The two hemispheres of women’s brains are far better connected than those of men. Females have up to twenty-five percent more corpus collosum—the brain’s connective tissue—than our male counterparts. Therefore we naturally enjoy more interplay between the logical left side (the part that manages language, practical applications, sequence, and details) and the more creative right side (that largely handles feelings, imagination, intuition, and the big picture).

In practical terms, this means we can think and feel at the same time. We can access emotions while using our analytical skills. We can sense how our words and actions impact others, and we can use the best parts of our right and left-brains simultaneously.

Men, to the contrary, need time to switch from using their analytical processing to utilizing the more creative, emotional side of their brains. (Like maybe a long round of golf or a three-day weekend.) So when your honey says, “I’ll think about it later,” he really means it.

The exertion required to refocus is most likely the reason that, when we ask our guys how they’re feeling about something, it takes a good ten minutes from them to respond. That is… if we get any response other than a grunt and a wave of the hand to leave them alone!

So, if you’re looking for work, how can you take best advantage of the opportunities that become available this time of year? Well, one of the strongest tools in your job search arsenal is a dynamic and persuasive resume. Make sure your resume is a compelling document that’s loaded with key skills that will sell you to potential employers. Also make certain to underscore your strengths and talents with targeted examples of you performing your work at it’s best. In today’s competitive climate, it isn’t enough to simply list your skill sets, you need to show ownership of your skills by clearly stating how you’ve used them in the past.

Aside from displaying your skills, there is a specific format that works best for the older applicant. You need to make sure that your valuable experience is highlighted and easy to locate in a 30-second scan. Because that’s just about the length of time most resume reviewers spend deciding whether or not they’ll take the time to read through your resume.

For valuable tips on how to create a winning resume that will open the door to interviews, I invite you to check out Land the Job You Love! 10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers Over 50. Armed with the right techniques to set you apart from the competition and get you in front of key decision makers, you can’t go wrong. So turn your age into an advantage and make the most of the New Year. There won’t be a better time to turn your resume into a winner send you on your way to landing a job you will love!

Undeniably, we live in a youth oriented culture. But before we start complaining about the unfairness of it all, we might take a brief stroll down memory lane and remember we boomers share in the tiniest bit of responsibility for initiating society’s focus on the firm of flesh. With attitudes like “don’t trust anyone over thirty,” we certainly flaunted our share of disdain and hubris while living on the youthful side of the generation gap. Anyone care for a heaping dose of karma?

Even more telling, as the original “forever young” generation who’s beginning to show some definite signs of wear and tear, we’re busily huffing and puffing away at the gym, going under the knife for a “rejuvenating” lift, and running to our hair stylist for highlights and camouflage—all in the hopes of drenching ours aging bodies in those fabled waters of the fountain of youth.

In truth, I confess that I love what my own stylist says as she prepares her foils and paints my roots a fetching shade of blonde. “I’m bringing you back to your natural color,” she remarks with an admirably composed straight face. Yeah, right! Maybe in the third grade! Nevertheless, I doggedly ignore the fumes of the chemicals, submerge myself in the delusion that “blondes have more fun,” and consider my dye job a health treatment. (Perhaps I’m acting as a prime example for all those jokes referring to the intelligence of us gals with flaxen hair!)

Despite the rush to root revival to which many of us succumb, there’s a new wave of independent and courageous women who are going gray with pride and gusto. Maggie Rose Crane is the author of Amazing Grays—A Woman’s Guide to Making the Next 50 the BEST 50 (Regardless of your hair color!).

Confronted with her own issues regarding aging, Maggie watched with astonishment as her skin began to lose its elasticity and age-related crinkles began to form upon her face. Furthermore, she was “mildly horrified when my tummy morphed into a permanent flotation device.” Smile lines etched in deeper and Maggie found it necessary to color her hair more often. When she finally made the decision to stop dyeing her hair, Maggie came face-to-face with her fears about aging in a youth oriented culture. And so began her “not-so-graceful quest to aging mindfully.”

After dealing with and overcoming many of her own issues about growing older, Maggie wanted to share her insights with others. Her book offers a message of hope and inspiration; she exposes the fears and anxieties that haunt many maturing women and goes on to reveal how to mindfully navigate the turbulence with wisdom, perspective, and practice.

As I love talking with women who are embracing life on the feisty side of fifty, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Maggie for Feisty Side of Fifty Radio. I invite you to take a listen. As always, the interview is a brief fifteen minutes, so take a bit of time for yourself and hear what she has to say. For those who wish to find out more about Maggie’s book, here is the link to her website.

