If you've ever wondered how to create your best life in your 40s or 50s, this video is for you. Many people believe life slows down with age, but what if your happiest, healthiest, and most authentic years are still ahead?
In this episode, Amy shares the 5 powerful mindset shifts and daily habits that transformed her life after divorce and helped her build her best life in her 50s. These simple practices don't require expensive products or a complete life overhaul, just a willingness to choose yourself every day.
Whether you're navigating midlife, rediscovering yourself after a major life change, or simply looking for practical life advice that leads to lasting happiness, these lessons will help you cultivate more joy, confidence, peace, and purpose.
In this video, you'll learn how to:
These are the kinds of life lessons many women wish they had learned sooner. If you're looking for honest life advice, midlife motivation, or a practical guide to your 40s and 50s, Amy's heartfelt insights offer encouragement for every stage of life. This conversation is filled with practical wisdom to help you embrace your next chapter with confidence.
Your best years aren't behind you. They're waiting for the version of you who's willing to show up authentically, love yourself deeply, and create a life you genuinely enjoy.
What has been the biggest lesson you've learned in your 40s or 50s?
Hey, hey, hey, you want to get better as you get older? I do. We all do. I think we all do. If you want to create your best life and your 40s, 50s beyond, I am sitting here almost 54 years old and happier than I've ever been. So I'm like, what did I do exactly to get to this point? Was it easy? No, but was it that hard? Not really. You don't need to buy anything special. You don't need special equipment. You don't have to go get a red light mask or whatever it is.
I do like mine, but that's not part of it. If I had that or don't, doesn't matter. You already have the tools you need. It's just a matter of sorting that out. And it took me till I was late 40s to figure this out. So, you know, don't get discouraged if you feel like you're late to the game. You're not. You're really not. We all get there in our own due time. So five things I did to create my best life and my 50s and beyond. Now, why did I do these things? Because I was single during the pandemic.
And I felt old. I was in my late 40s in the middle of my second divorce. And I was like, I am not having much luck dating. I don't feel great about myself. Is this what we've got? Is this it? And I just decided, no. I decided that I was going to create my best life just with me. I started playing this game of what if? Like a little what if experiment. And that's number one on our list. Play the what if game. What if it's just you? And yeah, I get that that can feel depressing.
But at the same time, it can also be freeing. Because what if it is just you? Are you just going to resign yourself to moping around? No. Of course not. I was like, no. If it's just me, then I'm going to make it so good. You have freedom to create whatever you want. So you play the what if game. You start to say, if this is it, if it is just me, what am I going to create? How am I going to feel? How am I going to make myself feel? Because anything can happen at any moment.
Anything can happen in life. So what if this is it? What are you going to do with it? You have that power. If this is it, I'm going to eat this and feel this way and go to the gym and get outside and make myself laugh and have the best sex ever with myself. That was one of mine. Like what if you just got to find new ways to do all these things? And you know what? That's magnetic AF. That is attractive. I always think of this SpongeBob episode. And SpongeBob gets this little piece of paper.
It's like a little scrap of paper. And he's having a freaking blast with it. He is partying with this little piece of paper. He's having so much fun. And I think it's Squidward. Squidward looks at him and he's like so mad. He's like, I want that paper. I want to have that fun. But it wasn't about the paper, of course, right? It was that SpongeBob was just making it fun. And so Squidward finally steals the paper from SpongeBob. And he expects the paper to bring him the joy and the fun.
And instead, he's not having any fun. And he's like, why am I not having fun? And then he's pissed about that. But the point is that it's not the paper that's fun. It's you. So what are you going to do with it? You got this one precious life. So life gives you this turn of events. What are you going to do with it? That's what I felt like. I was like, OK, well, maybe I'm never going to find anyone. So what am I going to do with myself? And I just decided to start enjoying the moment, by myself, a flower.
A flower. You don't even have to be a bunch of flowers. Put it beside your bed. Do these little touches just for yourself, which leads us to number two, commit to having fun with yourself. When I am by myself, I am constantly making myself laugh, talking weird. I mean, essentially, I'm sitting here by myself with you, yes, but with a camera, right? I'm sitting here by myself right now. But I can just sit and entertain myself. I commit to having fun with myself on a daily basis.
