bad feelings again. I stop apologizing for doing/being who I am or am not. You get the point.

I encourage you to create your own list – you’ll be surprised to discover all the lessons you’ve learned, and the ones you haven’t. That list is next – the harder one, the one requiring complete honesty with myself when I admit that there are some lessons in life I still haven’t grasped, even in 40 years, and ask myself if I ever will.

But today, here’s to what I have learned…

1. If you’re doing it right – living your life, being true to your beliefs, everybody shouldn’t like you. Some people won’t like you. That’s a good thing.
2. Sometimes if you really don’t feel like doing something, don’t. Some call it gut, others intuition, but whatever it is, it’s dead on.
3. Even if you’ve fought to hold onto something – an idea, a person, a relationship – sometimes it’s just time to let it go.
4. The one thing you want the most in life will be the thing you have to work the hardest to get/feel/achieve – and you’ll have to work at it for the rest of your life.
5. It is ok to forgive and remember. If you forget, what’s to stop it from happening again?
6. Your yesses and your nos, verbal or otherwise, teach people how to treat you.
7. When it comes to relationships don’t ignore the subtle signs you see at the beginning – that is who he/she is.
8. There are worse things in life than being corny/geeky/nerdy – ask Bill Gates.
9. The pressure to “fit in” never really goes away, what changes is your desire to.
10. Money really can’t buy happiness, but not having it can significantly contribute to sadness.

What have you learned in 40 years? Share yours in the comment section or on our Facebook fan page.

Editor’s Note:

Thanks to Facebook’s weekly reminder of your friends’ birthdays, more attention is being paid to natal anniversaries than ever. Adults particularly tend to celebrate landmark birthdays that end in a round figure. The cost for such parties, however, can easily get out of hand. In the spirit of creating a back-to-basics bash, I offer the following nine tips.

1. Discount Decorations
Dollar stores are your go-to place for party decorations. You’ll save up to 70-percent off party store prices and the selection is equally nice. Dollar stores also are a great place to finding inexpensive wrapping paper and reusable gift bags.

2. E-invitations
Facebook is one of the best ways to create a simple invitation using the “Event” function, but not everyone uses the social network. Several websites, including evite.com and SmileBox.com, offer free electronic invitations that do the trick while providing RSVP feedback.

3. Serve Finger Food
A four-course meal takes a lot of time, skill and money. Instead, keep guests happy with simple hors’ doeuvres created in your kitchen. You’ll want to avoid the pre-packaged appetizers from your grocery or specialty store as they’ll cost you 40 percent to 60 percent more than homemade.

4. Borrow Your Finery
Stepping out in a new outfit or dress shirt will surely impress your guests, but it’ll do little for your budget. Borrow something to wear from a friend for that special birthday-outfit feeling. If that’s not possible, check out second-hand stores for a bit of frugal frippery.

5. Booze as Gifts
Instead of bringing gifts to the event, ask guests to contribute booze for the celebration. Alcohol is the most expensive element of any adult party, especially if you’ve invited a rowdy crowd.

6. Skip the Cake
Store-bought cakes are often expensive and don’t always taste the best. Instead, serve simple cupcakes, baked goods, ice cream or — horrors — make your own cake from a box mix.

7. Select a Strategic Time Slot
Plan the event for directly after lunch or dinner, when guests will already have eaten and won’t expect much in the way of food.

8. Register with CardAvenue.com
Take the burden off friends by having the birthday gal or guy register for gift cards at CardAvenue.com. They can buy discount gift cards for the recipients favorite stores or restaurants and they’ll never know the cards were purchased at less than face value.

9. Don’t Stress Out
You’re less likely to buy extras at the last minute if you don’t sweat the small stuff. Your role is to be a good hostess and you can’t do that with frayed nerves.

Andrea Woroch is a consumer and money-saving expert for Kinoli Inc. As a nationally recognized media source, Andrea has been featured on NBC Today Show, FOX & Friends, MSNBC, ShopSmart Magazine, Kiplinger Personal Finance, CNNMoney and many more.

“It used to be that turning 40 symbolized the end of youth. Now it’s the beginning of something better.”  

That’s how The Today Show’s recent segment on Generation Xers turning 40 began. Here’s a look at the segment…

Seems like health, fitness and renewed goals are common among women turning 40. But what’s also common and somewhat less talked about are the new pressures associated with turning 40. Women, like the ones featured in the segment, are competing in marathons, working on being in the best mental and physical shape of their lives, kicking ass and taking names. The Jennifer Anistons and Halle Berry’s of the world show us that you can look and feel fabulous at 40.

But, what if you’re not one of those women? Not yet anyway.

Has the “40 is over-the-hill” mantra been replaced by an image of a 21st century “super-40 woman” replete with magnificent body, burgeoning career and unparalleled fabulousness? Because if it is, I am so not living up to it and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.

