With all the hoopla about being 40 (even 50) from Julia Roberts to George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Madonna to Kim Cattrall, it’s a good time to be in midlife life. There are lots of reasons to celebrate! One is we’re not alone. All those glamorous types are getting up there too. But the truth is, sometimes we non-celebs (and even celebs I suppose) can go down the dark path.

We can get depressed about the fewer years ahead and the more behind us. About the “if onlys” those awful regrets we regret to have. We look around at everyone being younger than us! (Hey, where’s everyone MY AGE?) There’s a sense that we won’t ever be so many things. Our dreams seems to diminish as our wrinkles and aches and pains grow.  There’s often a sense of hopelessness. And then there’s the reminder in the mirror that we’re on the wrong side of youth…

So what do we do when we go into the funk? Go to Disneyland? or Go deeper into ourselves and just feel the muck, the yuck, the madness of midlife?

As Inner Guide, Mary Hoffman, says, “sometimes you just have to feel it and sit with that feeling to get past it.”

These past weeks I’ve found myself on a daily freak out. I think about my age, (I can’t even write the number here. It’s somewhere between George Clooney and Madonna) and what I’ve accomplished, questioning if it’s enough. Questioning if I’ve made my mark. Then I freak out some more like I’ve just been told I’ve got 6 months to live. And then I remember…I can’t change my age, but I can change my attitude.

As I’ve always said when things get a little rough on the midlife adventure front, “Remember this is where the deliciousness is.” It’s the Universe (or our subconscious or whatever you want to call it) putting a fire under us. Time to take action. Either inner or outer.

Adventure Tip: Take an inner adventure; Sit still. As Gregg Braden says, “Pray from the end.” Whether you pray, visualize or affirm, see it or say it as if it’s already where you want your life to be.

Adventure Tip: Take an outer adventure. Get off the couch, out of bed, and do something. Even a walk. Ideally go to an exciting event or take a mini-vacation, even one night somewhere else to get a new perspective.

Attitude Adjustment Adventure Tips:

•Create an midlife adventure notebook.

•List all your accomplishments to date. (Not just your Oscar or Emmy wins!) List the smallest to the biggest. They ALL count.

•Ask yourself, “Whose lives have I impacted?” These are the REAL accomplishments. That’s where you’ve made your indelible mark.

•List what you want to accomplish. Create visuals for that extra oomph.

•Start adventurizing your life. Right now!

-Tracy Pattin

Adventures come in all shapes and sizes AND appear in all types of places. One of the most powerful is an INNER ADVENTURE. Listen to Inner Guide, Mary Hoffman explain her powerful techniques to guide you through the depths of your inner being to discover new parts of yourself. In part 1 of Inner Midlife Adventure with Mary Hoffman, Mary talks about the process of using the dominant and non-dominant hand to tap into our subconscious. In part 2, Mary talks about connecting with our body through the subconscious. In Part 3, Mary talks about connecting with the spirit. It’s an adventure you won’t want to miss. And now in part 4 Mary talks about Shadow Work; where we explore our judgments of others and how we can learn more about ourselves in the process.

Adventure Tip: Resist the urge to constantly go “Out There” to reinvent yourself. Include an “Inner Adventure” to your adventurizing.

-Tracy Pattin

Adventures come in all shapes and sizes AND appear in all types of places. One of the most powerful is an INNER ADVENTURE. Listen to Inner Guide, Mary Hoffman explain her powerful techniques to guide you through the depths of your inner being to discover new parts of yourself. In part 1 of Inner Midlife Adventure with Mary Hoffman, Mary talks about the process of using the dominant and non-dominant hand to tap into our subconscious. In part 2, Mary talks about connecting with our body through the subconscious. And now in Part 3, Mary talks about connecting with the spirit. It’s an adventure you won’t want to miss.

Adventure Tip: Resist the urge to constantly go “Out There” to reinvent yourself. Include an “Inner Adventure” to your adventurizing.

-Tracy Pattin

Click Here For Inner Midlife Adventures Part 4

Click here for Midlife Travel Adventures part 1.

The movie, Eat, Pray, Love, has sparked a fascination for crossing the globe to find yourself. Sort of an inner-outer adventure. With my innate wanderlust plus the opportunity travel (because of my dad) with my airline passes, I trekked across the world in my 20s. Not sure if I “found myself” but I tested the waters. It was sort of an Eat, Pray, Love journey. Of course I did a lot of eating and yes, there were some hot romances, but the only praying I did was to make it to my next destination, or that the Algerian Border Guards wouldn’t shoot us and would let us into Morocco.Blank books were the rage then (blogs weren’t even a thought) so I decided to keep travel diaries of every trip. And now, I wrote theYES!book about those adventures, other people’s adventures and ways for you to get inspired to do your own adventurizing. Here’s an excerpt:

Sahara Adventure
Adventure Tip: Sometimes an adventure is not about how perfect and fabulous it is. It’s about the experience. This adventure was filled with hot, dirty, lonely days, dysentery, scary moments, depressing towns. Yet, it was the most fascinating experience of my life. Often when we change our attitude about a situation, we discover a great new adventure. Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Camping across North Africa with Australian travel group San Francisco-London (Then overland across Europe and North Africa) Flight 30, Gate 2B
8 available coach seats 3 paying standbys/5 non-revs (including me)

I can’t miss this flight. Then I’d miss my next adventure—camping across North Africa. Once again, I have to wait for my name to be called. I can’t decide whether I’m special and privileged or just a freak. Seems I always have to not know until the last minute to go anywhere.
Got middle seat, middle row, back of plane.

