With permission from the authors of “The 52 Weeks: Two Women and Their Quest to Get Unstuck,”  I’m sharing the Foreword to the book, which I wrote, as a way to describe how I felt after turning 50.

In a word . . . I felt stuck . . . until I realized what was keeping me there.

Is this your story, too?

Read more at Huffington Post  >>

The post Life After 50: How To Break The ‘Inertia Curse’ And Get Moving Again first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

The 52 Weeks:  Two Women and Their Quest to Get Unstuck, with Stories and Ideas to Jumpstart Your Year of Discovery is finally here!

            HERE’S WHERE WE’LL BE!  

OCT 23          MORE MAGAZINE GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT

6:30-9pm     DREAM Downtown Hotel, 355 West 16th St., NYC

Join us for a first look at The 52 Weeks. Come chat with us and buy the book at MORE Magazine’s

Fierce & Fabulous Girls’ Night Out.

This annual event is a fun-filled evening featuring mini-makeovers, signature cocktails, gift bags and more. Go to www.more.com/gno for more information! This is a ticketed event.

NOV 22  BARNES AND NOBLE BOOKSTORE

7-8pm   150 East 86^th St., NYC

Join us along with several experts from the book for a panel discussion and book signing.

DEC 4            NYU BOOKSTORE

6-7:30pm     726 Broadway, 
NYC

Book signing & create your own “52 List” for the New Year!

Hope to see you! Check back often at the52weeks.com  for updates & news!

 Order Your Book Today!

The post Book Launch Event News!–Pam Godwin first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

We are so excited! Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project,  read an advance copy of our book and said…

“We all want lives packed with both fun and fulfillment. With its humor, honesty, and great insight, The 52 Weeks is a terrific resource for anyone who wants to get unstuck.”

Wow. This, from the woman that the New York Times dubbed “the queen of the self-help memoir!” We’re honored.

Many other galley copies of The 52 Weeks are now out there! It’s an industry thing: our publisher (and sometimes us!) distribute advance galley copies to select authors, media and others.

It’s pretty nerve wracking.

The 52 Weeks is all about getting out of your comfort zone and even just sending these galleys out was way, way out of our comfort zones! We are trying not to think about it but it’s hard not too. Would our early readers enjoy it? Would they “get it”? Were they carrying it around or was it buried under a pile of mail? Would they relate to our stories and understand how we felt? So, here we are, waiting and hoping others also believe our book has some real little gems inside, great advice from the real experts and has value for the millions of women out there who feel “stuck” sometimes. We’ll keep you posted on any other early comments! In the meantime, THANK YOU Gretchen for being the first to jump in. You helped us let out a  deep breath and forge ahead.

More soon, Pam and Karen

The post BOOK UPDATE: Early Read by Gretchen Rubin Lands Us A Cover Blurb! first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

Sometimes you have to shake it up to get “unstuck.” Summer is a great time to try new things. So break out of your comfort zone and try something new, even if it’s seemingly small or insignificant. In fact, doing one new thing often leads to another. Did we mention that More magazine recently asked us at the 52 Weeks for our suggestions to include in a feature article about how making one small change can make a difference in your life?  We loved working with them and submitted many ideas – some adrenaline inducing, some not. And which of our ideas did they choose to include in their June article?

“Smile. The physical act can trick your brain’s neurotransmitters into thinking you’re happy!”

Out of all the more adventurous ideas we submitted, we found their choice amusing. But hey, experts say it works! Here’s our list of 52 New Things to Try. We left the smile advice only on More magazine’s list for now! What are you trying this summer?

