Things I Understand Differently at 52 Than I Did at 32

I’ve been thinking about how strange it is that some of the things that felt SO important to me at 32 barely matter to me now.

Not because I suddenly have life figured out at 52.

I definitely don’t.

But twenty years gives you a lot of time to live through things, change your mind, lose some things, gain some things, make mistakes and realize that life rarely goes exactly the way you thought it would.

And somewhere along the way, what matters starts to shift.

I still care about plenty of things.

I just don’t care about all the same things in the same way anymore.

There are also things I understand now that I really couldn’t have understood at 32 because I hadn’t lived them yet.

Maybe I’ll feel the same way about 52 when I’m 72.

I hope I get the chance to find out.

Not everything deserves the energy I used to give it

This is probably one of the biggest ones.

I used to worry about things that I probably wouldn’t give five minutes to now.

What somebody thought.

Something somebody said.

Whether the house looked a certain way.

Things I thought HAD to get done.

Problems I thought needed to be fixed right now.

I still worry. I still overthink things. I still get irritated by things that probably aren’t worth being irritated about.

I’m still me.

But one of the things I’ve had to learn is that energy isn’t unlimited.

That lesson has become especially important as my health has changed because sometimes I really do have to decide what deserves the energy I have that day.

But I think it applies to more than physical energy.

How much mental energy am I giving something?

How much time am I spending thinking about something I can’t change?

Is this going to matter next week? Next year?

I’ve learned that sometimes making life easier isn’t about figuring out how to get everything done.

Sometimes it’s realizing everything doesn’t need to get done in the first place.

One thing that helps me is getting everything out of my head and onto paper. I do a brain dump, then look at what actually matters today, what can wait and what I probably don’t need to be worrying about at all.

Some days I choose one main thing and go from there.

It doesn’t magically make me stop worrying or overthinking.

But it helps.

If your brain tends to feel full too, I’ve written more about how I use brain dumping to clear some of that mental clutter. You can read that here: BRAIN DUMP ARTICLE

I also created a daily focus worksheet/planner because sometimes I just need somewhere to put everything that’s bouncing around in my head before I can figure out what to do with any of it. 

People are going to think what they’re going to think

I wish I could tell you that at 52 I no longer care what anybody thinks about me.

Nope.

But I care a whole lot less.

I’ve learned that you can explain yourself until you’re blue in the face and someone can still misunderstand you.

People can hear one part of a story and decide they know the whole thing.

They can think they know what you should have done when they weren’t the one standing there having to make the decision.

And sometimes there isn’t an explanation that’s going to change someone’s mind anyway.

I spent way too much time when I was younger wanting people to understand me.

These days, I’m more concerned with whether I can live with the choices I’m making.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care if I hurt someone or that I never need to explain myself.

Quite the opposite.

Part of getting older for me has also been learning to own the things I get wrong, apologize when I need to and try to do better.

But there’s a difference between taking responsibility for yourself and spending your life trying to control everyone else’s opinion of you.

I’m getting better at knowing the difference.

Our kids never needed us to be perfect

This one hits differently once your kids are grown.

I didn’t do everything right as a mom.

There are things I would change if I could go back.

There are things I’ve apologized for.

And I’m sure there are things my girls remember very differently than I do.

But looking back, I understand something now that was harder to see when I was right in the middle of raising them.

They didn’t need a perfect mom.

They needed someone who loved them.

Someone who showed up.

Someone who listened.

And someone who could admit when she got something wrong and try to do better.

Motherhood doesn’t end when your kids grow up either. It just changes.

One of my favorite things about this stage of life is getting to know my daughters as adults.

They’re still my girls.

But they’re also women with their own lives, experiences, opinions and dreams.

And I really like getting to know who they’ve become.

If I could talk to 32-year-old me about motherhood, I think I’d tell her to worry a little less about whether she was doing everything exactly right and pay even more attention to the ordinary moments happening right in front of her.

Because those ordinary years don’t feel quite so ordinary once they’re behind you.

A good life doesn’t have to look impressive

At 32, I think I probably measured success by how much I was doing.

Work.

Money.

Accomplishments.

Being busy.

Getting things done.

Having plans.

I still have goals. I still want to make money. I still want to accomplish things.

And I still manage to come up with about 47 new ideas before I’ve finished my morning coffee.

But what I want my life to actually feel like has changed.

I want time with the people I love.

I want enough money that I’m not constantly worrying about it.

I want to travel and see places I haven’t seen.

I want a comfortable home.

I want things on the calendar that I’m excited about.

I want good conversations.

I want to laugh a lot.

And I want ordinary days that feel good too.

Recently, Bob and I were on our way somewhere when we ended up taking a different route.

We knew how to get there the regular way and could have changed it back, but we decided to keep going.

We ended up driving through back roads and countryside we’d never seen, even though it was all fairly close to home.

It wasn’t a vacation.

It didn’t cost anything.

There wasn’t some big destination at the end.

It was just a drive.

But we came home talking about doing it again and seeing what else is around us that we’ve never bothered to explore.

That’s the kind of thing I appreciate more now.

A good life doesn’t have to be made entirely of big things.

