In this blog-post, we’re focusing on why it’s good for you and never too late to: 1) take up new physical activities, 2) engage in new social activities and 3) pursue new intellectual challenges that can make a positive difference in your well-being – for the short-run and in the years ahead.

If you happen to be job-hunting over the age of 40, after many years of being firmly entrenched in the same company, industry or location,  you’re probably feeling that’s a  DARE-ing project in and of itself – which it is.  In that case, PLANT something new that takes care of your innermost self and boosts your confidence and sense of control while you’re grappling with change.   PLANT something that improves your physical health, ramps up your intellectual power and unleashes beneficial brain chemicals that contribute to your well-being.  Here are just a few of the reasons experts advise you should PLANT new SEEDS now, especially if you’re dealing with added stress.

1. If Your Sneakers Are Moldy, Your Brain Will Get Oldie. Before last year, the only weight I ever pushed around came from the sound of my own loud mouth.  A year later, and dozens of pounds lost, I can attest that exercise saved my life, improved my well-being and enhanced my intellectual focus.  Here’s why it would work for you:

• Dr. John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, says in his book, Brain Rules, that “a lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary.” Medina asserts that exercisers outperform couch potatoes in all sorts of brain metrics tests, such as those that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called fluid-intelligence tasks – which refers to how you put to use the information that you learn.  One of the biggest surprises is that you don’t even have to exercise that long or hard to reap these benefits!  Did you know that even walking several times a week will benefit your brain? The ideal is doing two to three bouts of aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes  – which can reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s by 60%!

• Exercise improves your mood because it stimulates the release of three “feel good” chemicals in your brain. Called neurotransmitters, their medical names are serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.  By stimulating the release of these hormones, exercise has been proven to help lower depression and anxiety.  So, get out there and walk off the stress, or go for a bike ride, or – if you’re not the outdoorsy type – put on some music and dance like a fool in your own home.

2. If the only laugh lines you have are from watching late-night “Seinfeld” reruns on TBS, you need to get some real friends. When was the last time you had a conversation with a friend who made you laugh? More importantly, when was the last time you actually felt you could cry with a good friend who wouldn’t judge you?  If you don’t have friends like that, maybe now’s the time to consider going beyond your current circle of friends (or all those online LinkedIn “connections.” Would you ever want any of them to see you with streaked mascara?  I didn’t think so.)   Additional tips:

• Be proactive about cultivating, engaging and caring about people you really want as friends, and weed out the ones who don’t feel that way about you. In this day and age it’s too easy to rationalize that there are many other things we need to be doing work- and family- wise rather than spending time with friends.  Yet, connections with true friends and family members are what matters to our well-being.

• According to psychoanalyst, educator and author, Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., positive social interactions are a powerful mechanism for controlling stress. As women talk with other women about worrisome occurrences in their lives, their stress levels fall because oxytocin (the maternal friendship and bonding hormone) levels rise.  Even during non-stressful times, having solid friendships has been proven to improve health and extend one’s lifespan.

• If you’ve been a mom for most of your adult life and your circle of friends is tied to your children, now might be the perfect time to expand your circle of friends. Getting involved in organizations other than your children’s school or church expands your perspectives.

3. Unchain Your Brain, Train Against the Drain. Learning a new language, researching the competition before starting a company or learning to play a musical instrument are all exercises to unchain your brain.  To PLANT or SEED something new, challenging and fulfilling while waiting for the next big thing to take SEED, it’s a good idea to engage in an activity that is not related to a work situation or family demand. Following are few reasons why:

• Taking up new intellectual activities stimulates different neural regions and develops new pathways within the brain.  This helps to re-energize the brain against the dreaded “brain-drain” many women complain about in middle age, and helps you see problems in a different light.  As Dr. John Medina writes in Brain Rules, “What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like – it literally rewires it.”

• The more you stimulate the neural regions and pathways, the more adept you become at the new skill or activity you’re learning. It’s that fluid intelligence thing again. One of the other major benefits of taking up new intellectual activities is that it increases your self-confidence that you can, indeed, learn new things.

• There are nine different kinds of intelligence, but most people neglect to explore, let alone develop, those outside their comfort zone. Conversely, we all know of artists, musicians, business-owners and scientists who did their best work after the age of 40, 50 or even 60.  By developing different facets of their intellectual capacity, they surpassed the creativity and productivity of their youth in ways they never would have DARED or imagined earlier in their lives.