1. Go on a horseback ride
2. Take up Saori Weaving
3.  Do a tandem dive
4.  Buy a lottery ticket
5.  Go skinny dipping
6. Decoupage an old piece of furniture
7. Eat something you’ve never tried before
8. Read a classic novel
9. Swim with dolphins
10. Learn a romance language
11. Travel cross country
12. Make out with a stranger
13. Take surfing lessons
14. Enjoy a candle-lit dinner with your kids
15. Go paragliding
16. Mentor someone
17. If you’re always at the farm stand buying veggies, plant your own instead
18. Take a nude drawing class
19. Donate your home or time to the Fresh Air Fund
20. Get your caricature done by a street artist
21. Become a pen pal to an overseas soldier
22. Have a photographer take some hot photos of you
23. See one of the 7 wonders of the world
24. Watch a meteor shower
25. Ride a mechanical bull
26. Play strip poker
27. Throw a surprise party
28. Enroll in an improv or storytelling class
29. Go for a dance lesson
30. Patent an invention
31. Write your memoir
32. Schedule time with parents or grandparents and record the conversations
33. Learn everything there is to know about every flower you see
34. Take a flying lesson
35. Do a random act of kindness
36. Learn how to drive a “stick shift” car
37. Do nothing
38. Go whale watching
39. Fill and bury a time capsule
40. Go topless at a nude beach
41. Give a compliment to someone you don’t like
42. Fall in love
43. Write a book
44. Make a picnic by a pond or a lake
45. Paint a room
46. Book a cruise, a cooking tour, a bike tour, any tour
47. Try scuba diving
48. Get banned from somewhere
49. Build a bonfire in your backyard and roast s’mores
50. Get on a train and go somewhere new. Don’t map it out.
51. Eat kimchi
52. Learn how to play Texas Hold ‘Em

Look for our book this fall inspired by our blog! You can now pre-order from any of the booksellers listed below:

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, IndieBound

The post 52 New Things to Try This Summer! first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

It’s Our Anniversary! A year ago we officially got a book deal!

Yes, we know it’s been a while since we’ve updated you or even wrote about anything going on.

So where have we been?

Well, it started with our blog, the52weeks.com. It launched many, many weeks ago in July 2010.

That’s when, for 52 weeks, we tried to do something new, different or something we were afraid to do every week for a year and write about it because we felt we’d lost momentum.  Sometimes we succeeded. Sometimes we didn’t. But we tried.

Somewhere along the way we decided we wanted to share our story and lessons with others.

We wrote a book proposal. It took a while. We had no idea what we were doing! We finished sometime around February 2012.

We knew we needed experts to help us tell women how to get going again. We called, e-mailed, and reached out to some great contributors for the book.

And then it happened. About a year ago – almost to the day, Memorial Day 2012, we received an email from Skyhorse Publishing. They wanted to publish our book. Pretty cool.

In the end, Over 20 great experts came on board including Lisa Lillien, best selling author and creator of the Hungry Girl brand; top author and journalist Helen Fisher, PhD;  Joi Gordon, CEO of Dress for Success, and many more authors, doctors, artists, therapists and even a comedian and a poker diva!

Then we got an amazing agent, Jessica Papin (yes, in that order).

Then we wrote a book — all year and then some.

So why have we been MIA?

Well, even though our blog was all about getting out there more and getting “unstuck”, we ended up, ironically, at home, glued to our computers, writing the book!

But it was a good kind of “stuck”.

So what have we been doing lately?

Editing, editing, editing and more editing. We’ve been reading, re-reading, and fact-checking. This publishing world is a whole new thing for us. Talk about trying something new and getting out of our comfort zones!

And now we can formally announce that The 52 Weeks, the book, is available for pre-order from these sites.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

IndieBound

Goodreads

The book is inspired by our blog but it is really a companion for getting unstuck. The 52 Weeks is filled with many of our challenges and great moments. Ultimately though, the book turned out to be less of a memoir and more a blueprint for getting out there and creating your own “attainable adventure”, with a large helping of how-to advice from our top experts and contributors.

We hope you will continue to look for news from us and spread the word. Our blog will be re-launched later this summer as a companion for the book. We hope our book inspires you and gets you going – whatever it is you want to do or achieve.  Have a great summer and see you soon!

Karen and Pam

The post The 52 Weeks: Book Update! first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

This is a guest post by Jackie Moffett. She is funny, smart, a former PR maven and an amazing writer. Most important, she is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and a great friend. We reached out to Jackie to write for the52weeks.com after months of following her inspiring journey helping Hurricane Sandy victims. We are including Jackie’s story in our book. Karen and Jackie met in high school where they definitely spent more time at football games than giving back. Jackie lives in New York City with her husband, two boys, and her dog Tilly.

Yesterday I gave $1000 to a woman who lived in a cave.  That was what she told me, in a Russian accent, across a card table set up in a chilly Coney Island elementary school cafeteria: “I live in cave.” She meant her home, dark and wet, a home like many others in this Brooklyn seaside town, ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.  The storm had broken through seawalls, barreled through houses and submerged every vehicle.  Five feet of water stood on Ocean Parkway, the town’s main thoroughfare. Every sub-let basement, home to countless poor families with multiple children, was flooded and powerless, as was the supermarket, hospital and nursing home.  Price gouging abounded — $10 for milk –- and utility trucks sat idle as bureaucrats fought over provenance, while babies slept on cold floors in the chill of November nights, mattresses soaked, damp blankets rendered useless.