There can be little doubt that boomers like Maggie are truly changing the spirit and style of aging. Yes, we’re a generation remarkable for its sense of passion and promise and a couple of gray hairs or “flotation devices” emerging from around our middle ain’t gonna stop us now. So go ahead: sprout those grays, wear them proudly, age with gusto, and show the world just how feisty a woman over fifty can be!

 Workshop in Walnut Creek, CA

Don’t miss my upcoming class, Menopause: A Woman’s Journey to Wholeness, at Elephant Pharm Walnut Creek, CA on Sunday, January 25th, from 1 to 2 p.m.

Click here for more information

As a woman on the far side of fifty, you’d think I’d have slayed my demons long ago. And, yes, in all due modesty, I’ve challenged and overcome some pretty formidable shortcomings. I now exercise regularly, I’ve trained myself to forego those tempting bags of delightfully crunchy corn chips, and I’ve even learned to say “no” to people and projects I wish to avoid. (Well, mostly!) But, as New Year’s resolutions are still front and center most everywhere we turn, I’m going to confess to a biggie—a demon I still grapple with and a super self-sabotage mechanism I’ve employed far too frequently over the years: procrastination.

Yes, procrastination. It can whither one’s will and render one immovable. It sneaks into the unsuspecting brain with such salvos as “I’ll get to that later,” or “I’ve got to finish such and such first,” or “It really isn’t that important anyway.”

Meanwhile the task, now languishing in the recesses of one’s mind, grows and grows until it becomes the unspoken elephant in the cerebral cortex. Yep, hard as we might try to ignore it, the dreaded chore has taken on gigantic proportions and is silently gnawing away at us.

So, what to do? Experts in organization and time management suggest we take large projects and break them down into manageable steps; i.e. eat that elephant in your brain one bite at a time. I’m all for that because it feels good to make lists and check things off.

Others say we should start with the most difficult parts of a project first so we get them over with and can move on to more pleasant activities. Now, to me, this is an invitation for procrastination at its most potent. “No way!” I’d be shouting to myself, “nothing’s worth doing that.”

But a while back, a very wise person gave me a gem of an idea: Why not start with the parts of a project you love? So in a recent task fraught with the potential for procrastination, I did just that. And I’m pleased to report that even the most onerous of chores became manageable when I broke it down into smaller pieces and began with things I enjoy. In fact, my energy shifted, I became motivated, and I began to experience a sense of accomplishment that transformed my attitude and boosted my confidence. I started to feel like I was on a roll and before I knew it the dreaded undertaking was nearly complete.

So, for all you feisty ladies out there who may be putting off those big-time projects you really can’t avoid, do yourself a favor; pick the parts you like and that give you energy. Start with them. The rest will follow and you’ll be amazed at all you can accomplish once you feed your inner sloth with just the right mixture of fun and success.

 Workshop in Walnut Creek, CA

Don’t miss my upcoming class, Menopause: A Woman’s Journey to Wholeness, at Elephant Pharm Walnut Creek, CA on Sunday, January 25th, from 1 to 2 p.m.

Click here for more information

In my last post I mentioned I wanted to explore the topic of achieving balance in several areas of our lives. The first days of January are the perfect time to broach this subject as many of us feel out of sorts after the excesses of the holidays. We may have eaten too much, we’ve undoubtedly felt the stress of living up to Norman Rockwell expectations for the “spirit of the season,” and we’ve probably ignored important health habits like regular exercise and getting sufficient rest in favor of various holiday obligations. Nevertheless, as we retire our 2008 calendars in favor of the 2009 version, we literally get a fresh start and a whole new set of blank pages to work with. So, let’s make the most of them and reevaluate our direction and our goals for the New Year.

This is a great time to tend to some of the areas of your life that you may have been neglecting and there’s a straightforward little exercise that can help you do just that. Draw a pie chart and put a circle in the middle. The circle represents YOU. The various pieces of the pie that radiate out from YOU should include things like: family, health and wellbeing, social relationships, learning and intellectual stimulation, spiritual practices, community involvement, leisure and fun, and satisfying work. Give each piece a ranking from one to five; five representing excellence and fulfillment, and one meaning you have work to do in this area.

