Self Discovery Archives · Page 20 of 22

My Four Best Qualities: What are Yours?

September 5, 2017

This is going to be an article all about me. Well, that sounds like something you really want to read, right? You get to read about Paula Harer. It is your lucky day! But, it is part of an exercise designed to help you become aware of your strengths, be able to verbalize them and make changes if you don’t like what that list looks like. One of the best qualities most women have is reinvention.

I was feeling like I needed a little pat on the back for myself so I started thinking about the things that I am proud of about myself: I started to think of what is good about me. It turned out to be a very positive internal challenge, more about what I feel I bring to the table for my friends, my family and the people around me than self-praise. What I didn’t include were the basics like she showers daily, always wears deodorant or knows how to drive a car. Here is my list:

Humor

Brilliance doesn’t get in my way. Glamour is not an issue for me. But, I am funny. I don’t know if that includes the way I look, I kind of hope not, but I am funny. My Dad was funny. I think that is where it started. My Uncle is funny. And now, my kids are funny. I am an only child so I know that when I was young the best way to make friends in a group of strangers is to say something funny. If you continue to be funny they will put you in charge so you need to know when to stop! I am pretty self-deprecating, which, in my opinion, is the best way to be. Much better to laugh at my own expense than to laugh at others’.

Generosity

I am very generous. I can honestly say that I get much more excited about gifts that I am handing our than gifts that I am receiving. Being generous is a much more selfish attribute than you might think. Take, for example, the fact that I knit hats for friends’ children or grandchildren. I knit the hat, which allows me to spend time with that friend in my mind every time I knit a stitch. I give the hat to the friends who ooh and ahh over it because it is, of course, super cute. Then, I collect the compliments. I am the star of that. Tah-Dah! I get so excited when I find the perfect gift. I am also generous with donations, with my time and with any other resources a that I have. It makes me feel good, so everybody wins.

Style

I’ve got it. One of my best qualities is style and I got it from my Mom who was way a more stylish and beautiful and talented than I can ever hope to be, so I come by it honestly. She could make a hospital gown look good! And, we didn’t have a lot of money. I can remember watching her sewing a dress for her high school reunion that I still remember. It had beads around the neckline and was very risqué to my 6-year-old self because the neckline was nowhere near the neck! Robin’s egg blue with black beading. Stunning, and homemade. I inherited that from her. I like to say that on my headstone it will read, “Here lies Paula. She could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” While Style has nothing to do with money when I was young and poor people seemed to think I was way more successful monetarily and it had to be because I was able to make something from the bargain basement look expensive. When I started my life over two years ago I moved into a one room loft and everything that I owned had to go into that loft. The only furniture that I bought was two sleeper sofas so my adult children could all stay with me at one time. My Mom’s style was never more evident and necessary than when I had to make that place our family home. I did and it is.

Resilience

My final of the four best qualities is resilience. I am, as I feel most women are, a resilient woman. At 61 years-old I am newly single and reinventing myself, as I have had to do a number of times before. I am like those blow-up clown punching bags that have sand in the bottom: when I get punched down I hit the ground and bounce back up. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a little wear and tear on me. It doesn’t mean that I am not held together with a little duck tape. But I do pop back up every time.

Now it’s your turn. What are your four best qualities? If you don’t know them, ask your friends. I would love to see them in the comments and no need to feel embarrassed because mine are right here for all the world to see. Brag about yourself a little. Next time, I will talk about some ideas for how to make changes if you don’t not like your list of best qualities.

Trust Yourself and Your Life Will Fall Into Place

August 1, 2017

Ask yourself these questions:

Do you trust yourself? Do you trust your instincts? Do you listen to what your mind and your heart are telling you or, do you argue with that little voice in your head? Or even tell that voice to shut-up?

When I was a young woman I had good instincts and made good decisions. I think I knew myself well. But, that changed.

For the past three decades or more I stopped listening to myself. I stopped listening because I knew that little voice was right about my marriage, my husband, my career moves, about everything. Throughout my married life, I had to shut down my instincts because listening to them meant breaking up my children’s family (I guess that came from the motherly instinct to hold the family together). I can sit here and name a hundred times when I had to convince myself about one story while I knew the truth was another. Consequently, so many of my decisions were poor at best and disastrous on the bottom end. My personality was different. Some of the people I spent time with would not be a match today. I had no self-confidence, although no one who knew me would have believed that. And, I didn’t like myself for many of the last thirty years, not because I thought I was bad, just not me. In short, I was not myself because I wasn’t listening to my heart and my mind and following that path.

I need to put a disclaimer here for my children: every second that I spent with them and on them was my only real joy. That was real, that was authentic, that was the place where I listened to my instincts. They were and are my North Star.

Today, I am the happiest that I think I have been in a long time. Of course, I am disappointed that I am soon to be divorced, but I can only use that as a springboard for the new life I want to lead. Since the day I knew that my marriage was finally over, I have been listening to the voice in my head and the decisions I have made have all been the right ones. Everything just fell into place once I got myself back. My hair even started growing back (yes, I had lost a lot of hair and I didn’t start with much). I now listen to my heart and my head and they haven’t steered me wrong yet.

