I’m not usually big on birthdays, but I turned 40 last week and it felt like a bit of a milestone.

I’m not depressed per se about being almost middle-aged (I intend to live until I’m 98, so I have a few years to go on that one), but I have spent some time reflecting on how it feels to be on the other side of four decades.

Without further ado, here are my thoughts on life.

Put your shoulders into it

I was about 19, dancing with a guy I met in a bar in Otahuhu when he said to me. ‘You gotta put your shoulders into it.’ He would probably be surprised to know that I took his advice to heart and have carried it with me since.

Whatever it is that you embark on in life, don’t fanny about worrying whether you are any good at it or what people are thinking. Launch yourself like a rocket headed straight to Mars. Put your back into it. Whatever you do, do it with your whole heart, mind and soul.

‘But what if I fall? Oh but my darling, but what if you fly?’ - Erin Hanson.

Winnie the Pooh summed this up quite well “You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.” A.A Milne

It doesn’t really matter what you do

My Dad was nearing the end of his sixties when he told me he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.

That was the moment that I realised that no one knows want they want to do with their lives. We’re all just making it up as we go along.

Okay, I went to school with one chick who knew she wanted to be a forensic pathologist by the time she was 15, and I’ve met the odd person since with similarly solid life goals carved out. I’m sure they have excellent pensions. But this is not normal. I worked in recruitment for 15 years and met very few people who had it all figured out.

Here’s the kicker. It doesn’t matter.

We are but tiny blips in an infinite universe of super cool shit. In a very short while, I’ll be gone, and not long after that, there won’t be a person living who remembers anything about me at all.

Therefore, whether I take this job or that job, the left fork or the right makes not an ounce of difference.

Some people might find this depressing; but the idea that all the decisions I make are essentially irrelevant is very freeing.

There’s no wrong paths in life. Just different directions to travel in.

Look after your flesh bag, and it will look after you

Ok, ok, I know, the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack got there first with ‘wear sunscreen.’ Truly though, for better or worse, whatever makes you ‘you’ got squeezed out into the world in an amazing little package of skin, bone, muscle, vital organs and what not. Like one of those Uncle Ben’s boil in the bag rice sachets, only a lot more complicated.

Whatever you think of the outside covering that holds all your bits and bobs in, it’s the only one you’re ever going to have. Be good to it. Try to think well of the stuff that get you around in the world. It’s doing an awesome job.

Stuff will start going south, but you will care less.

The wheels start falling off sooner or later no matter how much yoga you do (for the record, I don’t do any, yoga bores the ever-loving crap out of me). But, one of the best things about ageing for me is that the older I get, the less I give two figs about anyone else’s opinion.

Maybe I get this from my mum. When she was 65, just after a shopping trip, she came twirling into my kitchen in a new dress and said to me ‘do I look more like Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe?’

Trust me, she wasn’t joking. This is the kind of confidence that I have aspired to ever since.

Do you know the poem Warning, by Jenny Joseph? ‘When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple, with a red hat that doesn’t suit me’

I love that poem (full text here). Heed the warning. Don’t wait until you’re old. Wear the red hat now.

Connection is not the only thing that matters in life, but it matters a hell of a lot.

You know those people you meet and you just know, straight away, that they matter and you want them in your life? They get you. They make you laugh somewhere right down deep in your belly, the kind of laugh that makes your abs vibrate and hurt in a way that planks never achieve. You can sit in absolute silence and on some level you’re having a kind of conversation.

These kinds of connections are rare, and they might last a night, one long hot amazing summer, ten, twenty or fifty years.

If there’s any possible way to go for fifty years, take that option.

People will change. They’ll have kids, they’ll fall in love and drop their friends for a bit, they’ll get busy at work, they’ll have dips in their mental or physical health. Shit will happen and this shit can cause even the deepest connection to drift.

Make an effort. Drop a text, put a date in the diary in 8 weeks time, leave a care parcel on their doorstep, make them a mix tape. Do whatever you have to do.

A best friend is the most intense love story you will ever experience in your life. Hang the hell onto them and don’t let them go.

Pick your funeral song

What I mean by this is that it doesn’t do any harm to have moments of remembering that cliche as it might be, life is phenomenally short. No days are promised to us, or any of the people that we love.

Whatever it is that you want to do, whatever it is that you enjoy, and most importantly, whoever you want to do it with - do it.

Enjoy all of life’s simple pleasures, because life is a miracle and an accident and there’s not much more to it than enjoying the sound of rain, the sight of the night sky, the thrum of live music through your feet, the ocean on your skin, the heartbeat of the people you love, those random conversations you have at 2am. A really perfect tarte tatin. My god, go to France and eat a tarte tatin.

Life is just a series of moments strung together. Have as many good ones as you can.

Incidentally, my funeral song is ‘the Whole of the Moon’ by the Waterboys.

I spoke about wings
You just flew

I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon, the whole of the moon.

Whatever it is that’s bothering you, deal with it.

Easier said than done, I know, but not impossible. Is there something that’s on your mind, that holds you back, some lingering trauma or anxiety that makes you unhappy or impacts your work or your relationships?

Deal with that shit.

Find yourself a (qualified / appropriate) psychologist, coach, book, group, friend to talk to, journal - whatever is available to you and whatever it takes. You might need to revisit this more than once in your life, because like corks, issues tend to pop up more than once.

We all have our stuff. Whatever yours is, don’t let it take over your life.

People don’t really age, they just get older.

For a variety of reasons, I have a few close friends who are a lot older than me. I’m talking mid 50s, mid 60s, late 70s and mid 80s. They think about all of the same kinds of things younger people do. Similar fears, anxieties, desires. The only thing that has changed is the way the world perceives them.

Consequently, I have developed a theory that people have an age that they get to and then they basically stay that age forever. On the inside, I’m about 32. It just so happens that every day I look in the mirror and see more of my mother looking back at me.

The good news about this is that if any part of you is worried that you won’t be up for a good time when you have the skin of a ripe walnut, the memory of a goldfish and a bra that clips around your knees, you can stop worrying.

Good times are out there for the plucking right until you’re six foot under.

And that’s it. If I think of anything else by the time I’m 50, I’ll report back.

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Do you have life advice or thoughts on ageing to share? Drop it below.

And if you’d like to spend 90 minutes with a registered Psychologist exploring how to build your resilience skills, and how to bring more positivity into your life, check out our next Mental Fitness virtual session here.

Blog by Ngaire Wallace - suggest a blog topic by contacting ngaire@theeffect.co.nz.