I talk in weird voices. I just get super weird and ask myself ridiculous questions. Ask the universe ridiculous questions. I talk to my dog. I do have a dog, so I do spend time talking to my dog. But I'll just create a whole mood for myself. I create lighting concepts just for myself. It's OK to give yourself permission to have a blast with yourself. Seeing in the car, seeing loud, seeing bad. Talk to yourself. Ask the ridiculous questions, too. I think that's so important and amazing.
You just start going, why is everything lining up for me? Why is everything falling into place? Why is everything just amazing right now? You just start calling these things in and you build these little habits of having fun and injecting your daily life with so much joy and fun just from you, just like SpongeBob. Number three, start loving yourself properly. When you think of loving someone else, you look at them and you say, I love you, right? You do things for them.
You want them to take care of themselves. That's what you have to do to yourself. So it doesn't require anything external. I swear it doesn't, except a mirror, you know, which we all have a mirror. So you look at yourself in the eyes and you say, I love you. Because if you haven't done that, it's high time you did. Because we do it. Like I mentioned, my dog, I do it to my dog. So many of us will do it to our pet and not to ourselves. You are 1 million percent or more, infinity percent deserving of that.
And yet we'll withhold it from ourselves or we'll just feel like it's too weird. But just do it when you're alone, set a timer on your phone. I'd prefer five minutes, but two minutes is fine. And so you stare at yourself in the mirror, you say, I love you. And you see that person in the mirror. And when you do, you feel seen by yourself. Chances are you're going to get a little teary, little misty. Little misty eyeed up in here. And that's a good thing, right?
And if you can start it as a practice and do it every day, and then you just get in the habit of doing it. Maybe you're putting on your makeup. Maybe you're taking off your makeup and you just like, look at yourself and say, I love you. And you love yourself properly. And yes, it does mean doing all those other things, right? You want to get to eating healthy, but at the same time, if you don't, you don't guilt yourself. Because I know if my daughter eats something that maybe isn't the best, I'm not gilting her.
Not at all. I'm like, yes, honey, enjoy your life. I love you, right? That's what we got to do for ourselves. It's parenting ourselves in the most loving way possible. Now, would I want her to do that all day every day? Oh, right? No. The other day, she was going to take a mock SAT and she had this avocado and some veggies and some hummus that I'd made. And I don't remember what else. She had a whole little assortment of foods and she was taking upstairs. And I was like, this is brain food.
Like I praised her. I was like, this is brain food. You're feeding your brain. You're gonna, and she started laughing. Like she got all like, he he. And that's again, what we got to do to ourselves. When we do it well, then you're like, oh my gosh, you queen. You're in like a queen today, right? And so those are elements of loving ourselves properly. And maybe it is not looking at our phone first thing in the morning. You know, maybe it is reading before bed.
Maybe it is journaling. Maybe it is spending time in a relaxed state. Maybe it is meditating. Those are all ways of properly loving yourself and you start to build those habits. That's what leads to feeling so good at any age, dialing those things in, but it's based in the self-love. It's based in, wow, I can be good to myself. And it gains momentum, right? It just starts gaining that momentum and then you get better and better at it as you get. Number four, do your values work.
So many times we think we want something, right? We think we want a bag or a certain type of car or whatever it is. But when you do values work, you really get to the root of what you want. And so often it's security, it's freedom. No, it's choices, it's love. It's simple things and we can start to go, okay, I don't need the stuff to fulfill that. I can actually fulfill that right here right now. Imagine that. Brane Brown has a values list. Maybe I'll be able to link it here or something, but you can easily look it up.
She wrote out like so many values and you can look at those and really get your mind wrapped around, oh, what do I really value? I'm gonna read you a few right now just to kind of get your brain going and tell you some of mine. So mine, authenticity, which we're gonna get to in just a second. Connection, listening, gratitude, massive one. That's probably my number one. Learning, creativity. But she goes on, I'm gonna read you a few more. Courage, these were all ones that stood out to me.