This Russian woman, one of many queued up on a winter day to receive a donation from a rich man who also once lost almost everything precious, spoke to me because I was a volunteer for the Cantor Fitzgerald Hurricane Sandy Family Support Program. I handed her a $1000 gift card from my card table stack and tried to look her in the eye but she would not meet my gaze.  After three months volunteering in Sandy’s aftermath, I had come to expect this. Often, the people who needed money most were most loath to accept it.  Because the storm took so much, they held on to their pride like a life raft and maintained a death-claw clutch on their dignity.  The storm took everything, their averted eyes said. Please allow me this.  And so I did.

How I got to meet that woman and give away ten million dollars is a good story, a story of great tragedy and a story of recovery.  In other words, it’s a quintessential New York story.  It began with Howard Lutnick.  Howard Lutnick is a famous New Yorker, a man best known for being the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the company that lost 658 employees; among them Howard’s brother and best friend.  In the wake of 9/11, Howard, his wife, Allison, and his sister, Edie mobilized to take care of every family member left behind, in every way necessary.  Their effort came to be called the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund. And 11 years later, almost as soon Sandy came ashore, the Fund was expanded to include New Yorkers and New Jersey-ites affected by the hurricane.

In early November, Allison sent an email asking her girlfriends to meet in the Cantor Fitzgerald conference room, located in midtown Manhattan. I arrived to see 15 or so other close friends and acquaintances.  Usually we met over lunch or drinks and talked about things like kids, husbands, schools and basic parenting stuff.  But today the conversation was of floating bodies and raging fires.  It was the same day we learned the fate of two missing toddlers in Staten Island.  Their mother had been trying to flee during the storm surge and lost her grip on her children’s hands as she tried to get them in her car. Their bodies were found in a gully at the end of the road. They  were two and four years old.

So there we were.  Mothers of 40+ children collectively. I, myself, had not been in a conference room for eight years and I felt totally out of my comfort zone. I think the same was true for a lot of us.  Around that table sat former power players from finance, law, media, PR, advertising, fashion, and real estate and though our conference table days were long behind us, this brain trust showed no signs of rust or weakness.  We were lionesses, all. In the days to come we would hold each other and weep witnessing the storm’s carnage, but today we were strong and the urge to help was palpable.  Now we just needed a plan.

Allison ran the meeting with Howard beside her.  The mandate, she said, was that Cantor Fitzgerald wanted to give $1 million to ten hardest-hit communities in NY and NJ.  Our charge was to figure out which communities should benefit and how to give the money away. Immediately, suggestions flew in from all sides.  There were lots of ideas and lots of roadblocks.  And so it went until, Howard spoke. “This is what I want,” he said. ”I want to give money to parents with children who lost a lot.  I don’t want to be paternalistic and tell them how to spend it.  I just want to put the money in their hands and say, ‘Here.  I hope this helps.  And that’s it.’”  The room was quiet.

It sounded too simple to work.  Maybe I had been away from the corporate world too long and didn’t remember how plans like this pushed through.  I knew that becoming a mother had made me more fearful of things.  Moreover, the practical part of me did not believe that such a simple proposition would succeed.  I could think of countless reasons why this would fail.  And I knew others felt similarly.  But what I came to learn is that in a storm, where everything is upended, safe and practical do not fly. And so I let go.  I believed that the plan would work.  I believed that a small group of my friends could take on the biggest hurricane to date and help people we had never met in towns we had never been.  Because it seems that conviction, mixed with a little bit of New York chutzpah, is as powerful as any storm.

Two days later I was in Coney Island, Brooklyn, with four friends, Councilman Domenic Recchia and a plan to distribute $1000 money cards at local elementary schools.  Domenic, a big lug of a guy, was our ambassador, and someone who had a kind word of encouragement for every passerby.  We walked with him through still-powerless, sand logged neighborhood streets to a parking lot.  The lot had been transformed to an open-air marketplace flanked by FEMA trucks, generators and Red Cross stations.  It was more akin to a Third World displacement camp than to the streets of Brooklyn. Hundreds of people queued for miles; huddled in whatever dry clothes they still had waiting for a donated blanket or bread. “What they really want is bleach,” Domenic told us. “Because of the mold inside their houses.”  We had seen these houses earlier with their regurgitated candy-colored insulation strewn about front yards; their interiors gutted to skeletal wooden support beams. “You mean people are staying in these homes?” we asked incredulously.  And as he bounded off to shake yet another hand, he answered us over his shoulder.  “Yeah, they’re staying.  They have no where else to go.”

