Well, well, well. Here we are, the 40’s… Shall we celebrate? A post about this has been coming for a long time now. I’ve planned to write on it since turning 40 but have never felt I could do it justice. Where does one start? This age is life altering as they claim it will be. An age where you begin to fall apart only to be challenged to piece yourself together. It’s beautiful I suppose in a harrowing way. Whether I’m ready or not, I must face it and at least attempt to reflect upon it.

I’ve always actually really enjoyed aging. I’m of the team to believe, experience and wisdom trump youthfulness. However, it tests you more at this approach haha! My faith, my fitness, my finances… family/friendships, and favorite things, all under the hour glass a bit more now. It’s true how you start not caring as much as you start caring. It’s more that you dial in on what you really have decided you care about. For me, it’s these categories of life I just mentioned. Everything important falls into these five domains and so I thought it made the most sense to dedicate this post on my reflections of 40 focused around these areas. I’ll call them my values. The areas that engage me to be my best self and my best for others. These principles have been my constants in life that I tend to remain committed to. I notice through the years I refine them more and more. At 40 they tend to go through some new overhaul where you dissect them deeper than ever and transform them through a type of awaking to anything that’s questionable lol. You define your identity deeper. Deciding for yourself who you are… Less others deciding for you. Here’s a few fragmented life lessons as I enter my 40’s based on my non negotiables…

Let’s start with FAITH. Life demands that we have ourselves rooted in something or we will soon discover that we can stand on nothing. As you age, you are shaped by experiences and influences, but there comes a time you must discern your own understanding about what you believe to be true or what code you choose to live by. I noticed long ago how majestic this world is and began rooting myself in the belief of a designer. I’ve studied a lot of variants of creation and continue to be curious of the great mystery, but I believe there is God and that we are made to live as one with the world around us. I believe life is a gift and I consider it precious and have overwhelming gratitude. My experiences have engrained in me a code of love to be for the best and although we experience resistance to that, I find that leaning into the power of this positive force always wins. That’s precisely why I choose the belief. Because the nature of humanity in general is at peace when we are living in love and positive light. It sounds whimsical, but I try not to overcomplicate it. As a human, I feel my best when I ground myself in a spiritual life and spend time in stillness reflecting on the beauty of being and inviting how I can show up as my most optimal self. Anytime I get lost away from that it tugs at my inner peace. It’s enough to prove to me that it’s how I am designed to operate. I have faith in this practice and find comfort in what I feel to be a promise of prosperity when applied. I like thinking of it as alignment. I was having a conversation recently and it was brought up that to be a whole person faith must be considered and synced. I couldn’t agree more. That being said, in my 40’s I find that I take my faith very seriously so as to be functional and allow myself to experience this world I exist in. Many things have come along the way to challenge me in this pursuit of why I value faith and practice it, but it continues to be a principle I stand by and believe in for the good of humankind. It’s one of my non negotiable’s. I need time and attention toward faith for my mental and spiritual/emotional health.

Another domain I take seriously is FITNESS. At forty the fitness thing starts to shift and you realize real fast how much health matters. I want to be the type of person who can be active in my aging years so I look at fitness from a holistic approach. I don’t think of it as a vanity thing worried about my looks but more a vitality and range of motion perspective. I want to be sound in my health overall. I have always believed small good habits are what will matter in the long run. No fast tricks or easy wins. Sure there are great things to compliment the aging process now but nothing replaces general good health practice… The boring stuff like eating whole foods for nourishment, sleeping to recover and reset, exercising to remain strong and prevent injury. I keep it pretty simple in trying to educate myself in these categories of food, sleep, and movement and find that steadiness in these are where I’ve seen gains over time. Each quarter I try to come up with something new I want to try and implement or learn in my health journey and it keeps me building and engaged. Sometimes its been skin care, sometimes its been macro nutrients… There are always ways to grow in our health and vitality. I also stick to the basic principle that my body is a vessel I get to enjoy life with so I need to care for it well and be a good steward of it. In my forties I have learned reformer pilates, tried micro needling, began supplements, and even focused on pelvic floor therapy- lol! My next curiosity is sleep and developing better consistency. I am learning how much it plays into our hormones and blood sugar levels. I wish I could have understood sleep habits were so crucial when I was younger and maybe I could have been more consistent in other areas of my life. It affects your decisions and capacity so much! Wish me luck on this new endeavor and I hope you take this info to heart and think about something you’d like to lean into health wise as well!

Next up on my list of things worth focusing on… FINANCES. Of course it’s a necessity for us all to function in life. We have to utilize money and manage it decent enough to find our needs and hopefully some wants. This is an area I never had much care for or training in unfortunately. I have had to learn the hard knock way about finances, but like the things we learn from pain, I feel better for it. And like anything valuable managing money is not easy. It takes effort, intention, and consistency to monitor and build. It also takes some good amount of reflecting. Most people don’t pay enough attention to finances because they haven’t ever reflected on their financial goals and how to achieve them. I read a great book last year called “The Five Types of Wealth”. It was great because it was about how to personalize wealth to your own desires. Prompting what matters to you? How much is enough? What do you want to have or do? Once you take time to ask yourself some of these questions you get a clearer picture of what vision you have for yourself and how to get there. Mine is very simple. I want my home to be a completed and inviting place where I host my family and friends and find refuge for myself. A property investment if you will. The other things I care about is keeping a comfortable lifestyle with my needs met and a few desires. I am working towards being able to travel more too because this is something that brings me life. I like to experience new places with my loved ones and bond through shared interests and adventures. It gives me great energy to explore outside my normal space. Now that I know the things that are my “enough” I can work toward getting to that and I’m motivated to actually do the hard parts because I am owning the results and know whats needed to be successful. Hard, but you have to do hard things to chase your dreams. I will also direct any young person to read up on the concepts presented in “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” What fantastic advancement it offers if applied. I wish I’d have understood the value in assets and liabilities from a younger age. It’s never too late to direct your own choices with money management and empower yourself to live more literate with them. At 40, I could wish I’d have done better sooner, or I can start doing better now that I know better. Only one of those options uses action to get an outcome.