This simple pie chart can be a powerful tool to start you thinking and draw your focus to aspects of your life that require care and attention. As we grow older, we become more introspective and have a natural tendency to want to actualize our total being in the fullness of all our facets and complexities. Awareness is the crucial first step to making necessary changes.

The next steps call for action and one of my favorite blogs just added a post on this very topic. Create Your Future quotes an article by Jack Canfield entitled, “Decide What You Want for Yourself in 2009.” In his piece, Canfield addresses the subject of balance and provides suggestions for creating goals in various areas of your life. I heartily suggest that you give yourself the gift of reading this inspiring and informative article.

If you’re a woman over fifty, you’ve undoubtedly sacrificed parts of yourself over the years in service to meeting the needs of family and friends. In fact, many of us have a history of putting ourselves and our desires last on our own to-do lists. So it’s high time to bring a whole new balancing act into your life. Let 2009 become your richest and most satisfying year. As a fully formed woman with the gifts of age and perspective, it’s your time to shine and do so in each and every aspect of your being. 

Ta-da! We’ve made it! 2008 was a difficult year for many of us. If you’re over fifty, you’ve likely seen a large portion of your life savings melt away and your homes drop in value just when you’d finally paid off that wretched mortgage. As boomers, this current major economic downturn was truly unexpected. Financial hardship was the lot of our parents’ generation—certainly not ours.

Despite the obvious, however, there is an underlying reservoir of strength and spunk that will sustain us throughout these tough times. In fact, as boomer women, we’ve already displayed our courage and tenacity in overcoming tremendous odds. In a single generation, we’ve blasted away three thousand years of male domination to carve out a totally new role for women: equality in the home and in the workplace. So, a little economic hardship ain’t gonna stop us now.

In fact, we’ll just get a bit more creative, support one another even more, and dig our way out of this. I’m betting that 2009 will be a year of great transformation and a coming together of people. We’ve got a new administration that supports these goals and, according to numerology, 2009 (2+0+0+9=11, 1+1=2) is a “2” year. This means the new annum should be a time of “balance and union.” With these ends in mind, I’m going to start series of posts on bringing balance back into our lives in several areas: health, career, relationships, spirituality, and others.

People call this time “the dead of winter.” It is anything but. As the weather chills and the days are marked by early darkness, we yearn to go inside—both physically and through our own internal thoughts. It’s a time for reflection, for reassessment, and for gathering ideas and energy for the rebirth of spring.

So, let’s take some time, come together in shared reflection, assess our lives, and make our plans to move forward with renewed vigor. 2009 is a brand new fresh start and we, as women over fifty, are both ready and able to make the most of it!

Sometimes growing older can bring on feelings of depression. If you’re a woman over fifty, you’ve undoubtedly had to face some less than happy realities. The body you inhabit has likely wrinkled and widened, dearly held relationships have grown distant and sour, and cherished loved ones have passed away. The holidays, a notoriously happy time of year, can actually bring on feelings of loss and sadness as we contemplate how our lives have changed with the passing of time.

So, if you’re feeling the holiday blues, I’d like to make a small suggestion. You might want to check out the work of Dr. Martin Seligman. He’s a well-known psychologist and author of several books. His site is called “Authentic Happiness” and his mission is to promote the field of Positive Psychology. Rather than focusing on an individual’s pathology, Seligman looks towards all things positive.

There are a variety of free questionnaires you can take that measure various personality traits relating to the art of happiness. These include scales on general happiness, optimism, gratitude, and overall life satisfaction. There are also several resources, articles, and newsletters you can access at no charge. Seligman’s site is one of the most valuable I’ve found, and it can get you thinking in new and positive ways. I encourage you to check it out—especially if you’re feeling stressed and out of sorts, two common emotions that surface during “the season to be jolly.”

Who knows? Following Seligman’s advice might be the first step to changing your mood and your inner reality. Plus, there’s a huge bonus to being happy: studies show that happy people live up to nine years longer than those who are chronically depressed. So, here’s to a hearty “ho-ho-ho” and to the enjoyment of authentically happy holidays!  

Remember the joy of anticipation on Christmas Eve—being so excited you could hardly fall asleep? Remember waking your parents early on Christmas morning because you weren’t allowed to see what Santa brought until they shared in your wide-eyed excitement of that special day? Remember the flurry of tearing wrapping paper and ripping off bows to get at those treasured presents?