Coney Island became one of our ten communities. In short order, the roles each of us would assume emerged and as news of our efforts spread, our volunteer numbers grew.  So did we, becoming increasingly adept at managing the process of list gathering and money distribution. We became principal liaisons, translators, greeters and problem solvers.  We gathered often in that conference room again and again, bonding over the shared drive to help, and learning as we went.  We learned to wear fingerless gloves to turn pages of names while we stood in the cold.  We brought candy for the children forced to wait in long lines and coffee for their mothers. And we learned not to expect eye contact.

Many of the people who came up to my card table asked to meet the Lutnicks, who worked at every distribution. They wanted to give them carefully chosen thank you cards, or just shake their hands.  One woman came with a Con Ed bill for $1000, attributable to the space heaters bought to keep her children warm in a house without heat.  She cried as she asked to please meet Howard Lutnick, wanting to acknowledge the gift and the giver.

The storm knocked things down and out and made the powerless even more so.  It has been heartbreaking to watch and life-affirming to participate.  Helping people has made me stronger than ever and solidified bonds with my friends.  For all of us, Sandy was personal. The storm didn’t hit other people: it hit our people. There were 19 schools in all and nearly five months later, we aren’t finished giving the money away because of snow delays.  I will be happy when we are finished because we will have helped so many but sad not to have the camaraderie and the sense of making a difference.  And to those who didn’t meet my eye, not to worry: I still have your back.

The post Lessons Sandy Taught Me first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

This is a guest post by Linda Orton. Linda is a mommy, an optimist, a storyteller, comedian, and a serial entrepreneur. Currently owner of Intelligent Video Solutions, Intelligent Entertainment, and Vid4Pro, LLC, she works across the US helping major firms and corporations tell their stories. She is completing her first book, “Life is Hysterical. We love Linda’s honesty about her so many “firsts” and we’re happy she wanted to share her story with “52”. The fact that she is doing stand-up for the first time in her 40’s rocks. She lives in Westchester, NY with her two children.

Discovering humor and vibrators around the same time could have made for a challenging situation; I could have been like the caged monkeys in the experiment and never left my bedroom but alas, I had my children to care for and two companies to run.– Linda Orton

I have always been defined by my intelligence. It was what mattered most to my mother; it was what influenced my choices in work, in friends, in a husband and in my parenting. My focus on being smart and seeking smart got in the way of so many other more important things like compassion and fun. But then, life happened and an amazing shift occurred: being smart gave way to being funny and emotional.

The last few years have turned my safe bastion of cerebral focus into one wild ride full of emotions, instinct and creativity. I didn’t realize outside factors – seemingly so disconnected from one another — would have such an impact on me. Perhaps I was simply ready: tragedy and hardship had paved the path for humor and optimism.

My starter marriage of 20 years officially ended on November 28, 2012. It had unofficially ended at least 5 years earlier, but my ex moved out on Memorial Day of 2010. Two weeks later he said he had something important to tell me and I should sit down. I said, “I don’t need to sit down. I know exactly what you are going to tell me. She’s Asian, she’s a black belt and she’s in her twenties.” He looked at me and said, “You think you’re so bloody smart, (long pause) she’s thirty-two.”  I was right about the other two things though and so the very harsh reality that our marriage was not only over, but he had moved on, quickly set in.

The following Memorial Day of 2011, my mother passed away. She and I had shared a tumultuous relationship for most of my life. I met her death with a sense of peace and gratitude and her funeral service was my first attempt at stand-up comedy – as strange as that sounds. She had led a sad and unfulfilled life — driven by alcohol and sarcasm; we rarely shared the mother-daughter bond that many have. She met my children only 4 times before she died. One time a year — starting when they were 3 and 6 — we got together. I carefully recorded and preserved these times for my kids to look back on one day if they choose.

Once my mother died and my ex-husband moved out, I had an epiphany that gave me great joy. I was funny. In fact I was hysterical, not just to myself, but to others as well. It was instantly clear: I simply had the wrong audience most of my life. This small fact, but major realization, was more liberating than anything that had come before.