Adventure Tip: We must allow ourselves to not know so we can get out of the comfort zone that keeps us from knowing ourselves, testing ourselves on a deeper level.

London-North Africa-London Bus #2366 (more like an oversized hippie van than a tour bus) “Reserved” seats 14 Available seats 16 One male Kiwi (New Zealander) 11 female Aussies (Australians) 2 female septics (Aussie nickname for ‘Yanks’ because it rhymes with septic tank=septics=Penny & I) Tunis, Tunisia

Crossing the Sahara

Miles and miles of sand dunes. As we drove along the road, Berbers—nomadic people of the Sahara—strode along on camels, oblivious to the 107-degree weather. I wonder what their lives are like? What do they think about? Women walking with babies on their backs, a man with his head wrapped in white clothwearing a grey robe just sitting on a cow. They move from place to place. Are they happy? I’m not right at this moment. It’s hot, so hot. Not steamy hot but sandy, bristly hot. Rod Stewart’s Maggie May on the tape deck distracts me from this lonely, endless, two-lane highway of hypnotic hotness. I’m so glad I’m not one of those Berbers. But maybe they’re happy being wanderers. Our rest stop breaks up the monotony. We all take dibs on a sand dune to pee, crouching behind the hill so the truck drivers don’t get a glimpse, leaving our stamp of toilet paper flying in the wind like little white kites. I hate this. I love this.

“Remember, the rest of the world is not like Saratoga.” I remember, Mom.
Adventure Tip: When we experience something so different from our daily lives, it makes us look differently at ourselves. Maybe those Berber people were the happiest people on the planet. Adventure opens our eyes to new experiences, whether we’re loving where we are or hating it.

Sfax, Tunisia

Camped in an olive orchard. Why did we pick this trip? It’s so much work. Penny and I were sitting in our tent and suddenly three gypsy women with babies on their backs came right into our tent to look at us. They just stared and smiled. We smiled. In that moment I felt this strange connection. Like we were family. Another old man came by on his wooden cart. Stopped. And stared. What is he thinking? Could it even be translated? Did it need to be? I wonder what their lives are like.

Just think, one month ago I was spinning my dad’s globe. I closed my eyes and stuck out my finger. It landed right on North Africa. Penny and I decided that was our next adventure. A continent so far away. Now, we’re there, right here. The gypsies, the old man on the cart, their lives are as far removed from us as that point on the globe, but meeting them face to face makes me realize that maybe we’re not so far away. I hate this. I love this.

The sun disappearing over the sand dunes painted a peaceful, beautiful sunset. I forgot all about the desolate hotness of the day.

Are we there yet?

Nefta, Tunisia

Went on Oasis Camel Ride. This giant, dusty beast kneeled down so I could hop on its bumpy back. The biting flies were everywhere. I think I’m getting used to them now. The camel lurched forward and stood up. I was 10 feet high on this furry, sandy, smelly, spitting rollercoaster. Camels are known for spitting, just like all the men in my life. Greg, our guide, is now flirting with me outrageously.

En route to Tunisian border into Algeria

Another day of dawn-to-dusk driving down a hot highway framed by miles and miles of sand dunes. The Eagles’ song Hotel California makes me homesick. For a moment. All the windows on this rickety, old bus are open creating a dry, hot draft. Our only air conditioning. I imagine being at the ocean in Santa Cruz with a cool sea breeze. Then I look out the window. The gigantic sea of sand yanks me back to reality. No houses, no people, no animals, no California ocean. Just one straight tarred line of endlessness. Suddenly I long for stoplights, tailgaters, skyscrapers, crowds. So this is what loneliness looks like? I hate this. I love this.

Middle of the Sahara

Gas station (sort of)
Instead of tagging a sand dune, we got to pee in a real toilet! What luxury. It was a 4’x6’ cement room. A prison cell. Solitary confinement. Cockroaches everywhere. And the smell. Where’s the toilet? The sink? At least cells have them. It appeared to be that hole in the corner. As I crouched down with my precious one sheet of toilet paper, suddenly I heard giggles. Five pairs of large, brown eyes stared at me through the little window. I screamed at them. The kids laughed. I screamed again, they laughed harder. Then ran away.
“Remember! The rest of the world is not like Saratoga.” I remember, Mom!

Border between Tunisia and Algeria Somewhere in the middle of the Sahara Desert Reminds me of Checkpoint Charlie, East Berlin

-Tracy Pattin©2010

Stay tuned for part 3

With the opening of “Eat, Pray, Love” today, travel is on my mind. When I look back on all those amazing adventures across the globe I did in my 20s and 30s, I’m so grateful to my dad for giving me the opportunity through my airline passes to see the world. And so grateful that I wrote all those travel diaries to keep reliving the great memories. (and now in midlife, I’m ready for more adventures!) Here is an excerpt from my book about adventures of all kinds from across the globe to on my couch:

Tribute To My Dad

I can’t cry. I will not cry. Just breathe. I took a breath. It was my turn to
remember my dad.

