My new friend is a university professor who’s preparing to leave her career and start her second act in life. She’s looking for guidance and advice from someone who has already been walking that path for a few years. I’m always happy to support other women in whatever way I can so this was an easy yes.

The meeting was a lovely 30 minutes of my day. What struck me about this woman wasn’t her courage or her belief in herself, it was her happiness.

She’s 4 years older than me and radiated positivity. Several times she said, “after 50 is amazing, the best is yet to come.”

I love joyful, self-confident people. Even though the purpose of that conversation was supposed to be me helping her, I think I got as much help as she did.

Because honestly, sometimes being an entrepreneur is emotionally hard.

After that conversation, I entered the weekend with a lot of enthusiasm. The best IS yet to come. There is nothing but potential in front of me and the only thing stopping me is ME!

It’s a message I choose to share with you today because our time now, after 50, is when we get to put all of our hard-earned knowledge and life experience to work.

I mean seriously, I’m sure it’s the same with you, I worked my butt off to get to this point.

And… alongside all the newfound freedom we have, midlife also brings us special health challenges. The good news is that none of those challenges have to stop us from living a vibrant, productive and fulfilled life – for decades to come.

You may be seeing health issues start to crop up because, once we’re over 50, our body just isn’t as forgiving anymore. Bad habits we mindlessly indulged in when we were younger, and we thought we’d get away with forever, finally caught up with us.

Our miraculous body is still forgiving though. We just have to be nicer to her and actually do all the things we already know we need to do.

When we were raising families, serving our employers (or both at the same time) we usually put our own health and needs on the back burner.