Courage, creativity, financial stability, grace, humor, inclusion, joy, love, peace, recognition, resourcefulness, responsibility. I like responsibility, personal responsibility. Worthiness, success, travel, wealth. Well, is a good one because what is wealth really, right? Freedom, security. We can get that confused with money when really wealth is health, wealth is peace. So once you do your values work and you really understand it, and I think it's an evolving list, like I keep it in my notes app, and it's something that I return to and I kind of check in with.
And I'm like, am I really aligning with these things that I value? And you just start to understand yourself so much better. And that leads to feeling really happy and really good at any age. So many times people don't sit down and do this values work to really understand what they value. It's gonna bring you an internal piece that you've never felt before, which leads us to number five. And maybe one of my favorites, I don't know, they're all my favorite. Number five, get good at being honest.
Like I said, authenticity is one of my biggest values. And getting good at being honest has been a road for me. And I don't mean that I was a liar, but I do mean that if I'm gonna value authenticity and honesty, then I have to really walk that walk and constantly excavate my words and what I'm doing to make sure that they're aligned with authenticity. Like if I'm saying something to you right here, you can bet that I am walking the walk of that in my life. Like when my kids ask me a question, I do my very best to answer honestly and with personal responsibility.
Now does this mean if someone says, do I look terrible in this? You go, yeah, no, it doesn't really mean that. That's not the kind of honesty I'm talking about. However, there are ways to be honest about that in a very kind way, right? Where you're able to say, eh, I don't love that silhouette on you, why don't we try something else? Or I really love you in an open neckline. And I don't know that turtle neck doesn't show off how gorgeous you are, right? There's different ways to say things.
But for me, one of the ways that manifests dishonesty in authenticity, I think, is managing situations. I'm in recovery in Alonon as a codependent and all of that. And so I can find myself trying to manage situations by scourting around the truth or forming this version of things that isn't accurate. And I have to catch myself and watch myself. And that's been a habit. And it's made me happier because when you are authentic and honest and fully living it, it seeps out of you.
You know how when you can sense someone's dishonest, you can sense like, I don't trust something there. Yeah, we trust that. That's our gut. But when you're living in authenticity and constantly working at that, people are gonna look at you and be like, why do I trust you? I just feel safe around you. I feel like I can trust you. It's just seeping out of you. And it feels so good too because you don't have anything to hide. You don't have anything to hide at you.
You can just be honest and authentic. And that even goes for when you're feeling maybe bad about something or guilty about something. You can be honest in the moment with someone and vulnerable to a degree that's not worrying you. You're not afraid that you're gonna be rejected or you're able to express that. Gosh, I'm afraid of saying this because I feel really weird right now. Like maybe I'm gonna be rejected, but you're able to open up and be honest. And most of the time the person that you're talking to is going to invite it.
They're gonna say to you, tell me, it's okay. Right? And they're gonna mean it. And you are safe and you know you're safe because those are honest statements. I am safe. You are safe with yourself. All those other things that we've just done, you've created safety here with yourself. You've created a safe space to be. So no matter what you are safe to tell the truth. Safe right here in this home, in this thing you've been given. We got all these other questions out there, right?
Well, we know this much. So you are safe right there. And you're creating a safer space all the time. And before too long you're feeling good and you're in your 50s and you're like, how did this happen? Oh my gosh. That's me. Like how is this possible? But more please, I'll take more. Sure, feel great. I mean, granted, like I got body parts that are screaming sometimes. So that part is a bit of a challenge. But overall, I feel so happy and delighted with a life.
Even when something bad comes along, yesterday my daughter had her purse stolen and I was angry. I had a whole mix of emotions, right? But that's life. Life is problems that come along. And you can find that balanced state where those are gonna happen, sure, and we are humans and have emotions. But overall, you are a peaceful being because you're living your life according to alignment. Just a beautiful thing. Ugh, you're a badass. Do we need to review those?
All right, let's review. Play the What If game. Constantly create happiness and joy with yourself and fun, start loving yourself properly, hone in your values and get really good at being honest. Did that cost us any money? No, it did not. How rad is that? You are a badass. You are amazing. Even if you've only got a little teeny tiny spark in there, let's blow on it. Let's keep it burning brighter and brighter and brighter all the time and when we come together, we shine even brighter.
So keep shining bright until next time.