Despite the recent media push to feel otherwise, there are times when 40 just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.There are times when I feel like I should be farther along in the pursuit of my goals. There are times – like this past weekend when I was wedged so tight into an airplane seat that I saw Jesus and the angels – when I kick myself for not being fitter and healthier at 40.  40 has not been all reawakening, Zen moments and enlightenment. This is real life so it can’t be. And real life is no less real at 40 than at any other age.

I’m not alone – I get emails from women who feel the same way. Those who aren’t over the moon about turning 40 but don’t want to express that (sometimes unpopular) sentiment on Facebook or in post comments.  But that’s the reality of turning 40 – and that’s what this project is all about – it even says it in the tag line - “Life.Love. Reality. In our fortieth year.”  Don’t be afraid to express your true feelings about 40 – your 40 is your own and no one should dictate how you “should” feel about it.

So, what’s your 40 looking like? Share in the comment section and on our Facebook fan page.

(Turning 40 shirt design by warningsignshirts: Zazzle.com)

Editor’s Note: I first wrote  the following post in September 2009. I’d only been blogging for a little while and The Women at Forty Project was brand new. One of the things I was struggling with was regret. I regretted some of the choices I’d made that lead me to where I was in my life in September 2009 and I’d regretted many of my mistakes. Fast-forward to 2011 and I’m still (shockingly to no one at all) making mistakes. So when a WAF community member posted this as her status updated last week, “There is such joy in turning a mistake into something beautiful” I looked up this old blog post and used it to remind myself why mistakes aren’t always such a bad thing…

I remember when correcting mistakes wasn’t as easy as tapping a couple of keys on a keyboard.  Today, hitting the backspace or delete key can save the day by pulling you over before you shoot off that irate email you’ll regret later, create a seemingly flawless page of text and undo that thing you just did that’s the exact opposite of what you meant to do.

If you’re a member of the Women at Forty club, then you remember correcting tape (vaguely?), white out and trashcans full of crumpled paper. You remember a time when you’d have to think things over a hundred times before committing them to paper once. As a rule, we spent more time developing and preparing everything prior to putting it out there because it was hard to correct our mistakes and harder still to live with them once they’d been made.

I think the same holds true in other areas of our lives as well. Relationships, career choices, family. As we get older, we tend to make choices and decisions at a different pace. Today, women in their twenties start dating and break up in a matter of weeks, all by text message, tweets or status updates.  They’re making major decisions and mistakes quicker than ever.

When it comes to mistakes, I’ve made some big ones (one was 6’2 ”.) And none of them, sadly, came with a backspace button or delete key. I had to live through the consequences of making every one of my bad decisions – big and small. And while it’s really Zen to say we wouldn’t change a thing about our past, given the opportunity I would gladly delete and backspace some of mine with a vengeance.  6’2″ for one, burning my eyebrows off in a tragic but comical barbeque grill lighting fiasco for another, and remind me to tell you about “The Catfish” someday. In fact, I’d much rather have learned many of my life lessons the easy way, less intent on trying to thwart the “I told you so’s” and more interested in paying attention to the voices of the women who’d been there, done that, and saw the likely outcome from a mile away.

I’m grateful for backspace and delete keys. God knows I use them both every day.  But while even I would call a do-over on some of my stupider younger woman moves, I think that just as in writing, overusing the backspace key can stifle us, causing us to constantly edit and over-analyze ourselves – preventing us from living full, authentic lives, mistakes and all.

Would you call a do-over if you could?

Editor’s note: A couple of weeks ago I asked readers what advice they’d give to today’s 20 and 30 somethings. I got several great responses including advice about having kids and creating and living your bucket list. For one reader in particular, the question sparked an internal dialogue that ended with a letter to her twenty-something self.  In today’s post, Clare shares her letter with the WAF community…

Dear Twenty-something me:

So you’re a junior in college and your head’s screwed on backwards.  Boyfriend troubles, GREs loom on next year, and you don’t have a summer job lined up yet.  Mom and Dad still take care of you: you’re living under their roof when not in school, you have their health-care, they feed and clothe you.  Your auto insurance is only $5.00, which they pay for too.  They bought a car for you when the ol’ big Bertha Wagon died.  You have no idea what monthly payments are.

Lucky you.

Here’s what you have to look forward to:
Getting back together with your boyfriend.  Again.
Breaking up with your boyfriend.  Again.
Summer jobs.
Next year, your last.  Friends from freshman year are room-mates.
Getting back together with your boyfriend.  Again.
Graduation.
Another summer job.
Graduate School.

But even that’s so easy compared to what you have to deal with now.  Are you taking all this for granted, or is it really hard on you?  Do you take it all in stride?

Because wait, there’s more:
Fast-forward to 1994.  You’re 22 going on 23 now.  You’ve been in graduate school for nearly a year.  And you hate it.
You just got engaged to your boyfriend (the one you broke up with twice).
You just found out that your father had a massive silent heart attack, is having triple-bypass surgery, has kidney stones that won’t pass (you can’t make this stuff up!) and by the way he has terminal cancer.
So you plan the wedding.  It’ll be a reunion for your dad, the ceremony is inconsequential to what really matters, and you don’t care.