Those are just a few of the reasons why PLANTING something new – physically, socially or intellectually – can be beneficial both in the short run and over the long haul, even in times of stress.  Next week, in Go DARE, we’ll provide a list of ideas for what to PLANT or SEED.  There’s no limit to why, what, where and how you can grow by DARE-ing yourself!

Supposedly, March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Right. How about this: March is all about raging rip-roaring reality (Jeez, two months gone by already and I still haven’t done X or Y or Z?) combined with a fuzzy-frilly-floral free-wheeling pass to start over, or start something else – as in: PLANT some new SEEDS in your ever-fertile head!

We DARE you to regard March as your month to revisit, refine and re-PLANT the GARDEN that is your life.  So what if the SEEDS you PLANTED in those January resolutions didn’t take?  So what if they’ve got more mold on them than the half-bitten chocolates your nephews shoved between your couch pillows during the holidays?  Need help with those PLANTS?  [click here] Hey, I may not be Mother Nature, but I’m one DARE-ING Mother of Reinvention!!!

So – or SOW!!!  SPRING It On!  Hope you-know-what (SPRINGS!!!) Eternal!  March is the perfect time to shed your fears and inhibitions and DARE PLANT the SEEDS that are going to allow you to soar to new heights of motivation and accomplishment in 2010.

Our blog posts for March will focus first on DARE-ing to PLANT, how PLANTING new SEEDS now can excite you out of your winter doldrums so you’ll have better experiences to harvest later this year.

Next week, in DARE SUPPLY, we’ll let you in on some fascinating studies by experts who have proven that SEEDING your life with new activities and taking more risks can make you happier, healthier and even smarter. Did you know that there is a clear connection between having novel experiences and a rise in dopamine production in our brains? That means that trying new activities or even tasting new foods can instantly elevate our moods.  How great is that?

Our third March blogpost will give you tips and ideas to GO DARE, so you can turn your desires into actionable steps that will bring you closer to attaining your goals.  In that blogpost, we’ll give you a list of fun and even exotic activities to take your life from same-old, same-old to one that you’ll actually want to discuss at dinner parties!

Finally, in the last week in March, we’ll salute just a few of the DARE-APPARENT thousands of women over 40 who have taken their lives from ordinary to absolutely phenomenal.  Yes, they had to throw some caution to the wind, but they did it in a smart way, WEEDING out the old stuff to plant a new and fertile GARDEN.

Yes, March can be a cruel month weather-wise and otherwise.  All that Hallmark-card hype about Spring la-dee-dah, yet on most March days we’re still dressed in sturdier boots, hats and mittens than a first-grader!  After all, no smart 40-plus woman in her right mind is making like the silicone-slicked society sylphs photographed in The New York Times Style section doing leaps and laps over snow drifts dressed in stilettos and mini-skirts!

Still, even if you wait a few weeks and start on the first day of SPRING – March 21 – that’s OK too.  After all, Mother-frigging Nature Herself – the Goddess of all things fertile, fragrant and fresh -  decided March was the perfect month in which to PLANT SPRING. Think of DARE PLANT as taking the initial steps to open yourself up to a more bountiful life!

So, or SOW, as the case might be – regardless of your end goal, the key is making sure you PLANT something this month, because even the most verdant GARDENS and biggest ideas start with a tiny SEED.   You’ll be surprised at the rush you’ll get from just PLANTING something new!

DARE-INGly,

Liz DiMarco Weinmann

Photo by epSos.de.

So, how do you DARE?

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I did do it by staging a personal REVOLT – against my mindless eating, against my big lunches, against my elastic waistbands, against the threat of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Resolutions?  They’re OK for some women, but for this stubborn, unruly and cantankerous over-50 broad to really RULE over my bad habits once and for all, I needed to stage a complete REVOLT. 

Are you ready to REVOLT for your own good? Tell us about it – we DARE you!  We can get you DARE from Here!

On that day, I was elated.  As my name was called to go up on the dais to receive my MBA diploma,  the program administrator looked at my photo, and then back at me, and then at my photo again.  She kept saying, “But that’s not Liz Weinmann.  It can’t be Liz Weinmann.”

