40 Lessons for my 40th Birthday (Part 4 of 4)
Darlene is celebrating the end of her 3rd decade sharing 40 lessons along the way.
To share my 40th birthday I’ve compiled a list of 40 lessons from the decade, and some of the stories behind them. While I don’t wish I’d learned them sooner, I think all lessons come in their time, I want to hold them close to me as I enter this next phase of life: middle-age.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
This is the last installment, on my 40th birthday. 🥳
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40 Lessons for 40 Years (31 - 40)
In no particular order.
31. Take the time for helpful, deliberate meaning-making.
Meaning-making is either passive or deliberate, but it's always happening. Your mind is interpreting your reality and writing stories about what it all means.
The person who cuts you off is a jerk.
The boss who gives you extra work is selfish.
The person who mindlessly took their trauma out on you is heartless.
Many of those stories are automatic and unexamined (and at least one of those examples silly and vapid). Deliberate meaning-making takes time, vulnerability, and bravery. It means opening up to the objective realities of a situation and crafting subjective interpretations that align with a more authentic version of yourself.
Taking the time to step back, examine the story, and find opportunities for more helpful interpretation can be a pathway to healing. At least it has been for me.
32. You can 100% be in love with someone and take a bit of space. It doesn't have to mean anything.
I am a very intense person.
My partner is also an intense person.
There was a time in my life I thought real love meant you couldn’t get enough of one another. That happily ever after meant you were working through all the ups and downs of life together in real time.
Learning how to regulate my emotions and process them has taught me the value of alone time. Of unplugging with intentionality to learn what I’m feeling, make deliberate meaning (see #31), and then decide how I want to apply that knowledge.
Figuring that out was hard.
Communicating when I needed to do that was also hard.
But man, did it level up our connection game!
Making space to process within yourself empowers you to choose what you bring into your most intimate relationships.
33. Meditation, yoga, and fitness all have lessons far beyond the cushion, mat, or gym.
I figured this out in my 20s recovering from the onset of my condition. The struggle of my 30s was learning how to communicate this in an authentic, effective way.
Fortunately, research is catching up to what many athletes, yogis, dancers, and other movement practitioners have known for millennia.
Your body has lessons that aren’t communicated through language. Find a modality you like and will do consistently, then let it teach you about yourself.
34. Mindless consumption eventually consumes you.
Food. Alcohol. Weed. People. Sex. The internet.
Sure, hedonism can be fun. It can be a great catharsis.
Until it’s not anymore.
Know the line. Know the signs you’re tiptoeing up on that line. Have a way to back yourself off of that line and trust the people that love you when they say you’re crossing it.
35. Make the time for fun.
Once I got into grad school I was committed to making the most of the opportunity I’d been given. I listened to the Hamilton soundtrack a lot and my mantra for about 18 months was “I am not throwing away my shot.” This lined up conveniently with lockdown and gave me the opportunity to shut out the world and start building the foundations of what I’m now doing.
The cost was a rhythm of work and life that started to seep the color out of my reality. I was studying and writing about wellbeing and happiness, but work became my identity. The Coach Darlene persona began to eclipse my authentic self.
Fortunately, my dear friends Jenn Lee and Karla, the human essences of levity and fun, have interceded multiple times.
All work and no play makes one miserable & miserable to be around.
36. Do more than just have fun.
Related to #34, after the burnout and the divorce but before the revelations that lead to grad school, as long as my bills were paid it felt like little mattered. Chaining together a few months of that and life started to feel meaningless and pointless.
One of the philosophical foundations of Positive Psychology is Aristotle’s concept of Eudaimonia. There’s no direct translation to English, but the ancient Greek philosopher described it as the “highest good”. It’s the happiness that comes from your values, meaning, purpose, and living a good life. In the word’s of students from Plato’s Academy:
"The good composed of all goods; an ability which suffices for living well; perfection in respect of virtue; resources sufficient for a living creature."
Balance fun with meaning. Joy with calling. Levity with purpose. Both matter. Both build the resilience to find grace in an otherwise challenging world.
37. Roots over shoots.
Stealing this one directly from Arthur Brooks at The Atlantic. Culturally we’re taught its our achievements that make us happy. That striving for promotions and accolades, or followers and likes, will give us the validation that we as human beings crave. (What Brooks calls “shoots” like that what sprouts on a plant in the spring.)
