KEEPING MY HEAD ON STRAIGHT

Believe me, the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. Don’t waste your time worrying about it comparing your life to someone else’s. Let’s talk about the six things I practice to help keep my head on straight.

1. Forget what the other guy is doing. Why waste time and energy focusing on what you think is a better life than yours, when you can use that energy to focus on your own life to make it better. You can work to make your own life happier.

2. It’s okay to have a bad day once in awhile and instead of hiding it, acknowledge your feelings.

This is the hardest for me to do. I always have felt that acknowledging a bad day, would make me seem weak. I always felt I had to be in control, even when I’m having a tough time. When someone says “how are you?” we generally respond with “I’m fine thanks – and you?” even when were not – internally we might be depressed, stressed, hormonal and preoccupied with problems.

It’s important to remember that it really is okay to not be in charge and optimistic ALL the time. Its fine to feel sad sometimes – my advice is just to learn to recognise and indulge in “I feel sad” and give myself a break – curl up and read a book, listen to music or inspirational podcast, or eat a pound of chocolate ( well, maybe not a pound, but you get what I mean). Allow yourself to have a bad day. Tomorrow you can pick yourself up and begin again.

3 Find joy in the moment. Of course , you might say that this is so obvious, but how often do we step back and really do this? Waking up and having a cup of coffee in your pajamas while listening to the birds outside, watching your favorite Youtube channel, a movie or in lying cozily in bed with your partner. Just slowing down enjoying real life in the moment and appreciating real life as it is. All of these ordinary things really matter and are important.

4. Eliminate negativity. When you learn to be happy, you will not want to be around people who make you feel anything less than you are.

Any aura of negativity around you is toxic. Get rid of those that create that environment. At the same time, learn to give more love to others from your end.

I’ve become better at giving more of me, my love and my attention to kind people that deserve it, rather than people that drain me – and I’m better off for it.

5. Life is short. Buy that Chanel lipstick! As a friend once advised me, “Quite simply, I think if you truly love something, you should work, save, and get it. It doesn’t matter if it’s on trend, it only matters that it makes you feel great.”

Pampering yourself by treating yourself to some luxuries and recognising that you deserve to be treated well is important for everyone’s self-esteem.

6. Be kind. The next one has been my mantra for a long time and I end all of my Youtube videos with this one. Be kind. ‘Do unto others as you would do unto yourself.’ It could be something as simple as a smile it thank you. It is amazing how just a small gesture of kindness travels from one to another as it is played forward. If you can do good every day it will come back to you ten fold in one way or another.

We are not perfect, but I try with these steps to keep my head on straight.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2018©️

WHO ARE YOU?

FIVE STEPS TO BUILDING THE LIFE YOU WANT | QUESTIONS WE SHOULD BE ASKING NOW | WHO ARE YOU

Women over sixty. Who are we? WHO AM I? Who are you?

The Five Ws, Five Ws and one H, or the 5 W’s are questions whose answers are considered basic in information-gathering. They are often mentioned in journalism (news style), research, and police investigations. They constitute a formula for getting the complete story on a subject.

Who was involved?

What happened?

Where did it take place?

When did it take place?

Why did that happen?

Some authors add a sixth question, how, to the list.

I was thinking the other day that we can take those important fact finding W’s and use them in relation to our lives.

1) Who are you? Who do your friends think you are?

2) What do you want out of life right now?

3) Where do you want to be a year from now?

4) When is a good time to start?

5) Why do I think this is important?

6) How am I going to achieve this?

These are important questions we should be asking ourselves no matter how young or old we are. The sooner we find our direction and who we really are and what we want from life, the more fulfilled we will be. It is never too early or late to begin your personal fact finding journey.

https://youtu.be/8yZQNgA37nU

Copyright Sandra Hart 2919©️

All Rights Reserved

GRATITUDE AND TOXICITY

This 2019 adventure on which we are embarking will evoke thousands of resolutions and retrospectives. Good intentions, blessings and regrets of 2018 will be on all the social media sites.

I usually don’t add to the pile of thoughts about my past or future, but this year I am especially grateful. I am grateful for my family. My children and their extended families. Each of them deserve the best in life.

As a parent, no matter how young or old our children are, we want the best for them as they make their way through life, don’t we? What joys they have, we have. What pain they carry, we carry.

Fortunately, there are so many good people in this life. Contributing. Giving. Applauding our successes. They are the majority.

Then there are the toxic ones. Taking. Resentful. Spiteful. It is those negative sources we may be connected to through past decisions in our lives that can drag us down. This is especially hard when those negative people surround and try to take down your loved ones.

When it is out of control what advice do I give them? Keep a positive boundary? Don’t go for an easy fix? Fight fire with fire? Hold onto what is going well and don’t let hateful energy coming your way destroy the good in your life?

I truly believe in karma. What comes around goes around. Those who try to steal our joy eventually cannibalize themselves. The vitriol and envy eats away and eventually…’poof’ they disintegrate into into nothingness.

