This week I turn 50. My golden jubilee birthday signifies that I am half a century old. To celebrate, here are 50 things I now know to be true.
- Curiosity equals lasting contentment.
- I am never as right as I think I am.
- Don’t let the noise of your mind drown out the whispers of your heart.
- The moment has three parts: the moment, my experience of the moment, and the story I tell myself about my experience of the moment. It’s the story that gets me into trouble.
- Forgive people – and yourself – more easily. Grudges make you small and mean.
- Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ~Mary Oliver
- Never check a bag. You need far less stuff than you think.
- Yoga just might be the perfect movement practice. It strengthens your bones and muscles and improves the range of motion in every joint. It helps you chill out and builds a brain that defaults more easily to compassion and gratitude.
- (Try to) worry only about what you can control.
- Being on time is respectful.
- Surround yourself with people who are interested and interesting.
- Be a better listener.
- Go to bed early.
- Don’t discount the power of just starting. Momentum builds naturally. You can’t steer a parked car.
- Carve out time for silence every day.
- A perfect glimmer happens every winter, when the sun streams through the studio window and warms your skin after days of bleak, gray drizzle. Linger in that sunbeam. Chase it around the floor all day.
- The love and joy you receive from your pets outweigh the destruction to your house. The cats will scratch the furniture. The dogs will get the rugs muddy and chew holes in your socks. No amount of vacuuming will ever keep up with the shedding.
- Compliment and thank strangers. Tell the secretary at the car dealership what a pleasure she was to deal with. She doesn’t hear it enough. Tell your waiter you love his haircut. He doesn’t hear that enough either.
- Who you are is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
- A good decluttering purge is magic for a bad mood.
- Your black cashmere turtleneck is timeless. Never get rid of it. (see footnote*)
- Set your phone down and look up more often. Clouds have so many good things to say.
- Take off your habit goggles as often as possible to experience the mundane and taken-for-granted with new awareness.
- Eat more protein.
- Normalize talking about mental health.
- The moment before complete surrender is when I grip the hardest.
- Asking for the help I need is a strength.
- You don’t need more clothes. Work on getting out of debt.
- Make your partner laugh.
- Loud laughter and soft rain are the two best sounds in the world.
- Less Netflix, more reading.
- Go outside every day, no matter the weather.
- Beauty feeds your soul. Linger in the glimmers.
- You cannot find stability by looking for stability. You find it by settling into instability.
- You cannot practice detachment. You can only show our mind the suffering that attachment creates.
- Expect miracles and they show up more often.
- No one wins by my playing small.
- A little Botox goes a long way. But a little makes a huge difference.
- I will not say yes when my heart says no. ~ Courtney Carver
- Have a financial goal that you work towards every month.
- Order the pasta. Your worth is not directly tied to your waist circumference. And there is no number on a scale worth a life without fresh pasta. Nourishment goes beyond the food we put into our body.
- Be the woman that celebrates women. We cannot burn the patriarchy down by using other women as kindling.**
- Wear more sunscreen. While I will never regret the time I spent in the sun, I regret not wearing more sunscreen.
- Sometimes we have to get out of alignment with the world to get into alignment with our soul.
- My brain produces around 700 new neurons every day. Use them wisely.
- I can be a thermometer or thermostat. A thermometer reacts to everything around it. With a thermostat, the environment shifts to support it.
- Be willing to be changed by everyone you meet.
- Money doesn’t make you happy, but not having enough money can make you very unhappy. You need enough money to afford your house, car, reading habit, occasional travel, and insurance.
- Our bodies are incredibly wise. Listen to the whispers of your body. Because you know. You always know.
- Growing old is a privilege.
*Since writing this, I sadly find the need to edit #19 to Your black cashmere turtleneck is timeless. Never loan it to your daughter because she will put it in the washing machine. Cashmere. In the washing machine. It will be ruined and you will question your parenting skills and also want to murder your stupid offspring.
**Exceptions to this rule include but are not necessarily limited to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.