December 20, 2008. As I looked around the chapel, my brothers, sisters, my
dad’s longtime companion, and all of his friends were waiting for me to
share my memories. I glanced at the picture on the altar next to his urn, in
his airline uniform, in the cockpit, smiling. I began. “My dad loved flying
more than anything else. He was in heaven at 35,000 feet, every time he
went to work for American Airlines. In fact, in the hospital he told the
doctor he was in the cockpit, and he thought the nurses were flight
attendants. He gave me that gift. The passion for flying. For travel. For
adventure.”

Then, I picked up the YES! book and turned to Chapter 1. “I think this really
sums up why my dad and I had such a love to see the world.” I began to
read. “I love this moment, the engines roaring down the runway…” As I
read the passage, it was like I was taking off on another adventure. I
continued reading. “…and then it happens. That breakthrough moment when
clouds give way to bright sun. We’re racing across the sky, the white
nothingness below and bright blue above turn into one fabulous magic
carpet ride.” I paused, looking around at all the smiles in the room. “And I
know right now my dad is on his own fabulous magic carpet ride.”

I closed the book. With my dad’s life complete, I felt somewhat complete.
So grateful for my wanderlust. My desire to see the world…Or maybe I’m
just beginning another giant adventure.

I hope this book inspires your adventurous spirit like my dad inspired mine.

Stay tuned for part 2 Excerpts From theYES!book. Sahara Adventure.

-Tracy Pattin©2010

“Everyone’s looking for something — for answers, for their true and higher purpose — and Gilbert had the fortitude (and the wherewithal) to take off alone on a journey around the world to find herself after her divorce” writes Christy Lemire in her review of new movie, Eat, Pray, Love.

When you’re over 40 and beyond, that search seems to go into overdrive as we assess our midlife lives on our chronological timeline wondering where has all the time gone? Am I fulfilled? Am I happy? Do I have a sense of purpose? What the hell have I done with my life?

If our assessment is that something is missing, do we give up? Surrender? Get fired-up and head in a new direction? Or maybe we do what Elizabeth Gilbert does and chuck it all and head to Italy, India and Bali in search of great food, spiritual enlightenment and fabulous romance.

Adventure Tip: Go see “Eat, Pray, Love.” Then step out of your own comfort zone. And then, Renew, Reinvent, Adventurize. Repeat.

Adventures come in all shapes and sizes AND appear in all types of places. One of the most powerful is an INNER ADVENTURE. Listen to Inner Guide, Mary Hoffman explain her powerful techniques to guide you through the depths of your inner being to discover new parts of yourself. In part 1 of Inner Midlife Adventure with Mary Hoffman, Mary talks about the process of using the dominant and non-dominant hand to tap into our subconscious. In part 2, Mary talks about connecting with our body through the subconscious. It’s an adventure you won’t want to miss.

Click Here for Part 3 Connecting with the Spirit

Adventure Tip: Resist the urge to constantly go “Out There” to reinvent yourself. Include an “Inner Adventure” to your adventurizing.

-Tracy Pattin

“The only way to get rid of a problem is to replace it with a more compelling life.”

Tony Robbins

Adventure Tip: Focus on creating a more compelling life rather than on your problems. Start stepping out and adventurizing and who knows? That problem may disappear or weaken as your life expands.

Need I say more? As we find our way to a more adventurous midlife, perhaps the word  “crisis” won’t be part of the phrase…Midlife Crisis. Maybe we will change it to Midlife Adventure. But it goes beyond thinking all the way to stepping…out of your comfort zone to a new part of you.

-Tracy Pattin

Adventures come in all shapes and sizes AND appear in all types of places. One of the most powerful is an INNER ADVENTURE. Listen to Inner Guide, Mary Hoffman explain her powerful techniques to guide you through the depths of your inner being to discover new parts of yourself. It’s an adventure you won’t want to miss. In part 1, Mary talks about connecting with the mind.

Adventure Tip: Resist the urge to constantly go “Out There” to reinvent yourself. Include an “Inner Adventure” to your adventurizing.

Click here for Part 2 Connecting with the body.

Click here for part 3 Connecting with the Spirit

-Tracy Pattin

Kids to seem to have the inside track on great life advice and they often don’t even know it!

The other day, my dear friend and I were commiserating about our midlife looks. Specifically our hair. Having to color it constantly and keep it looking young like our skin and body. She launched into a great story about her 11 year old niece who was visiting from Australia. “I was inspecting my gray hairs in the mirror (on my head!) when my niece comes in the room and says,’what are you doing, Auntie?’ I told her I was looking at all my gray hair popping up. She throws her hands up and asks, ‘Is that what you want to do with the rest of your life?’ I was instantly over it.”

Adventure Tip: Stop focusing on every gray hair and start noticing your great life! And listen to a kid once in a while.

-Tracy Pattin