We’ve arrived at FAMILY. This value is by my nature closest to my heart. It’s where I feel I won the lottery… and also where I feel my personal purpose lies. I was lucky to have a wonderful childhood with a great loving family. You could say I felt very safe and secure in my supportive environment. It came second nature to me to carry this torch on and so I studied family development as a career and I also established my own family. I shared tips regarding family life on my website for some time honestly to understand my own experiences better and simultaneously offer lessons I was learning as I went! I’ve learned a lot about family as you can imagine throughout the years… and the best advice I can offer is to control what you can control in showing up as your best self. If you can first learn to have a positive relationship with yourself, you can then grow in relations with others. This is why the trendy “secure attachment” is so popularly preached. If you already have a good outlook and experience with relational skills, you are one step ahead. Gain relationship skills by observing people who set great examples, learning through a class, or read up on books. Don’t be so set on wanting what you don’t have, but rather caring for what you do have well. Be intentional with your family relationships. They are important and they can enhance or breakdown your individual self. This must be taken seriously because the way you model relationships is being absorbed by the individual family members that surround you. It’s a pattern game. Win it! I’ve been blessed to bear witness to some very special members in my family who showed me healthy patterns. I count knowing them, the ultimate privilege. I want to write about each one of them and they deserve it, but I can’t do their magic justice and I want to honor them well. Maybe someday I will write a book on each of their beautiful lives and how they’re legacies live on. For now, I will say what a loss it’s been losing them. It’s made me inspect my own way of living and do my best to be ingrained with the best parts of their being. I’m currently traveling and notably emotional as I keep being reminded of the ones I miss. I try to say what I miss about them out loud to another and also do something that they would do in that moment I’m reminded of them. I also, visualize a reenactment of their face and voice which brings me great comfort in remembrance. Don’t underestimate the impact you are having on your family.

FRIENDS are so similar to family. Relationships are crucial to our health. Invest in friendship. I’ve always been lucky to have collected friends in my life. I’m curious, outgoing, and relational so it’s came natural to me to make friends easily. However, I am a big believer in intention with friendships too. All types of friends in various seasons of life are necessary and appreciated, but you can “develop” friendship too. Sometimes it comes natural as you encounter special people you have synergy with or you bond through something memorable. Other times you pursue a friend by going places that interest you and finding another that enjoys the same. You discover chemistry, shared goals, or show up for each other when it’s hard. Finding friends is like dating. You have to put yourself out there… Look in places you like, see who feels easy to hang around, have conversations that test your alignment, notice if they are equally as invested to meet your standard of friendship? There will be varieties of friendships, embrace them all because friends come in all shapes and sizes. Each with significance to be revered. What a blessing to have and be called a friend.

Lastly, what I like to call my FAVORITE. A major non negotiable to me is to prioritize my favorite thing. I consider this my calling or purpose. Some could call it a career, some a hobby. I think it’s all the same. It should be a type of craft that you are passionate about and can’t help but always lean into. For me, it’s taken lots of shapes, but it usually involves design in the form of concept, curation, and connection. I love creating in this medium of bringing something together. If I’m not spending time each day creating in this way I loose bandwidth. It’s weird to find something that you can exhaust yourself doing and actually gain energy from at the same time. That’s what your favorite thing should do for you. When I don’t prioritize this, it shows in how I behave. I’m unsettled. Once I make time for it, I instantly feel better. There’s lot of tips to help you find what this is for yourself but I’ve found that beginning broad with a direction is a great start because the path will lead you to some pretty niche parts of yourself. Let it. The plans you think your going for will eb and flow like a river… A friend once told me, just stay in the boat. Let it ride through all the curves and over the logs. Chill in the still, but stay in the boat! The river takes you where it will and the best parts are the directions you didn’t mean to go down or didn’t see coming. When you stay in the boat you sign up for the trip plus all the adventures along the way. Keep paddling in the way of your favorite thing.

Some thoughts on this:

-Consider what doesn’t bother you to stay up late and wake early for

-Consider what you like to spend your money on

-Consider what you could speak in front of an audience about for 15 minutes without preparation

-Consider what your strengths, experiences and passions are? What frustrates you… What you see and say oh that could be done so much better… it’s usually something you could make better if you applied yourself to the pursuit.

I know that was a lengthy reflection, but for myself, I’ve been wanting to put into words a bit of a culmination of these thoughts at this stage of my life. Thank you if you made it to the end! Hopefully it was engaging for a reader to reflect on as well. I notice as I age so many people stumble through life or get lost along the way because they don’t take the time to define their own code or principles like this. I’ve recently had conversations that reminded me to reinforce this to the next generation. I’m in the chapter of raising adolescents and trying to introduce them to these ways of thinking about their future and being responsible for themselves and their direction.

It’s such an individualized thing that we have to dive into in order to find that fulfillment for ourselves… To lead ourselves. When we understand what we value we can be inspired by things but we don’t have to worry so much about being swayed or influenced with fads or constant distraction. We can know ourselves… what’s important to us, and who we strive to be. We can use that confidence to test new ideas and trends. To measure against our beliefs and grow in clarity, resources, and knowledge but we can remain certain in a foundation and momentum because we know what we’re pursuing. Focus in on your goals and you will find your best self. Cheers to what 40 years has taught me and to the next 40 that I’m sure will keep chiseling. Respect to all on this life’s journey whatever age and stage. Keep forging and living for the most!

xx, Kasey