Write Your Own Life Script

July 6, 2017

If you follow Starting Over at Sixty you know that I write a lot about being purposeful in planning your life. It really doesn’t matter how old you are, but as I age I am aware of having a limited time on this earth. No gloom and doom, just fact. In my head, I have 30 more good years (fingers crossed, even more, and I hope not less). When I was young I had an infinite amount of life ahead, and maybe that’s the way it should be for young moms working in and outside the home. It was too hard to think of anything more than the day ahead. Now, all I have to do is look in the mirror to be faced with the truth. So, I am trying to be much more deliberate about what I want my life to look like and how I want to spend my time. I feel an inner urgency that I never felt when I was younger. And, coming from an unhappy marriage to a very sad divorce, I am ready for lots of fun. In fact, Fun is my middle name! It is time for me to write my own life script.

Visualize the Life You Want

My first step has been to visualize what I want my life to resemble. I don’t want to always be running from one place to the next and from one task to the next. But, I do want to be busy and active and vital. That means building a lifestyle that allows me to be just that. For me, intentionally including more workouts in my week is important: they make me feel better and give me more energy. I schedule workout classes and sessions with my trainer and give them the same importance I would any other appointment. If I do it during the day, then I get showered and changed and back to my routine afterward. If I can’t get it in during the day after work is fine. I used to give myself a “treat” by not exercising during the weekend: no more. At least one of the days I get a workout in and feel better for it.

Know Yourself

From my 30+ year marriage, I know this: you can never find true north when you are living a life that is contrary to everything you know to be right. And it only took me 30 years?! I know myself and always did, but now I listen to that voice inside instead of trying to change it. I follow my heart as much as I always did but now I try to be smarter about it. I am much more in tune with my inner compass. I know who I am and I listen to my inner conversation rather than trying to change it, which allows me to live a happier life.

My Script

If I were to write a script for myself for a normal week it would look like this:

I write posts each week and work on StartingOveratSixty.com, working on the social media, submitting posts for other sites like Huffington Post and Sixty & Me and corresponding with followers accordingly. I also write content for a web design firm as an intern and help with some client acquisition. I work out about an hour most days. I usually have lunch and/or dinner with friends. I take my dog to the dog park about once a week. I see a movie and do a little shopping. I like to read and I like to knit while binge-watching something trashy. I sing in a citywide choir that allows me to also sing with women in the state prison. I love that and it fills my heart.

Now, if I write a script for the year I will also include:

My children live across the country so I like to visit them whenever I can. Writing for Starting Over at Sixty allows me to do that from anywhere and that was purposeful. It is important to me to travel with my children at least once a year so we can all be together on an adventure, whether it is in the U.S. or International. So, if I were traveling for a total of three months every year that would be about perfect. I don’t like to go longer than three months without seeing any one of them.

Finally, in order to be here for more than 30 years, I have to clean up my diet. that is the part of the script where the sad music comes in. Nothing more to say about that.

Now, Add the Surprise Ending

I have in my head some additions to the script that would be more than the cherry on top, they would be the edible gold leaf! I will keep those to myself for now, but if any of them were to come true, I would post a boomerang of me tap dancing! One might include me being on Jimmy Fallon, promoting my appearance on SNL with my husband, Dwayne Johnson. Edible Gold Leaf!

I would love to hear from you on what your script looks like. Do you want to make changes to it? do you want to re-write it? The most important thing is that you have a script that you get excited about today and every day so you can have your own happy ending. Stay away from mine!

My Five Fingers of Focus: Getting More Out of Life

May 31, 2017

Five years ago, if you had asked me what my life was going to look like in ten or fifteen years I would have said that it would be full of family, of travel with my husband, of grandchildren and maybe of a vacation home so we could all be together more often. I looked forward to a life that was full of love and family. I still look forward to that life, but as I start my life over in my sixties, while I still want all of that, the picture is much different. And, I realize that in order for me to live a happy healthy life on my own, I have to change the focus.

I think and write about focus often. When I was a wife and mother and employee and volunteer, focus was the last thing on my mind. That kind of buckshot way of managing my life did not serve me well then and does not serve me well now. I can now focus on the goals that will make me happy, and more content with my life on my own. Here is what I do to stay focused. If you like it, use it. If you like it, but it doesn’t suit your life, make the changes that will this system to work for you. I call this my Five Fingers of Focus (that is the only way I can remember it!).

The Five Fingers of Focus (a time management tool for women starting over)

Mind (Learning)

I want to learn something new every week, I really do. That’s the goal and it can be anything, but it has to be a conscious decision. Right now I am reading a book on organization. Next, I want to learn something IT related so I plan to use Lynda (an online learning site) and find a course that interests me. While it may sound like kind of a loose goal, it isn’t. It’s very intentional. It makes me feel good when I complete something and I am able to use some of the knowledge. We all feel pride when we “master” something new.