Once I realized that I could use my brain for humor as well as for deep discussion, an entire world opened up. It’s not that I was dry and boring before…more that I just didn’t allow myself to experience or create humor even though I enjoyed it immensely. It was about finding the funny inside of me and letting it out. Around the same time I also discovered sex toys.

I never had discussed this subject with anyone and was much too dependent on third parties to make myself feel good. For someone so smart in certain ways, I was incredibly limited in others. Discovering humor and vibrators around the same time could have made for a challenging situation; I could have been liked the caged monkeys in the experiment and never left my bedroom but alas, I had my children to care for and two companies to run. Everything in moderation became my mantra.

I also was given a guardian angel in the form of a Verizon sales guy. Totally unlike everything I grew up coveting, he was street smart, cocky and a non-stop talker. He was tough and shy and in a bizarre twist of fate, we became friends, really good friends within the confines of his Verizon store located in my suburb of Westchester, New York. We talked about photography and religion, about my divorce, and my son with special needs; we talked about his failed relationship and about life and death. I fell in love with him and we communicated through email even after the owners closed the store and he moved on to a new job, in a new town.

He was there for it all and supported me through all my creative pursuits, my divorce, my mother’s death, my work and my challenges with my kids. He always seemed to contact me when I needed him the most.  After almost a year, he finally agreed to have dinner with me.  We covered every possible topic in one night at my house. We talked about my taste in art and he was the first one to shed light on why trees were always prominently featured in the art in every room of my home. He said they provided me with the roots I longed for. I listened to him and tried to provide the forgiveness he sought for actions he had taken in his youth. We talked about things I had never spoken about with anyone.

When he left my home, the gates at my complex wouldn’t open for some reason. He texted me and said it was a sign; that I was trying to lock him in. I said I’d come to let him out and I saw his bright blue eyes behind his helmet stare deep into me. Later in the summer, he was killed in an accident. We had never talked again after that night. I believe he came to say hello and goodbye to me in one 6-hour conversation. I served him tomato sauce from a jar and he wrote, “Yea, that really killed me.” Oy, words have such power.

I learned I could love again… I learned I mourned the death of someone I was never physically involved with more deeply than the death of my mother…I learned that you never know what gifts will get dropped into your life and then taken away with no clear reason. I learned that life is so very fragile and I was so very grateful.

I was so angry that my intelligence did not help me identify and fix the problems in my marriage and with my mother. That it did not save my dear friend from dying. I could not think my way out of any of it and so I was left to feel. To feel deeply and profoundly and to move the grey matter so far out of the picture that only nerves were left in my body and my brain.

Once the anger subsided, sometime last year, I realized that the emotions I had were healthy and that my brain was still there; they just were learning to co-exist with the other parts of my being. No longer vying for top seat, intellect and emotion were collaborators, guiding my being to my future funny self. One filled with joy, with happy and sad memories of the past and with incredible hope for the future.

The post Finding Funny at 47 first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

The post Feeling Stuck? Try This! first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

Jodi Garner is the Associate Director of Development and Institutional Advancement at The City College of New York.  She is also an aspiring Broadway producer.  She lives in New York City with her twelve year old boy/girl twins. When Jodi heard that one of our chapters in our forthcoming book was about mid-life career changes, she contacted us and wanted to share her story.

“You’ve got a real fire in your belly, or was that just a one time stunt that you pulled?” — as said to Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, 1988

It was a chilly March day in 1992. I was in my twenties and recently engaged. The Dow was just above 3,000 and I was in my final semester of business school. I had just registered for my dream china with my fiancé. It was the perfect moment to set a wedding date.

My fiancé didn’t really care, so I deliberated with myself. I have a December birthday that is often usurped by the holiday season. I wanted my anniversary date to have its own day in the sun–without competition with the gift-giving season.

The marriage didn’t last but what my now ex-husband said on that fateful day did; actually, it was prophetic. Upon hearing how I derived our wedding date, he said, “You know Jodi, not everyone measures the year in terms of gifts.”

How wrong he was. Not only are there people who measure the year in terms of gifts, they get paid to do so. They are called fundraisers. Their job performance is measured on the number of gifts they receive throughout the year. I know this because after a 20-year career on Wall Street that ended with a spectacular finale —  the fall of the House of Lehman —  I became a fundraiser.  Midlife reinvention.  I had to e-mail the52weeks.com to share my story.

