In this blog-post, we’re focusing on why it’s good for you and never too late to: 1) take up new physical activities, 2) engage in new social activities and 3) pursue new intellectual challenges that can make a positive difference in your well-being – for the short-run and in the years ahead.

If you happen to be job-hunting over the age of 40, after many years of being firmly entrenched in the same company, industry or location,  you’re probably feeling that’s a  DARE-ing project in and of itself – which it is.  In that case, PLANT something new that takes care of your innermost self and boosts your confidence and sense of control while you’re grappling with change.   PLANT something that improves your physical health, ramps up your intellectual power and unleashes beneficial brain chemicals that contribute to your well-being.  Here are just a few of the reasons experts advise you should PLANT new SEEDS now, especially if you’re dealing with added stress.

1. If Your Sneakers Are Moldy, Your Brain Will Get Oldie. Before last year, the only weight I ever pushed around came from the sound of my own loud mouth.  A year later, and dozens of pounds lost, I can attest that exercise saved my life, improved my well-being and enhanced my intellectual focus.  Here’s why it would work for you:

• Dr. John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, says in his book, Brain Rules, that “a lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary.” Medina asserts that exercisers outperform couch potatoes in all sorts of brain metrics tests, such as those that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called fluid-intelligence tasks – which refers to how you put to use the information that you learn.  One of the biggest surprises is that you don’t even have to exercise that long or hard to reap these benefits!  Did you know that even walking several times a week will benefit your brain? The ideal is doing two to three bouts of aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes  – which can reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s by 60%!

• Exercise improves your mood because it stimulates the release of three “feel good” chemicals in your brain. Called neurotransmitters, their medical names are serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.  By stimulating the release of these hormones, exercise has been proven to help lower depression and anxiety.  So, get out there and walk off the stress, or go for a bike ride, or – if you’re not the outdoorsy type – put on some music and dance like a fool in your own home.

2. If the only laugh lines you have are from watching late-night “Seinfeld” reruns on TBS, you need to get some real friends. When was the last time you had a conversation with a friend who made you laugh? More importantly, when was the last time you actually felt you could cry with a good friend who wouldn’t judge you?  If you don’t have friends like that, maybe now’s the time to consider going beyond your current circle of friends (or all those online LinkedIn “connections.” Would you ever want any of them to see you with streaked mascara?  I didn’t think so.)   Additional tips:

• Be proactive about cultivating, engaging and caring about people you really want as friends, and weed out the ones who don’t feel that way about you. In this day and age it’s too easy to rationalize that there are many other things we need to be doing work- and family- wise rather than spending time with friends.  Yet, connections with true friends and family members are what matters to our well-being.

• According to psychoanalyst, educator and author, Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., positive social interactions are a powerful mechanism for controlling stress. As women talk with other women about worrisome occurrences in their lives, their stress levels fall because oxytocin (the maternal friendship and bonding hormone) levels rise.  Even during non-stressful times, having solid friendships has been proven to improve health and extend one’s lifespan.

• If you’ve been a mom for most of your adult life and your circle of friends is tied to your children, now might be the perfect time to expand your circle of friends. Getting involved in organizations other than your children’s school or church expands your perspectives.

3. Unchain Your Brain, Train Against the Drain. Learning a new language, researching the competition before starting a company or learning to play a musical instrument are all exercises to unchain your brain.  To PLANT or SEED something new, challenging and fulfilling while waiting for the next big thing to take SEED, it’s a good idea to engage in an activity that is not related to a work situation or family demand. Following are few reasons why:

• Taking up new intellectual activities stimulates different neural regions and develops new pathways within the brain.  This helps to re-energize the brain against the dreaded “brain-drain” many women complain about in middle age, and helps you see problems in a different light.  As Dr. John Medina writes in Brain Rules, “What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like – it literally rewires it.”