In reality, that’s completely false. Yes, it’s nice to be “successful”; but research in wellbeing is pretty clear that what makes us happy in the end are deep and positive relationships, living in alignment with our values, and having meaningful ways to contribute to the things that matter in our lives. (What Brooks calls our roots).
We're in a society that glorifies outcomes, but it's the depth of our roots that actually makes us happy.
38. Returning home will bring up a lot.
You can handle a lot.
To Brooks’ point, in 2021 after living away for nearly 20 years, I returned to my home town. I said I’d never, ever come back. As a certified weirdo I didn’t feel I belonged here. Yet, my family has lived in this rural area for many generations. There are deep roots here. Some beautiful and validating. Some warped and painful.
In the 2 years since moving home I’ve helped give care to those in my family that need it. I’ve reconnected with old friends and lost relatives. I’ve reconciled some very old traumas, creating the opportunity to go even deeper into myself and learn, learn, learn.
You can go home. But you’ll want to be ready to be face to face with versions of yourself that you have to be ready to meet, embrace, and reintegrate.
39. There's more than one purpose to your life.
The most wildly woo woo, spiritual thing that has ever happened to me was the day after the Concrete Floor Incident (see #1). During a meditation in class I felt the sense of myself fall away and like a door opened in the back of my mind. I saw a vision of the next 5 years of my life, and with it a message: “I am a conduit”.
I thought for many years that was my purpose being downloaded to me by the Universe.
Now I’ve come to believe that is one of many purposes. The things I’m here to learn, do, and contribute.
The more I study meaning, purpose, and calling the more I believe it’s not any one thing. We’re here at Earth School to learn whatever lessons are in store for us. Purpose grows as we use our gifts to pursue our interests and apply all we learn along the way. Complete a lesson, learn new things, apply it forward.
The show is not my purpose (yet, it is).
This page is not my purpose (yet, it is).
Being a wife is not my purpose (yet, it is).
Because purpose is not one thing. It’s many things woven into a life, and just like life it keeps evolving.
Purpose will evolve as you do. Some small scale and intimate. Some ripple bigger than you'd ever thought.
40. Being yourself isn't a set of thoughts.
It's a set of feelings.
I’ve spent the decade of my 30s doing a lot and teaching a lot of things that could fall under “Self Help” while desperately fighting to be labelled that myself.
(Want to hear me go on a very regulated rant? Call me a “life coach”.)
One of the biggest challenges of working with embodiment and Positive Psychology is the most effective ways of teaching those skills isn’t videos or blog posts. It’s not online courses or text books.
It’s experiences.
Wellbeing isn’t an intellectual exercise.
Meaningful self care isn’t a checklist of morning habits.
Flourishing isn’t learning through journaling.
You’re not doing all this healing so you can suffer better.
You’re healing so you can THRIVE.
That thriving is a feeling in your nervous system, not a mindset.
I believe, to my very soul, that each of us has an authentic, integrated, regulated self who can teach you how to live a life that actually works for you. That you can’t think your way into being that person. You can’t conform your way into being that person.
We’re all weirdos in our own way.
Letting yourself be who you authentically are, and making space for others’ authentic selves, is how we build a world where we can all actually thrive.
Thank you.
For indulging this list this week.
For supporting a platform where I get to be myself and do this work.
For sharing it when it’s meaningful to you.
But most of all for doing the work in yourself to make this world better for us all.
The last years have been difficult and I’ve often felt I had to be a particular version of myself to be successful in this space. To be an example of living in wellbeing.
What I’ve learned in the last year from interacting with all of you has been I’m more impactful in my vulnerability. The more I share about my trauma, illness, and the work of growing and healing the more I hear that it’s helping you. The more I pop the bubble of The Perfect Coach Darlene, the more it resonates.
Thank you for teaching me that.
Thank you for supporting this work.
Here I am, 40.
Let’s see what you’ve got in store for me.
Belatedly I've just got round to reading these 4 pieces. So insightful. Thanks for being so vulnerable and sharing your learning journey, Darlene.
thanks for sharing these deeply personal, digestible lessons Darlene! your vulnerability & wisdom makes the world a better place :)