On the day I turned 57, the scale confirmed that I had lost 57 pounds.  Take that, meno-fat!  I went from a size 18 to a size 10 in six months, kept the weight off for an entire year, and I’m still dropping pounds.

As you think back on all the achievements and accomplishments of your life to date, weren’t some of those the experiences that involved a REVOLT on your part, even if just a little one – against the usual, beyond the comfortable, toward the unpredictable?

If you’ve never REVOLTED, this might just be your year to Go DARE! Need help?  Get DARE from Here!

By April 5, I had lost 20 pounds.  Which was also the day  I was so energized that I over-did it at the gym and then had to stay in bed for nearly a week.  Talk about wanting to REVOLT!

Then, I posted an online question to the Weight Watchers community about how I could do some kind of exercise while I was waiting to heal.  Boy, did I get a resounding REVOLT from them!  Their advice was to stop whining about how much weight I still needed to lose and focus instead on the fact that I had really hurt myself and my body was justifiably in REVOLT.

What I learned is that—duh—REVOLT goes both ways. 

As you stage your REVOLT to recharge your life, career or community in a positive way, make sure you’re prepared to deal with setbacks that could halt your progress.  Need help?  Get DARE from Here!

In fact, what distinguishes the most memorable campaigns – whether they are for marketing, for politics or for actual military battle – i.e., a real REVOLT! – is a mantra that grounds the leader (Ruler) and her team, a rallying cry that moves the action plan forward.  It was only after I dealt with the fear of what would happen to me if I didn’t lose the weight that I developed a mantra to help me achieve my goals.

The mantra was a command that I plastered at strategic points all over my house.  It was anchored by a SMART goal, which entailed a specific date, the amount I wanted to lose and milestones along the way to track my progress.

Like a lot of goal-oriented individuals, I chose my birthday as a deadline.  I was determined to lose 57 pounds by my 57th birthday.  So, the mantra I plastered all over my home – especially on my fridge – was this:  “57 by 57.”

What powerful and DARE-ing mantra would help you REVOLT to reach a Big Goal? Tell us about it – we DARE you!

In order to stage a successful REVOLT against my weight, I needed to be a strong Ruler – of my time, my resources, my diet, my exercise.

If you’ve ever staged a REVOLT – for your life, your career, for a cause you care deeply about – then you know that merely wanting to do something and actually getting it accomplished are two different things.  It requires discipline, goal-setting and all the other tips and advice you’ve heard thousands of times.   

Are there resolutions you would gladly “resurrect” if you knew you could stage a successful REVOLT to achieve your goals? Tell us about it – we DARE You!

For a big, brash and believable REVOLT, you need a lightning bolt.

To jolt myself to lose 60 pounds last year and keep it off, I decided to literally scare the fat out of my body (that Catholic-school fear thing again).

I set out to research all the ways that my appetite was a dictator over who I was vs. who I wanted to become.  I noted all the ways that my excess body weight could kill me and—considering that I am a 50-plus, type-A, childless, career-woman whose body mass index was at least 15 points higher than it should be—that was more of a lightning bolt than I had expected.

I obsessed about the fact that I was fattest in areas that put me at high risk for heart disease, cancer and other hideous diseases. I was almost as frightened as I would be in the face of an actual dictator.  That’s what ultimately did it for me, what pushed me to REVOLT.

What kind of dream, desire, fear or challenge could jolt you to REVOLT? Tell us about it – we DARE You!

A lot of us want to change ourselves, our careers or our communities in a year.  But, a REVOLT of that magnitude – a Big SMART Goal – can be daunting if you don’t set certain smaller goals, increments and benchmarks to hit along the way.

While a Big Goal, like a Big Cause, requires the dedication of a marathon or a fighting army, you don’t have the resources for that (unless you’re Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel).  All the more reason to set goals that can be accomplished in sprints of a few weeks, a month, several months.

Staging a REVOLT involves specific measurable goals you want to achieve, plus a strategy for achieving them, especially if you’re the one who’s a dictator.  If you’re trying to do too much, with too little time, or always for other people, that requires a different kind of REVOLT.  It requires a re-envisioning of what you want to become, in light of what you have to deal with now, rather than focusing on where you were in the past.  

As a visionary, intelligent, motivated woman over 40, when was the last time you REVOLTED against trying to fix the past and instead DARED to envision a great future? Tell us about it – we DARE You!