• The more you stimulate the neural regions and pathways, the more adept you become at the new skill or activity you’re learning. It’s that fluid intelligence thing again. One of the other major benefits of taking up new intellectual activities is that it increases your self-confidence that you can, indeed, learn new things.

• There are nine different kinds of intelligence, but most people neglect to explore, let alone develop, those outside their comfort zone. Conversely, we all know of artists, musicians, business-owners and scientists who did their best work after the age of 40, 50 or even 60.  By developing different facets of their intellectual capacity, they surpassed the creativity and productivity of their youth in ways they never would have DARED or imagined earlier in their lives.

Those are just a few of the reasons why PLANTING something new – physically, socially or intellectually – can be beneficial both in the short run and over the long haul, even in times of stress.  Next week, in Go DARE, we’ll provide a list of ideas for what to PLANT or SEED.  There’s no limit to why, what, where and how you can grow by DARE-ing yourself!

Seems there’s less to TREASURE than almost any other year in recent memory.  (Unless your memory is lodged firmly back in the 1920s.)

Well, cheer up and get DARE-Borne! There are so many people, places, and things to TREASURE from 2009, but if you think this is going to be a Hallmark cards/American Greetings moment, think again.  Shit flies, pigs happen, many lie sleepless in their battle.

Here’s my take on why it’s important to DARE TREASURE your life, your career (the one you have, had, or want to have; it’s your experience that counts), and the fact that there are geeky, cheeky scientists who study what constitutes true happiness. 

TREASURE the comic relief provided by those who obviously don’t know or appreciate their TREASURES until someone else enlightens them:

• Tiger “The Cheetah” Woods - pouncing on so many cougars and cobras and chick-lets that it’s hard to fathom how he could keep score on anything else.  For us making less than millions of dollars per year, there are so many reasons to TREASURE one’s existing spouse or significant other, or one’s solitude, if that’s your TREASURE, and none of those reasons have anything to do with multimillion dollar post-nuptial agreements.
• White House social secretary Desiree Rogers – so narcissistic she couldn’t take her eyes off her own reflection in the Potomac swamp long enough to protect the real glitterati she was hired to serve.  TREASURE New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (deliciously DARE-ING over 40), who wrote the most biting, hilarious and dead-on excoriation of the poseurs and “arrivistes” that swarm Washington at any given time in any administration’s tenure.
• Senate Finance chair and Montana Democrat Max Baucus – who nominated his state office director (a.k.a.: chief coat warmer, favorite foot massager, and main martini shaker) for the job of U.S. attorney in Montana.  Obviously the senator took literally his name’s similarity to Bacchus—god of wine, women, and song—while asserting that he was separated from his wife when he began the affair with his staffer.  (Pun intended.)  I worked in D.C. for two long solid and sordid years, long enough to know that there were always far more pelvises grinding than there were noses to the grindstone.  TREASURE the fact that you’re not working in a job that requires you to accompany members of Congress to cocktail parties, take an accurate head count of the “guests,” and then hit them up the next week for thousands of dollars in “support.”

TREASURE the example of these women (strong characters, all of them) who turned the lemons that life hurled their way into rain and dough – building far bigger rainmaking machines than they might have, had their lives been “perfect”:

• Grandma Moses, who began painting in her 70s, after arthritis forced her to give up her career as an embroiderer.  For the next thirty years (yes, that’s 3-0, you read that correctly) until her death at the age of 101, she painted dozens of masterpieces, many of them depicting the rural scenes that grace sentimental holiday cards.  She exhibited all over the world, and her work has sold many times over for thousands and thousands of dollars.
• Mary Kay Ash, who started her eponymous cosmetics company at the age of 45, after being passed over for a promotion in favor of a younger man she had helped train.  Her how-to book for women turned into the business plan for Mary Kay Cosmetics, which might well make your holiday shopping list this year.  In 2008, the company had more than 1.7 million consultants worldwide and sales in excess of $2.2 billion.  Ash died at 85 years old, seven years ago, enjoying for many productive years the TREASURES that her midlife DARE-ing led her to create.
• Meryl Streep, the undisputed leading female actor of our generation, is redefining what is sexy, smart, and DARE-ing in women over 40.  She’s portraying characters who are exuberant, intelligent, and not afraid to stumble in reinventing themselves after a certain age or after adversity hits their lives.  Earlier this year, Streep’s astonishing portrayal of Julia Child—another DARE-ing woman over 40 who did not even publish her first great work until she was 49 years old!—brought tears of joy and recognition to millions of women who saw the movie about Child’s rise (screenplay written by another DARE-ing woman over 40, Nora Ephron).  Now Streep’s starring in “It’s Complicated,” a romantic comedy with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin where her character, a “dumped” divorcee, is so hot, even the commercials might make some men blush.
• Susan Sarandon, another DARE-ing actor who has taken on roles that might make Streep think twice.  In “The Lovely Bones,” the new movie release based on the breakthrough bestseller by Alice Sebold, Sarandon plays a big-haired, chain-smoking, whiskey-toting grandmother coping with the murder of her young granddaughter at the hands of a sexual predator.  Like Streep, Sarandon is not at all afraid to laugh at herself and invite others to laugh even harder.

TREASURE the fact that, in the midst of all the turmoil, trauma, and triviality leeching from the louses, losers, and lechers that generate our yucks (fleeting as they might be this year), there are brilliant economists who are finally focusing on what really makes us happy – besides money, that is.

• The so-called “happiness economists”—Richard Easterlin, Bruno Frey, Richard Layard, and Andrew Oswald, among them—have contributed voluminous research on the so-called “Happiness Index.”   Such an index could become a more reliable measure of a nation’s wealth than GDP or GNP.  If only!
• The bottom line on TREASURES, according to the happiness economists, is this:  After a certain level, money doesn’t really make us happy.  Even the rich and famous agonize over whether it’s wiser to be sexless, reckless, or feckless, and 2009 has proven to be the year when even they don’t seem very happy.

So, yes, your retirement plan exploded faster than that bag of 100-calorie popcorn you left too long in your microwave while you were surfing the Web for your next job.

So what if your 25-year-old son and his newly minted MBA diploma have moved back into the room you had transformed into your gym?  And, true, lemons are still rolling off American assembly lines faster than we can pour lemonade into their gas tanks.

But just look at the dubious TREASURES of the rich and famous: Tiger Woods (more women than ever!), Desiree Rogers (more leopard stilettos and hotshot close-ups than Michelle!), and Max Baucus (old Bacchus never had it so good!).

Do we really want to be like them?  Probably not, and that’s enough to at least make us smile.

Before I decided to spend more than the GNP of a third-world nation to pursue an MBA in my 50s (and suffer the terror of sitting in finance classes feeling as if I’d crashed a secret coven where everyone was interrogating me in Satanic dialects), I too DARED to Start something else.

The sight of the World Trade Center falling in front of my eyes led me to conclude that 20 years spent promoting soap and cereal for global marketing services firms was enough, and that it was time to do Something Important!  Fast-forward three years and three not really important jobs: turns out, every one of those moves was a False Start.

But those experiences, though excruciating, were so beneficial.  Here are just a few of the books that have helped me and other women over 40 Start something new.  Not a definitive list, but it’s a Start.

• The Breaking Point: How Female Midlife Crisis is Transforming Today’s Women, by Sue Shellenbarger. The Wall Street Journal career columnist illuminates through anecdotes and excellent reporting, the many types of work, avocations and fun that women have Started after they hit 40.

• A Whole New Mind, by Daniel H. Pink.  Full of ideas to think differently, explore all types of intelligence (artistic, physical, etc.) to innovate, pursue meaningful work, and stay relevant.

• I Could Do Anything, If I Only Knew What It Was, by Barbara Sher.  One of the best, most honest books on helping you visualize your “perfect life” – delivered in an empathic, amusing style.

• Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Exercises to plumb your deepest needs and how to tap into your unconscious for ideas your “editing” mind won’t allow.

• Jump Start Your Brain, by Doug Hall.  Promises to make you “500% more creative” – from a marketing guru who creates products and campaigns that convince us to try, buy and stay loyal to stuff we never even knew we needed let alone wanted.

• AHA! 10 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas, by Jordan Ayan.  Not just 10 ways, but thousands!  Has unstuck even the most tenacious, stubborn, blank, fearful minds.

• Write It Down, Make It Happen, by Henriette Ann Klauser.  A free-association guide, with prompts, questions and lists to encourage you to think differently, identify goals and aspirations, and, yes, make them happen.

• Second Acts, by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine, attorney and author/collaborator.  Guides you through what they call “sources of dissatisfaction” so you arrive at your personal hopes and dreams.

• Six-Week Start Up, by Rhonda Abrams.  An easy-to-complete workbook for launching a new venture, whether a business, nonprofit or other creative endeavor, especially if you don’t have the time or inclination to pour thousands of dollars into B-school, psychotherapy, or other forms of long-term torture.

• Get DARE from Here: A Menopausal MBA’s Guide to Empower Women Over 40 to Take Charge of the Second Half of Their Lives, by Elizabeth (Liz) DiMarco Weinmann.  I’ll bet you think this is heart-stopping and blatant self-promotion, don’t you?  HAH, it is actually a DARE to myself, to finish a book I started writing late last year.   No Self-Hell from me or for me!   

Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D.

All About: How to understand, seek out and master experiences that bring you maximum happiness, energy, and pleasure; activities you could wile away hours doing without even realizing the time.  The author calls it ”flow”…others call it “getting in the zone.”

Credible expert/Effective methodology: psychology & sociology professor…authored 120+ books on happiness and creativity…called world’s leading researcher on positive psychology… cites biological and chemical brain activity at root of our total well-being.

Or Else: “Cheating Chaos” chapter particularly relevant today: author advises “transformative coping“ – first, you cry, or get drunk, or eat too much, then you find a way to get through it, and over it, or risk “waste [your] energies in inner turmoil.”

The Break-out Principle, by Herbert Benson, M.D., and William Proctor. 

All about: the scientifically proven relationship between mind and  body, and how to harness the power of your right brain to relieve stress and increase creativity.

Credible expert/Effective methodology: Revered Harvard Medical School scientist. 30 years’ research on stress, productivity and creativity…launched Mind/Body Institute…grounded in sound, accurate, reliable biological principles…i.e., your brain on stress…vs. when relaxing, laughing, listening to music, having sex, chocolate. Four – 4 – simple exercises to cure analysis-paralysis: 1) immerse yourself in the problem, 2) move away from it and do something completely different, 3) seek out solutions from unlikely or comforting sources, 4) return to tackling the problem, with fresher perspective that often leads to the breakthrough.

Or Else: Harness good stress that gets juices going but work hard to eliminate excess stress that’s toxic and hampers overall effectiveness and health. Numerous Benson articles in Harvard Business Review warn of the financial impact of executive burn-out due to not taking a break.

The Joy Diet:  10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life, by Martha Beck, Ph.D.

All about: how to feed your head and your heart. Chapters titled: Nothing (as in, the merits of doing nothing); Creativity; Risk; Treats; Play; Laughter; Connection; Feasting.  Think that’s all fluff?  Without joy, you’re at highest risk of dying of heart disease. [See, Or Else, below.] 

Credible expert/Effective methodology:   Harvard M.S. and Ph.D. in Sociology…longtime O Magazine columnist…one of the funniest, wisest, realistic writers on why it’s so important to give yourself a break.  Here’s her intro: “If you’re looking for ways to shed that potbelly… you’ll have to look elsewhere…your belly and buttocks are absolutely magnificent right now.” How could you not get joy from that? 