1995.  April.  Wedding bells.  August.  Birthday.  August-day-after-birthday: father passes away.  You’ve been in a new state, with a new husband, and new family, for four months.  And a new job.  What else can be thrown at you?

Were you expecting this?  Ever?  Making $6.50 an hour full-time, supporting your husband who’s getting his Associates Degree?

Fast-forward again to 2002.  You’re 30 now, going on 31.  Seven years later…new job, again.  Been living in this new town for five years and you love it.  “Half-Backed” to New York, they say.  This is supposed to be the “Seven Year Itch” for marriages.  No time.  You spend ten days in the hospital wondering what’s wrong with you.

Surprise!  You have Lupus!  Nothing you’ve done before this was hard.

Why is it that hind-sight is twenty-twenty?

You truck on.  You learn from the doctors, you adjust your life.  You go on medical leave for four months, grudgingly.  That new job, that coveted job, is gone.  You’re in the house for the entire summer.  What the hell are you going to do with yourself?  Introspection.  Tend to tomatoes.  No hard work, no lifting, no stress.

2011.  Nine years now you’ve had lupus.  You lost the house due to medical reasons (bankruptcies should be lenient for people who have medical problems.  Just sayin’). You’ve moved three times since you got sick – Myrtle Beach, SC, and then back to the place you started when you got married, and back to where you started when you got lupus.  What have you learned?

1.  I have learned that I am me and I have always been me despite the setbacks.  Am I stronger because I lost my father four months after I got married?  Probably.  Am I stronger because there was no “seven year itch” in my marriage due to the lupus?  Probably.  Is my marriage stronger?  Absolutely.

2.  I have learned that my husband is my best friend.  Even though we broke up a few times when I was in college.  When all you have is your husband in a town where you have no family, it kind of gets that way.  The few friends – actual friends – you make become your family.  You make new friends and you lose old ones.  Things you thought you had in common, not so much.  New things you have in common with your new friends: it’s like you’re long lost siblings.

3.  I have learned that nothing truly matters more than my health.  I still don’t exercise like I’m supposed to, but I’m healthier than I’ve been since I got Lupus, which, by the way, you can learn about by going to www.lupus.org.  For me to go into what it is…is another story.

4.  I live for the quality of life.  Not for the quantity of things.

5.  And on a funny note:  I’ll be 40 on August 1.  I still look twenty-something.  Must be the genes.

What would your letter to your twenty-something self say? Share in the comment section or on our Facebook Fan Page.

For weeks now I’ve been seriously rethinking this obsession I have with food and my weight. Specifically it’s occurred to me that for almost all of the past decade, my obsession with controlling (unsuccessfully I might add) what I eat and don’t eat has centered primarily on weight loss. This focus on weight and not on health has caused me to become unhealthier. Yo-yo dieting, pre-packaged diet meals, low carb, low fat, sugarless…you get the idea. My quest to lose weight devolved into me eating man made substitutes for food and came at the expense of eating food the way it was intended to be eaten.

It’s time for a change, a real change – an “I’m about to turn forty so I’ve got to start taking this seriously” change. I’ve been heading in this direction for years now, but eating for health was far down on the list, somewhere behind carb and calorie counting and fat monitoring. And while I’ve never been a lover of junk food and have always preferred fresh fruits and vegetables over sugary desserts – when it comes to food, the choices I make every day are made unconsciously, out of habit, and with very little regard to health and where my food is coming from.

In a nutshell (pun intended), clean eating is consuming food in its most natural state or as close to it as possible. It means eliminating as much processed foods from your diet as possible, and it means being conscious of the source of your food and the impact its production has on the environment. Militaristic clean eaters might have an issue with my definition, but that’s the definition that sums it up for me.  The Gracious Pantry has a great resource page about clean eating that you can access here. The turning point for me came when I watched the documentary Food, Inc. I’d absolutely recommend it to anyone curious about the source of their food – you will not be the same after watching it.

A year after test-driving my clean eating experiment I can say that I’ve adopted clean eating as a way of life.  A way of life differs from a diet in that it’s not something you ever “get off of.” So, on the (now increasingly rare) occasions that I don’t eat clean I, 1) enjoy it a lot less and 2) don’t belittle myself or consider it a diet catastrophe.  It’s not just a healthier way to eat, it’s a healthier way to think. Really, it’s a return to to the way my parents and grandparents used to cook and eat, before advertising and big business began convincing people that they had it all wrong.

Although I haven’t stuck to the $25 budget, I have been more conscientious about how much I purchase and what I’m paying for things, and in the long run that’s helped my overall budget.

So, what’s left is the weight loss. The good news is, the number on the scale is lower. The bad news is, not by much. As a child and teen I struggled with compulsive and emotional eating, and as a 41 year old woman I still do.  Like any habit/compulsion/addiction, it’s been a hard one to shake. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor apparently 41 years. Thankfully, I am a work in progress, not regress, and as long as I’m able, I’ll approach each day with the determination to become a healthier version of the person I was the day before. Anyone care to join me?

Grace