The last few years have been hard, the world is in chaos. Our lives are turned upside down. Our jobs have been disrupted, technology has alienated us from each other, our politics are crazy, we’re in the middle of a pandemic and the economy is collapsing.

Everything seems out of control, and we are stressed.

Yet did you know that we have been given a built-in stress control device? A tool for putting our lives in perspective, A way of connecting with others. A path to joy. It’s called, Laughter.

Close your eyes and think, when was the last time you woke up deliriously happy, and excited to greet the day?

Remember, when running around in the summer with the sun on your skin was enough to make me happy. Remember, when you thought you could change the world?

You weren’t put on this earth to be beaten, downtrodden, defeated, and burdened. If you woke up this morning, you have something to be happy about.

Life is crazy and you might as well be crazy right along with it. You may be mad that Kylie Jenner is a billionaire and you’re not quite sure what she does. Well, at least I’m not sure. But you just need to laugh about it and all the other crazy things that happen in life and move on.

Now, you’re probably thinking, when you’re in-the-midst of despair how do you find the energy, the presence of mind to laugh?

Dr. Joe Robinson, in his book,  Don’t Miss Your Life: Find More Joy and Fulfillment Now, says, the answer is PLAY.

I know you think I’m crazy, but I know from personal experience this is true.

When I was in my rebellious phase, my mantra was, “Life Sucks and Then You Die!” Yes, it was total teenage angst. And because I was so negative, I gave up a lot on things I tried. Anytime life didn’t meet the picture I had in my head, I was disappointed. I could get 90 % of what I wanted, but the missing 10 % would send me into a tailspin of depression and recrimination. It took me a long time to learn how to enjoy the good parts and laugh, eventually, about the bad ones.
Yes, life is full of unexpected twists and turns, and it’s not always pretty. However, today, I have a much more positive mantra now. It’s a quote by George Santayana.

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.”

For me, the foundation of resilience is accepting life and seeing there is beauty in it. You may not like your circumstances, and you have the right to change them. But life is about taking the good with the bad.
If you can accept that life is full of success and failure, happiness and sadness, ugliness and beauty; that nothing is promised and time is short. Then you can face life each day as a new adventure.

Fairytales and Hollywood movies have given us the expectation that we will live happily ever after. And when things don’t turn out that way, we think we have failed. But fairytales and movies are fantasies.

Learn to accept the good times and the bad as part of the journey you are on and allow them to inspire you to new possibilities.

An audacious woman is passionate, inspired, excited and motivated. She looks in the mirror and sees beauty. She has cast off negative media images and societal expectations and embraced her full potential. She knows that being successful, rich, famous, or skinny isn’t what gives life meaning. It is when she is laughing or loving or living her dreams, that life is filled with joy.

An audacious woman is any woman who wakes up one day and realizes that life, love and happiness are not defined by her size, her age, or even outside of herself. She has learned that being audacious is a state of mind.
Some of the words used to describe an audacious woman are bold, bodacious, fearless, daring, amazing, awesome, brave, dauntless, smart, attractive, sexy. But sometimes we forget, we lose ourselves. Why?

The media has convinced us that we are old, that we have outlived our usefulness, that we are not enough. The media has convinced us that the only way to be of value is to buy what they are selling, and they are selling a lot. It is no longer enough to be married, raise children or be employed; rather, women are required to remain desirable, marriageable and employable.

This means women are constantly working to maintain a youthful appearance, raise families and succeed at their jobs, while continually questioning their purpose in life and if they really matter. After years of being bombarded with stereotypes, they have lost their true selves.

The consequence? Women are unhappy; they self-medicate; they overeat; they overspend; they are stressed; they suffer from depression; they feel lost. Life wears them down and they become more and more disconnected from their Spirit. According to society, “women of a certain age”, are fat, old, sexless, useless, unattractive, fill in the blank.
Really?

In Mauritania, men find fat women desirable; before they are married young women are force-fed a diet of up to 16,000 calories a day to make them eligible for marriage, in Mauritania, fat is considered beautiful.
Okay, putting aside, the force-fed part, maybe we just live in the wrong country. Maybe our assumptions are just wrong.

In Greek, Native American, Japanese, Korean, Indian and African societies, mature women are seen as a vital resource, full of wisdom. We all have things we accept without question, assumptions that make up our world view. We all have old scripts- old ideas, limiting beliefs, expectations, assumptions, fears, and blind spots. We must recognize, challenge, and revise these ideas associated with life and change because these beliefs give us mistaken messages.

We are audacious and we should live our lives accordingly.