40 Lessons for my 40th Birthday (Part 3 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:
Tomorrow will be the last installment, on my 40th birthday. 🥳
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40 Lessons for 40 Years (21 - 30)
In no particular order.
21. Trust your gut
When I was 7 years old my mother began a relationship with a man that seemed like a white knight; or at least he thought he was. He was now The Man in our household, and I was unfortunately in a culture where that kind of thing is a thing. He was not a white knight - he was the bad guy.
Being raised in his household taught me to suppress a lot of stress, anger, resentment, and with them intuition. Relearning to listen to my nervous system has been a long and vital process.
Evolution gave you a sensor for danger, safety, and a whole host of other signals to your world. It’s your autonomic nervous system and you can learn to listen to it, even if you grew up being told not to.
22. Sleep makes you smarter
Working in a large, corporate gym and having a session quota often meant getting up at 4:30a, starting work at 6a or 7a, working until 8p or 9p, getting home late, and not sleeping enough. Years into my career I’d developed enough of a client base that I could start sleeping normally again ~ and the clarity of thought, emotional regulation, and creativity that returned felt like remembering who I was.
Your mind and body acclimate to the most consistent stimulus you give it. You’ll forget what you’re capable of as you consistently deprive your mind and body of what it needs and give it less than it deserves.
Regardless of what your goals are getting enough sleep is paramount to succeeding at them. Especially if the goal is happiness and wellbeing.
23. If certain foods make any part of you react negatively, don't eat them. Your body is telling you something is wrong
I had horrendous IBS as a teenager. At 15 I was on two oral steroids for when I had an attack and had been to the ER multiple times when my parents found me doubled over, clutching my abdomen.
In my early 30s I read books about nutrition and digestive health, did multiple elimination diets, and essentially “cured” this chronic spasmatic disorder. Along with a resolution of the digestive symptoms I stopped having eczema outbreaks, random joint inflammation, and my mood was better.
The body is a complex, integrated set of systems. What you eat has a major impact on all the body’s functions. Yes, it’s inconvenient and not fun at times - but being really sick is far, far worse.
24. Your gut microbiome makes neurotransmitters. Nurture the colony inside you ~ because it is you
There’s an axiom in Positive Psychology that the absence of the bad isn’t the same as the presence of the good. #23 is about removing the bad; but there’s more to it.
The microbes that live inside your gut are, on paper, separate organisms. You’ve probably heard the statistic about there being more microbes than cells in your body, but it’s more like 1 to 1, which is still cool! Personally, I think of it like the Whitman quote: “I am large, I contain multitudes”. We are so inter-related with our world that there is a world living inside us.
That world inside us lives on the fiber in our diet, dies by the stressors we experience, and supports our thriving by producing a host of things we need. The mucus that coats the lining of the gut, the transport molecules that allow us to absorb nutrients, and yes the serotonin we need to feel happy.
25. Move even more than you think you need to
Before the pandemic I routinely got 21,000+ steps per day just living my life.
During lockdown, while researching my Master’s thesis, I read The Joy of Movement by Kelly McGonigal and it confirmed what I’d been thinking and saying for a long time, but didn’t yet have the evidence to back up: moving makes us happier.
Earlier this year Columbia University published their movement snacks study showing movement a little bit sprinkled throughout the day is better than all in one shot at the gym.
Having a body that hurts most of the time, it’s easy for me to let myself sink into the couch. It’s easy to skip the walks. It’s easy to give up the foam roller. But the consequences are really awful. The easy thing is often not the helpful or right thing.
However much movement you think you need, you can benefit from just a bit more.
26. It's okay to miss someone. You can just hold that feeling and let it go
Last November I traveled to speak quite a bit. The first few weeks it was to groups I had established relationships with, meeting old friends along the way. The last stop was a conference center in Orlando. I knew few people, none of whom were staying in my hotel which was an island in the middle of the vast conference center parking lots.
Each night I’d go back to my room alone and long for home, counting down the hours until I could go. I’d never let myself feel that kind of lonely before, and it completely changed my view on longing.
We’re taught to focus on how to resolve or distance ourselves from negative and unpleasant emotions. To let them go. But emotions are information. Learning to hold them and find the lesson has been invaluable.
27. It's not my job to fix everything
Maybe it’s having divorce parents.
Maybe it’s having an abusive step parent.
Maybe it’s being “a woman”.
For a long time I thought it was my responsibility to figure out the solution to everyone’s suffering and every broken thing.
It’s not.
28. You have more time than you think
So much time is spent fighting who we really are and then numbing out or detaching from the reality of that fight. Time wasted pleasing other people by being who they want us to be. Stuck in systems of lives that don’t actually work for us and wasting our gifts on things that don’t matter to us.
Then, we’re anxious about what might happen next. What next thing will go wrong and rob us of even more. Without boundaries on our time and energy (see #27) we give so much of ourselves away to ideas, projects, and people that don’t deserve it.
Put down the phone. Shut off the TV. Have the conversation about boundaries and start saying ‘no’. A strong “No” makes space for a more meaningful “Yes”.
29. You have less time than you think
40 feels like realizing the ride is already half over.
If it’s half way over it’s going too fast. I have way more I want to do.
30. Don't waste energy being jealous of amazing people. Try to learn from them instead
I learned this meeting my friend Jodi Wellman (hi Jodi!). She is, in a word, Incredible. Beautiful, smart, funny, interesting, unimposing. Just a lovely human being. Knowing her, I observed in myself an old pattern ~ born of the jealousy of being raised poor and unpopular.
For much of my life when I meet a rockstar like Jodi (or see them on my social media feeds) I’d think to myself “I can do that. What’s so special about them? I should have that <insert notoriety here>”. It’s ugly to admit, but it’s true.
Not Jodi.
Jodi’s kindness and warmth and unassuming nature is so present that there is no room for jealousy. In the mirror of her friendship I saw a better potential in myself, which I’m still seeking to embody. What I learned was the incredible waste of energy that jealousy was creating; and that what was underneath it was a feeling I was not enough.
One more gift from Jodi: she unequivocally makes me feel I am enough.
A gift I try to pass on to others as often as I can.
Thanks Jodi.
Stay tuned…
Wednesday (my 40th birthday): 31 - 40
Then we’ll return to regularly scheduled content the rest of the month of December.