I spoke with a journalist last week and I’ve had good media coverage in Waitrose Weekend. My comments relate to Madonna Turning 60.

We tend to review life at these major birthdays as we transition from one decade to another, and ideally it is a time to look back and see how far we have come, to celebrate our successes and make positive plans for the future.

If your life is focused on internal satisfaction and you readily recognise what has already been achieved, you are much more likely to embrace every birthday as a step forward because you know that what happens is down to you and you will respond in a positive way. But if your focus is on what you feel you have not achieved, or you feel that the control in your life is external perhaps your job or your relationship is unstable, or your children are leaving home- it is much harder to feel good about what might lie ahead.

What we judge as success can also impact on how we see ourselves as we look in the mirror. Our focus might well be on the changes to our face and body, and too often we see this negatively rather than focusing on how healthy we are.

50, 60, 70 are still ages where you are likely to be healthy and have so much time left to do the things you want to do with more freedom to do so!

Relationships

It can be a good time to sit with your partner and to think about what you both want in the future. Retirement will be on the horizon and you want to make sure that if you have different views, it will still fit well together. For example, if he wants to spend more time in the garden and you want adventures it could work, you don’t have to do everything together.

But this could be a time for a deeper consideration. For some the relationship has run its course. You have become more like house mates with different interests. Whilst sad and a giant life change most who decide to separate at 50 or 60 and above come through it happier and feeling they have made the right choice. Relishing their single life.

A scan of some of the article can be found here.