As my husband often quotes, “On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and in waiting died.”*

I think this is the best advice I can give myself or my children when we are encountering negative and toxic people in our lives.

There is nothing wrong for fighting for your and your loved ones happiness. Face it head on.

* George W. Cecil

Copyright©️ Sandra Hart 2019

All Rights Reserved.

https://youtu.be/mhmQO210DUA

LATE-IN-LIFE REJECTION

It is Saturday and I’m sitting in my favorite chair, coffee at my elbow, Sofi at my feet and my husband across the room reading his favorite news magazine. Alexa is streaming big band music and I am wondering what I can write about here on my blog. It’s a brain fog kind of day and my thoughts are all over the place.

My husband and I have been married close to 35 years. Ours was his first marriage and I came into the partnership a widow with three teenage children. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for us, but we have weathered the ups and downs of a late-in -life marriage and are still here.

Recently one female friend and her husband celebrated their 60th anniversary; another lost her husband and a third is divorced in her 70’s. Loss by death is one thing we understand is out of our control, but divorce has its own separate pain. Rejection. How does someone in what should be the best years of her life survive that?

A divorce in later life is not only a personal rejection by an individual, but a shattering of long-held values and one’s self-image as someone who thought she and her partner would live happily after.

Therapists suggest the next 7 steps to help ease that feeling of rejection.

1. Feel the feelings. …

2. Understand you will go through the stages of grief. …

3. Think of your pain like a wave. …

4. Gather your support system around you. …

5. Stop the self-blame. …

6. Practice self-care. …

7. Find a therapist who can help.

Life is not always mapped out the way we planned, but as women we have to look at ourselves and say every day to our mirror, “I am worthy. I am enough.”

https://youtu.be/XsEu84UMAac

Copyright Sandra Hart 2018©️

All Rights Reserved.

WHAT IS THAT?!

I recently had a comment on one of my latest videos that said I should be doing ASMR videos. What? What is an ASMR video? I said out loud to myself.

It just so happened that I was sitting next to my 10 year old granddaughter who heard me and without any hesitation she explained it to me 1-2-3. A 10 year old! Just goes to show you how out of the Youtube loop I am! I am a creator who is stuck in my own box.

I do have to add that my subscriber said that my openings are already ASMR, so it should be easy for me to do one. She said the young girls are boring and she has to switch them off.

In case you are in that box with me, here is the explanation of ASMR:

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a euphoric experience characterized by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine, precipitating relaxation.

After digesting this a bit, I thought …

Humm… maybe there is a place for over sixty creators like me in the ASMR community. There is nothing like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. Let’s see if it works!

Copyright Sandra Hart ©️2018

THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANTI-AGING

My mother had beautiful skin with minimal care. She washed her face with Palmolive soap, put lanolin serum on with a touch of Coty power and she was good for the day. She always wore a hat that protected her face from the sun and for ninety-two years she had beautiful skin.

Today we are inundated with a plethora of products that the beauty industry tell us we need or else we will all wind up looking like prunes before we reach forty-five.

What has changed? Well there are real factors our skin is dealing with today. We have lost some of the ozone layer that makes the sun more damaging to our skin. There are more damaging free radicals in the air. Our diet contains more processed foods and the world we are living in today is more stressful. All of these things are directly related to the health of both our bodies and skin.

Unfortunately, our current culture has a deep-rooted habit of valuing women largely in terms of their attractiveness.

For women, it also means being turned from a coveted object into a disposable one. We spend our whole lives fighting our own disappearance.

We nod and agree that we should embrace our wrinkles while quietly understanding that none of us, individually, want to be the one who actually looks old.

Let’s face it. We are all getting older. But we should start “Changing the way we think about aging by starting with changing the way we talk about aging.” I’m not suggesting we give up our retinol or retinol, but maybe we should change the way we think about aging by changing the way we talk about aging.

In this culture, as a woman to age is to be erased — to be deemed irrelevant, disappear from magazine covers and popular films. For women, it also means being turned from a coveted object into a disposable one. I feel my whole life has been focused on fighting my own disappearance.

Each sign of wear on my face might be taken as evidence of my failure as a person.

I would like to read you and example: A 1926 ad for an in-store facial treatment blares, “Poor Lois — see how old she’s growing!” Female self-loathing was acknowledged openly. One ad asks, “Is it the greatest crisis of a woman’s emotional life?” Meaning: “that sudden, merciless message from a mirror’s crystal depths … ‘you are fading, just a bit.’

1930s and ’40s, Palmolive ran a series of bluntly shaming ads in magazines like Good Housekeeping and Farmer’s Wife. The soap company invented the problem of “ ‘middle-age’ skin,” a condition it claimed could afflict women as young as 22, then blamed it for all kinds of romantic disappointments, from “girls with empty date books” to the wife who “loses love.” (One ad featured an illustration of Cupid, sitting with his head in his hands, crying, “I give up!”)