Body (Exercise, Food, Health)

This is a never ending saga for me. Here is the difference in my new approach: I am intentional about my body and I think it is showing. I am not crash dieting or binge eating (OK, that is a lie). I am just being more mindful about my health and I have no size or number goals. My trainer today used the word consistent and I think he is exactly right. When I was younger and in the tornado of everyday life in a bad marriage, I had no consistency: I was grasping at anything that I thought would make me happy, eating nothing then eating everything then washing it down with a cocktail. I am crossing my fingers that my new found consistency continues, but if I fall off here and there, so be it. I am getting right back on the consistency train.

Main Project (Or Work)

This sounds like fluff doesn’t it? Let’s say Starting Over at Sixty is my project right now. I am fully focused on it and learning how I can make it better (feel free to chime in). That means I have joined more than one organization that is related to this new world. It means I am learning how to increase my readers and better my writing. And, it means getting help in the areas in which I know nothing. Focusing on this project also incorporates the learning piece of the fingers.

Creative (Hobbies)

Here are the things I like to do: read, knit, sew, watch TV, sing, go to movies, crochet, ride my bike, go to comedy shows, travel, needlepoint, go to concerts. I am not the only one who has a million interests, I know. But, I have tried to focus on a few at a time so I don’t have piles everywhere around me of yarn or fabric or five books with bookmarks at the end of the first chapter, never to see the light of day again. For instance, right now, because my children all have friends in their later twenties and early thirties having babies at an alarming rate, I am a baby hat knitting machine! I took some time off knitting though, to make some pillows for my son and daughter-in-law’s condo, and now I am back on hat duty. It ‘s so rewarding for me to make something for my children or their friends, but I have to keep the amount that I can do under control or it will end up being a nightmare rather than a joy. So what has changed for me is that I am very deliberate about what I am working on. If not, I have too many unfinished projects around me and that, in itself, weighs me down.

Philanthropy (Volunteer)

How many times have you said yes to too many requests and found yourself miserable because you were doing tasks or attending meetings and your heart just wasn’t in it? I used to do it all the time. I was married to a man who seemed to like me better when he thought I was popular (I kid you not). So I said yes to the opening of a garage door if I was invited! Not anymore. I have two organizations to which I give my time: one is a citywide choir (Harmony Project that you see in the photo) that allows me to work with a choir in a women’s prison facility and one is a group that helps older adults age in place and remain in their homes and neighborhoods. Those are where my time and energy goes. I do change up my financial support but those two charities are at the top of the list.

So, here is the take away from the Five Fingers approach that I use: it covers the most important areas of life so you can make room for the fun, without sacrificing fulfillment, contentment and happiness. That’s it. You will be amazed at how much you accomplish and how much time you have for other activities. Easy, Peasy.

As You Start Over Know Your Lane

March 5, 2017

I like to try new things. I always have. Especially if it is something that I am not good at. I was afraid of motorcycles so I took the classes. Why they passed me I will never know. When I went to buy a motorcycle I knew there was no way that I could drive it home. I had to have it delivered. They told me I was not the first person to do that, thank heavens. I bought all the motorcycle clothes and my fancy helmet and drove it maybe 20 miles over 2 years and donated it to Goodwill. I was still scared of it. I guess I thought my husband would get interested in it and join me. I saw us on long drives in the Hocking Hills on a beautiful Sunday. He saw me doing that while he did anything else. Lesson learned.

I had never had one accounting class and I felt that I was lacking because of it. I took accounting, online. About chapter 3 I figured out why I hadn’t studied accounting. I hated it. When I looked at the pages in the book my eyes crossed. I kept trying to get interested and I just couldn’t do it. I am all about girls in math and science, but sadly, no matter how cool I think it is, I am not one of them. Lesson learned.

So when it became clear that my husband found women who were nothing like me more attractive, I decided to be someone else. I decided that I could own restaurants. Well, I could, that was true, but I hated every day of it and I was terrible at it. In my mind I saw it going so differently and I thought it might bring us closer together. I thought he might become more interested in me. I thought we might be able to solve problems together, go over ideas together. You know, like a real husband and wife. I could not have been more wrong. Lesson learned.

I can name a hundred other times when I wanted to be good at something and was sure that I could do it, only to find that I couldn’t make myself good at it. I could not force myself to learn it or practice it or use it. I don’t think that I am not smart enough, or coordinated enough or that I don’t have a strong skill set. I am just better at some things than I am at others, and as I start my life over, I don’t think I have to change that. When I was married I was trying to be everything that I wasn’t, because clearly, I wasn’t enough. So I tried to be everything and was so miserable.

Now, I know my lane. That doesn’t mean I always have to stay in my lane, but I am becoming crystal clear on what I am good at, what I am interested in and what I like to spend my time doing. I used to say yes to everything. I was on committees that I dreaded. I was in organizations that were not of any interest, just to be in them. I did things socially that I really didn’t enjoy. Now I am done with all of that. Done done done. No more. Every day isn’t a picnic, but I know my lane. I know who I am. And, lots of things that I like to do are nerdy, but that’s me.

Get to know who you are. Get to know your lane. Again, it doesn’t mean you can’t try new things, but it does mean that you will be more mindful when you do. And, you will be more content and more at peace.

Self Discovery