From the start of my career on Wall Street right up until the financial crisis, I rarely thought about what else I could possibly do.   As a single parent with nine year old twins to support I thought I had to do what I had always done. Work was work, right? It took a near global financial meltdown for me change my views.

In 2008, when I was aboard the mighty ship of Lehman Brothers, which started to sink, the venerable investment bank tried saving itself by throwing its employees overboard. Most of us in Leadership Development were among the casualties. Just like that, my career on Wall Street came to an inglorious end.

I tried to look at the bright side: what better time to get laid off but right at the start of summer?  It had been eight years since my divorce and raising my twins as a single parent, I was relieved to have a break. Having gotten divorced when my twins were just six months old, I never really had the chance to lose that baby weight. So I hopped on my bike and started circling Central Park. I was in good spirits and good company—thousands of people were laid off in 2008 as a result of the financial crisis, and the park was packed. It was like summer vacation and when a friend invited me go hiking with her in Montana, I jumped at the chance.

I returned ready to hit the pavement and look for a job, but the rug was pulled out from under me when Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and the entire financial system was on the verge of collapse – everyone was pounding the pavement for jobs that were few and far between.

After months of fruitless interviews, and then no interviews, like any well-trained MBA from Columbia Business School, I hung out my consulting shingle. Business was rough. And while things looked like they might pick up in April, 2009, including two corporate interviews, the money just kept running out.

I wouldn’t say I was despondent, but I was tired, really tired. I had started out as a bond trader and one marriage, two kids and a divorce later had ended up in leadership development. The fact is, it wasn’t really a great passion of mine. So I sat down, fired up my laptop and said out loud, “Well, I need to figure something else out.” As if fated, my phone rang: Mary Burton, a top career coach I’d met ten years prior was on the line.  And on that sunny morning in 2009, my new beginning began.

Mary had reached out to see how I was and tell me about a career transition group forming in a few weeks. Mary is a Harvard Alumni and powerhouse. I jumped at the opportunity to work with her. As I expected, more minds were much better than my one.  Like with so many things, it took a village to help me make my mid-life career transition.

To be clear, it took work—lots of work. Every day for seven intense weeks, in between dropping the kids off at school, shuttling them to and from their after-school activities, doing the laundry and making dinner, I committed to doing everything that Mary told me to do to find a new career.

So after over twenty years on Wall Street and lots of self-reflection, work and brainstorming with my career transition group, my career answer materialized: nonprofit fundraising. I had helped raise money for my  kids’ schools but I had never considered it a career possibility. But, here I was.

Contacting friends and family and anyone else I happened upon, I conducted over thirty informational interviews during the six weeks that followed our group work: on the phone, over coffee, over drinks. Ten lattes, five salads and three glasses of prosecco later, I was convinced that it was a perfect fit and set out to look for a job.

With each ad I answered, and each letter and email I wrote, I proudly explained that I was making a career transition from Wall Street to the nonprofit arena and how excited I was to apply my transferrable private sector skills to achieving sustainable funding for your organization (fill in the blank – you name it): When no responses came back, it finally occurred to me: unlike sex, when it comes to jobs, nobody wants to be the first: you can’t get hired unless you have experience, but you can’t get experience if no one will hire you. We had a name for that in college and it was called an internship.  So I made myself a 45-year old intern. I researched which organizations would give me the best exposure to nonprofit fundraising and offered to work…for free. It wasn’t easy, but I got through it and with a positive outcome.

And the rest, as they say, is history. I got to put that unpaid experience on my resume and secured a paying fundraising job at a top tier medical center in less than six months. Fast forward to today: three years and three jobs later, I have been moving up the fundraising corporate ladder. Currently I’m the Associate Director of Development and Institutional Advancement at the City College of New York.

I’ve heard that the only thing constant is change and maybe some people (read: me) are hard-wired to keep moving, to keep reinventing themselves. So, I have another idea percolating. You see, my grandparents gave me this record when I was a kid, and I’ve recently secured the rights to make it into an Off-Broadway show: “How to Succeed in Childhood Without Really Whining: A Child’s Introduction to Grownups.”  I have this crazy plan to get a bunch of celebrities to rotate through the narrator role…okay, that’s another story for another time.

 

The post How I Became a 45-Year Old Intern first appeared on The 52 Weeks.

We recently interviewed Gretchen Rubin for our blog. She is the best-selling author of The Happiness Project and, more recently, Happier at Home. We are thrilled she agreed to answer some questions for us. Her “real-world” advice and honestly is one of the many inspirations for our book. 