Good skincare is an important part of anti-aging. We have truly come along way with research and products that genuinely will help slow the process of aging skin. But there are also a lot of products with promises that are bogus. Nothing will made us look twenty years younger. Nothing.

Copyright©️Sandra Hart. All Rights Reserved

ARE YOU AFRAID OF AGING?

This is a question that runs through not only my mind, but for certain most women as they approach retirement age. Studies show that women fear five basic things:

1) Becoming invisible

2) Being alone

3) Dependent upon others

4) Getting cancer

5) Being a bag lady

Believe it or not the last one, being a bag lady, has always been my biggest fear. I was really surprised to see this one on the list because I honestly felt it was just me.

We are the sum of our experiences and during my lifetime I gad a period where I didn’t know where my next dollar was coming from. I was widowed, had three children, a mortgage and no job. It worked out in the end, but that traumatic period in my life has scarred me.

Today let’s have a conversation about aging and how to face our fears as women as we journey through the aging process.

12 Moments In A Woman’s Life

Some thing never change even though centuries have gone by. One of those is the story of Ruth in the Old Testament. Within the four chapters of Ruth lie 12 Moments in a woman’s life that are still so relevant today.

I am 79 and, even at my age, can relate to her story all of these centuries later. As a woman every one these 12 moments have touched me during my lifetime. I would bet that they have touched you, as well.

No matter what your core beliefs or non-beliefs are if you are a woman today the lessons found and taken from the book of Ruth will apply to you.

Ruth was a Moabite woman, a foreigner from a hated country. But she married a Hebrew immigrant in Moab, and after his death she left her native land and went with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem in Israel.

The 12 Moments for us contemporary women are:

  1. Loss
  2. Change
  3. Transformation
  4. Aging
  5. Independence
  6. Respect
  7. Recognition
  8. Insight
  9. Empowerment
  10. Self-definition
  11. Invisibility
  12. Fulfillment

Within the video below from my Youtube channel, Life Over Sixty With Sandra, I discuss how each one of these 12 moments are related to us as females in today’s society. Sit back, relax and see if you can relate to Ruth’s moments from the Book Of Ruth.

Copyright©Sandra Hart.

All Rights Reserved

Age Is Only A Number

I recently celebrated an almost milestone birthday and someone recently asked me how it feels to be almost eighty.

Hummm…. I never really thought about it. Honestly. Age to me has always been just a number. It does not define me, nor does it have anything to do with how old or young at heart I feel. I certainly don’t feel old. Whatever wrinkles I have I have earned them by living.

There are those who might chime in that I’m only fooling myself. Not really. I know the year I was born, but I’ve lived my whole life on the premise that as long as I can put my feet on the floor at sunrise, I’m going to enjoy every minute of the day ahead. I’m going to tackle whatever monster comes my way and know that I have never been given anything that is too tough to beat. I will survive.

Sure. I have made bad decisions in my life, but I haven’t let that stop me from learning from them. Making lemonade out of lemons is part of the deal in this human life we are all living if we want to have a good journey.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2018. All Rights reserved

The Miracle Of Bee Venom

New Zealand is without a doubt the most beautiful country I have ever visited.

It has it all. The white sands and clear water. The snowy mountains towering over still lakes. Palm trees and waterfalls. Secluded beaches and hidden coves, native culture and thermal waters.

It is also the home of the Manuka flowering bush and also New Zealand sheep that are raised for their high quality wool.

Another by product of their wool is lanolin. Mother.

Lanolin, also called wool wax or wool grease, is a wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of wool-bearing animals. Lanolin used by humans comes from domestic sheep breeds that are raised specifically for their wool.

From the Manuka plant comes Healthful Manuka Honey and several skin care products using bee venom.

Honey bee venom is used cosmetically to ‘fool’ the skin into thinking it has been lightly stung with the toxin melittin. me lit tin. : a toxic protein in bee venom that causes localized pain and inflammation but also has a moderate antibacterial and antifungal effect.

This causes the body to direct blood towards the area and stimulates the production of the naturally-occurring chemicals collagen and elastin.

Collagen strengthens body tissue while elastin is the protein that helps the skin to remain taut and bounce back into shape after being pressed or pinched.

The venom also has the effect of relaxing the muscles, it is claimed.

Experts collect bee venom by placing a pane of glass alongside a hive and running a weak electrical current through it, which encourages the insects to sting the surface.

Because the bee’s lance remains in its body, it does not die.

I have done my due diligence on skincare containing bee venom. They do work. There is one caution. After all, the ingredients that work for one person may not have any effect on another. Even worse, instead of helping your skin, you may have an allergic reaction to any one of the ingredients in any product you apply on you skin. So it is important to do a small patch test if you are highly allergic to bee stings or have sensitivity toward ingredients in the products.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2018 ©

All Rights Reserved