We children of the fifties were fortunate indeed. Many of our parents suffered untold hardships and deprivation; their formative years had been marred by the Great Depression and, later, by the harsh realities of World War II. But most of our moms and dads did all they could to make our childhoods better than their own. They gifted us with Besty Wetsy, Tiny Tears, and Ballerina dolls. They raised our competitive spirits with board games like Monopoly, Concentration, and Operation. Our stockings bulged with holiday edibles: chocolate Santas, candy canes, nuts, and oranges. For many young families, the fifties were a time of relative prosperity and parents wanted to shower their children with goodies they’d never known.

It is with these sentiments that I think of the young parents of today who want to give their own children a “Christmas to remember.” How difficult it must be in this economy to celebrate the season of giving when you’re worried about making the rent. How many chocolate Santas can you buy when you’re scrimping to purchase basic necessities? How jolly can you be when you’re unemployed and fearful that your next job might be months away?

So, as a reminder to myself and others of my generation, let’s make the time to run by the toy store and grab an extra gift. Let’s drop a box of candy canes into our shopping basket. If we have a few extra dollars, let’s consider donating them to a cause we feel deeply about. There are plenty of bins and baskets and other opportunities to share.

After all, our generation has been blessed in many ways. And one of the hallmarks of the boomer mindset was to make the world a better place. (Yes, we are the peace and love generation.) So, let’s spread that love around. It ‘tis the season and we are the just the ones to help those less fortunate than ourselves enjoy a few small luxuries in celebration of the holidays. Together we will ring in a another and, hopefully, much better New Year. 

Let me say it one more time: “Happy ho-ho-holidays!”

We are now deep into the delights of December with its sleigh bells ringing, chestnuts roasting, crowds a-rushing, and stress arising. It’s supposed to be the “happiest time of year,” and although I’ve cut way back on shopping, decorating, baking and all the rest, I can still get a bit cranky. Encountering throngs of other harried hunters of the ideal gift and waiting in endless lines sets my varicose veins to throbbing, and my back hurts when I carry too many bags around. Now how feisty is that?

Yet, just when I think I might be bah humbug incarnate, I’ll hear one of my favorite carols, get a card from a far-off friend, or see the glow on an excited child’s face. It’s then I realize how much the holidays really mean.  This time of year is a wonderful time to reconnect with those who have meant so much over the years and there’s nothing more precious than spending time with family.

I haven’t been lucky enough to have grandchildren, so don’t know that special connection, but I can imagine it’s got to be a blessing beyond words. And the holidays truly would be the “happiest time of year” when sharing them with lots of little tikes full of excitement and enthusiasm.

So, to all of you out there, I send my warmest wishes for this very special season. Leave the stress behind and ring your sleigh bells, roast your chestnuts, and simply enjoy!

Now that I’ve turned the page on my calendar and revealed “December” printed gaily in big, bright red letters at the top of the following sheet, I can feel my stomach start to tighten. (And this is no easy feat after the hearty Thanksgiving meal I consumed!) I don’t know about you, but the beginning of the twelfth month of the year, puts the daze into holidays for me.

I think it must be some type of throwback to my younger years when I tried to make Christmas the ideal experience for one and all. Of course, I spent days roaming the mall attempting to select the perfect gifts and garments for family and friends. I’d agonize over whether Patty would prefer the green or the blue sweater, and then usually end up buying both. She, of course, would return them and get something she really wanted.

I’d also bake fifteen different types of cookies, arrange them on festively designed plates, and then drive them all over town dropping them by to friends and neighbors. I’d festoon every inch of my living room with garlands and bows, and spend hours deciding where to hang each of the hundreds of ornaments on the tree.

In fact with the Christmas tree, the decorations, the cards, the cookies, the gifts, and preparing several holiday dinners to boot, I’d usually wind up sick by the start of the New Year. At a minimum, I’d get what I lovingly referred to as “Christmas neck,” which was where my stress landed and made its home.

Now, however, as I write these words, I can feel a rather smug smile cross my face. I’m realizing another huge gift of being over fifty! I no longer bake fifteen types of cookies—at our age, who wants the fat and sugar? I no longer agonize over gifts and over spend—at our age, who needs dozens of green and blue sweaters? I no longer take hours to decorate the house—at our age, who’s still hanging stockings? (Unless, of course, you’ve got a houseful of grandchildren and then you’ll be hanging them with glee.) And, best of all, I no longer get “Christmas neck!”

For all these glorious reasons and more, I say a hearty “ho-ho-ho” and wish each of you a very happy and stress-free (okay—almost) December!