1) The52weeks.com is all about how Pam and I spent a year trying to get better, going again, or just get over it! We didn’t always succeed and found that carving out time for yourself is hard even when you put your mind to it! We know it is critical though if you want to get “moving” again. Is there one thing you do when you feel “stuck” and need to get going again in any area of your life?

Gretchen: I re-read my favorite books. It always re-charges my batteries.

2) Your new book, Happier at Home, focuses on the importance of the home overall, gaining control of your environment among other things and hopefully, as a result, reaping the benefits of making home a better place on so many levels. What are your top 3 suggestions for your fans in terms of the home?

Gretchen:

•  For most people, outer order contributes to inner calm. It may seem like taking the time to clear closets, make your bed, clear counters, file, hang up clothes seems unimportant, but people really seem to feel both calmer and more energetic when they’re in a clearer environment.
• In Happier at Home, I talk about how I “cultivated shrines”—that is, I took the time to arrange my most meaningful possessions in a very deliberate way. Some people have shrines to France, to music, to arts and crafts, to family…by arranging these possessions in “shrines,” you can make them more engaging.
• Enjoy good smells! I love this resolution. Smell is right under our noses (!) and a great, easy, quick way to tap into pleasure at home. Smell a grapefruit, vanilla, clean towels, a scented candle…

3) We tout the importance of baby steps, especially when change seems so overwhelming. In your opinion, what are some easy, small steps people can take to be “happier” in general?

Gretchen:

• Get enough sleep! This is SO important. Turn out the light at a reasonable hour. Most people need 7 hours of sleep so do the math.
• Exercise, or at least go for a 20 minute walk each day. Exercise boosts energy, so if you’re dragging, exercise will help.
• Fight the “bad trance.” This is the time when you find yourself zoning out in front of the TV, the Internet, the fridge. Often it happens when you’re too tired to do something more demanding, that would also be more happiness-boosting. If you’re too tired to read a book and can only watch TV, go to sleep!

4) The New Year is fast approaching! What do you think of resolutions and what is your advice to readers about making even one change for the New Year?

Gretchen: I love New Year’s resolutions. Resolutions work best when they are very specific, concrete, and manageable. Not “Get more fun out of life” but “Join a book group.” Not “Be healthier” but “Take my lunch to work every day.”

5) We have a chapter in our forthcoming book that is all about getting “unstuck” specifically in relationships. You were quoted in an article and said, “The only person you (can) change is yourself and when you change, relationships change.”  What exactly do you mean by that?  When did you apply that philosophy and what has been the result in your relationships? We’d love to share that with our blog readers.

Gretchen: I can’t change my husband, but when I’m more light-hearted, more considerate, more tender, he responds to that change. I can’t change my children, but when I’m more patient, more silly, and less rushed, my children respond to that change. It’s so tempting to think, “I’d be happier if other people behaved properly,” but you can’t assign resolutions to them! So whenever I want to see something different in my life, I always try to think of what change I could make.

6) In interviews you have openly talked about your fear of driving; however, you worked to change that. You said: “Sometimes, I’m scared to do something, but I can still do it, and it’s okay if I feel anxious, as long as I don’t let those feelings limit my freedom.” We are big believers in the importance of facing fears and trying to tackle them. In fact, we have a chapter dedicated to facing fears. What would be the one main piece of advice you would give our blog readers about facing fears? Why do you think we develop more fears as we get older

Gretchen: Do we develop more fears as we get older? I’m not sure I agree with that. But for me, it was a matter of deciding that I really wanted to tackle it, and was willing to accept the intense discomfort.

7) In your Real Simple magazine interview you listed “try something new” as one of the 9 things someone can do to be happier in 30 minutes! In a nutshell, why do you think it is important to try new things? What new thing(s) have you tried this year?

Gretchen: I just taught myself a new software program for writers called Scrivener. Challenging, frustrating, but now I love it. In general, though, this is a tough one for me. I have a narrow, deep range of interests so that makes it tough to find ways to try new things that are also part of “Being Gretchen.”

8) What is one small or large change you made this year to improve your health or change a bad habit?

Gretchen: I’ve been an on-and-off “tracker” — writing down what I eat and keeping track. Now I’m back doing it. I think it really helps.

9) Can you share something with our readers they may not know about you?

Gretchen: I’m a constant hair-twister!

The post An Interview with Gretchen Rubin first appeared on The 52 Weeks.