Or Else:  Beck is good, Beck is great.  I’ve red-lined her books and articles so much I can hardly see the words anymore.  But here’s the biggest reason to heed her advice to take a break, get a laugh, make a connection: our 4th expert – who says your very life could depend on laughing more:

In an article for the International Journal of Cardiology, Dr. Michael Miller, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, reported that a study done on 300 people with heart disease showed “they responded less humorously to everyday life situations.” According to Miller, not only did they laugh less, but they also tended to show more anger and hostility. In another study, Miller had participants watch clips of violent movies followed by clips of funny movies, and then measured their blood flow.  He reports:  blood flow improvement by most participants after laughter was equal to the beneficial effects of a 15- or 30-minute workout!

So, if your question is:  “Does that slasher movie make my butt look fat?”  Hell, yeah! So GO LAUGH your butt off, already!

Well-written creditable books and other resources for self-actualization are available in every conceivable form of media. The key word is “creditable”, i.e., produced by psychologists and other valid health professionals; or, management consultants and executive coaches qualified to provide sound advice on business, leadership and management issues.

If you need a consultant to help you organize your life, there are thousands of reputable organizations and private practitioners to help you. You can engage one-on-one, or you can take a workshop. Calendars, charts and comprehensive kits, web-based or not, can help women like you carve out and organize DARE-Space for everything from your stocks to your socks.

Life coaches can be good boosters to get you motivated, but be wary. Many people who call themselves “life coaches” have no professional training, let alone certification, in counseling, management, leadership, or business strategy. Do you really want to trust your life plans or business to someone whose scope of training consists of a 12-week “coaching bootcamp”?

In contrast, professionals with graduate degrees in these disciplines are highly trained to help you determine your needs, wants and priorities. They help you set goals; construct feasible, actionable solutions and plans; and identify and deploy the right resources at the right time. Ultimately, they help you apply – or explore avenues to acquire – your experience and expertise to forge ahead.

Executive coaches and management consultants are experienced business leaders who prepare seasoned professionals, entrepreneurs and other motivated individuals for leadership roles. These are professionals with usually a master’s or Ph.D., who work with you to retrace, evaluate and appreciate every milestone of your career, so that you continue to contribute value and obtain maximum personal benefit. A few years ago, an executive coach from a firm called ReadyMinds worked with me by phone and email for a month, after which I made the decision to pursue my MBA in Finance and Leadership. In turn, the MBA coursework helped me to advance my company, and apply my experience and expertise to helping other women over 40 assess, focus and act on their own personal and professional goals.

Dramatic events can create stress that transcends day-to-day hassles or normal career evolution, and may necessitate counsel from a mental health professional. These professionals – again, master’s or Ph.D.-level experts in counseling, social work or psychology – are qualified to conduct psychological assessments and evaluation, and to recommend a course of treatment. Their expertise is based on thousands of hours of study, peer-reviewed scientific research, and clinical work with individuals facing similar challenges to yours. Psychiatrists, who are medical doctors, are also qualified to dispense medications.

DARE-Supply Resources:
Start with these to figure out what you need, desire and LOVE, and how to make transitions more fruitful than fretful:

1. Authentic Happiness, by Martin E. P. Seligman,Ph.D., whose expertise is “the psychology of optimism.” His website, www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu is filled with reputable advice, as well as self-assessment quizzes to help you increase your positive thinking.
2. www.franklincovey.com – planning and organizational tools of every type imaginable, geared to your life goals and lifestyle.
3. Navigating Midlife, by Eleanor S. Corlett and Nancy B. Millner.
4. Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow, by Marsha Sinetar.
5. What Color is Your Parachute?,by Richard Nelson Bolles.
6. www.readyminds.com – reputable, expert career counseling.
7. Changing Course: A Positive Approach to a New Job or Lifestyle, by Maggie Smith
8. Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, by William Bridges.
9. www.hayhouse.com: The leader in self-help and transformation resources.
10. An excellent article on Executive Coaching can be found at: www.hbswk.hbs.edu/archive, the website of the Harvard Business School.