Geri Brin, a journalist, author, and former publishing executive, is the founder of the website Fab Over Fifty, which launches February 18, 2010 as "the go-to site for women of style and substance over 50."
When grandparents.com asked me to write a column on the theme "New Year, New You," my first thought was: Fab Over Fifty women don't need to start 2010 being positive and confident. WE ALREADY ARE! We're the most self-assured generation of women in the history of women. We've been married and divorced. We've raised children, and now they have children. We're nurturers, entrepreneurs, and caregivers to aging parents. We're sisters, aunts, and cousins. We've worked on teams within corporations and started businesses of our own. We're savvy, stylish, and successful, funny, passionate, and compassionate. We fall, get up, and move on.
Sure, we'd like to lose a few pounds in our rears, firm up our tummies, maybe raise a sagging breast or two. But we're done making New Year's resolutions to exercise more, eat less, and spend wisely. That's for the twenty-something generation.
| Do you need to step out of your comfort zone? |
 |
 |
Yes, it's definitely time 62.7%
I'll have to think about it 7.6%
No, I already step out of it all the time 21.9%
No, thanks; things are great here in my zone 7.9%
| |
|
|
So I'm going to take a different spin on the theme and make one recommendation for 2010:
Step out of your comfort zone. Meryl Streep's character, Jane, did it in the movie
It's Complicated. "I went out of my comfort zone, which I learned isn't all that comforting," she says. But Jane discovers something about herself in the process (see the movie to find out what) and I think we can, too.
Here are a dozen suggestions (perhaps you can try one a month) on how to leave your own CZ, without too much discomfort. You might be surprised at the outcome:
1. Taste a food you vowed you'd never go near. Raw oysters, anyone?
2. Wear a dramatically different lipstick shade, maybe that new red your daughter bought the other day.
3. Slip out of flannels and into silk.
4. Start saying no or yes more often, depending on whichever you're most used to saying now.
5. Try on a chartreuse sweater if everything in your closet is black, or a black sweater if everything in your closet is chartreuse.
6. Attempt to learn one new thing a day for a week about a subject that has never interested you. If you're still not interested after a week, try another subject.
7. Let others help you sometimes, even if you don't need the help.
8. Offer other people some help, even if you know they don't need it.
9. If you've always thought about making the move, let this be the year you go ahead and dye your hair red, blond, or black.
10. Let someone else win the argument, even when you know you're absolutely right.
11. Read a new book from a different genre, or listen to a new style of music. You already know you love biographies and Beethoven. This year, try a mystery or Cole Porter.
12. Turn off your BlackBerry for 15 minutes every day and meditate.
Read columnist Beverly Beckham's take on facing the new year.
Also: Learn why you may want to resolve to speak up for your grandchildren more this year, start volunteering, and take some new approaches to keeping your mind sharp.
Home
;){kind=logo}