Sometimes it’s a random drive.

Coffee with someone you love.

A campfire.

A trip you’ve been looking forward to.

Everybody being home for dinner.

Finding someplace new 30 minutes from your house.

None of that sounds particularly impressive.

But it sounds like a pretty good life to me.

“Someday” comes a lot faster than you think

At 32, twenty years sounded like forever.

At 52, I can tell you it wasn’t.

This one has really been on my mind lately.

There are so many things we say we’ll do someday.

Someday we’ll take that trip.

Someday we’ll go there.

Someday I’ll call that person.

Maybe next year.

Maybe when the kids are older.

Maybe when there’s more money.

Maybe when work slows down.

Maybe when life isn’t quite so busy.

And then one day the kids are older.

Twenty years have passed.

People you thought would always be there aren’t.

Your circumstances change.

You change.

And some of the things you thought you’d eventually get around to never happened.

I got a funny little reminder of this recently in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

I’ve watched Groundhog Day at least once a year for years. We live close enough to Punxsutawney that going there wasn’t exactly some impossible bucket-list adventure.

And yet we’d never gone.

It was always one of those “we should do that sometime” things.

On our way home from a trip recently, we realized we were close.

It was raining. It wasn’t the ideal day. We didn’t even get out of the car.

But I wanted to go.

So we went.

Was it some life-changing experience?

No.

But I’m glad we stopped.

And we’ll go back another time and actually explore.

It was such a small example of something I’ve been thinking about more and more.

I don’t want everything I want to do living permanently in “someday.”

That doesn’t mean ignoring bills, responsibilities or reality and doing everything we want tomorrow.

That’s not real life either.

Sometimes the money isn’t there.

Sometimes your health isn’t there.

Sometimes the timing really isn’t right.

But I’ve become much more aware of how easily “not right now” can eventually become “we never did.”

So if something really matters to me, I’m trying to ask a different question:

Is there a version of this we CAN do?

Maybe it isn’t the big version I pictured.

Maybe it needs to be changed.

Maybe it takes longer.

Maybe it’s a rainy drive through Punxsutawney instead of the perfect fall day I imagined.

But it still counts.

And it still becomes part of our story.

Life probably isn’t going to look exactly the way you planned

Mine certainly doesn’t.

There are things about my life today that 32-year-old me never would have predicted.

Some wonderful.

Some really hard.

Some I chose.

And some I absolutely did not.

I’ve had to change plans.

I’ve had to let go of things I thought my life would include.

I’ve had to figure out what comes next when the original plan isn’t possible anymore.

For a long time, I think changing the plan felt a little like failure.

I don’t see it that way anymore.

Sometimes life changes and you have to change with it.

You work with what you have.

You figure out what still matters to you.

And you build from there.

The Good Life Vibe itself has changed as my own life has changed.

What I thought this space would be years ago isn’t exactly what it is today.

Neither am I.

I’ve had to rethink what work looks like for me, what productivity looks like, what I’m capable of doing and what I actually want to build.

I’m still figuring that out.

But I no longer think a changed dream automatically means a failed dream.

Sometimes it means you’re finally building around your real life instead of waiting for your old life to come back.

I pay more attention to what I want my life to feel like

I don’t think I thought about this nearly as much at 32.

Back then, I was more likely to think about what I needed to accomplish.

Now I think about both.

Of course I still need lists and goals and plans. I have bills. I have responsibilities. I have things I want to build.

But I also ask myself:

Do I have anything I’m looking forward to?

Am I spending time with the people who matter to me?

Is everything in my life a responsibility right now?

Am I making room for things that are simply fun?

Am I making my life harder than it needs to be?

Sometimes I’ll write these things down.

Sometimes I’ll make plans.

And sometimes it’s as simple as putting something on the calendar so “we should do that sometime” becomes “we’re doing this Saturday.”

I’ve learned that a life can become very full of things that need to be done if you’re not intentional about leaving room for things you actually want to do.

And I don’t want to wake up twenty years from now and realize I was always waiting for life to calm down before I enjoyed it.

A few questions I’m asking myself at 52

I don’t have a list of rules for how anyone else should live.

Your life is different from mine.

What matters to you may be completely different from what matters to me.

But these are a few questions I’ve found myself coming back to:

What am I giving energy to that really doesn’t deserve this much of it?

What do I keep saying I’ll do “someday”?

What does a good life actually look like to me now?

Am I holding onto an old version of success because I still want it, or because it’s what I once thought I was supposed to want?

If my life can’t look exactly the way I planned, what can I build with what I have now?

I don’t always like my answers.

Sometimes the answer tells me I need to change something.

Sometimes it tells me I’m worrying about something that really doesn’t matter.

And sometimes it reminds me that there are already really good things in my life that I don’t want to rush past while I’m busy working toward the next thing.

That’s also part of why I use a simple daily planning system now instead of treating every item on my list like it has the same importance.

My Daily Focus Planner gives me a place to decide what actually matters today and what can wait. 

And I still don’t have it figured out

This may be the funniest thing I’ve learned.

When I was younger, 52 sounded VERY grown.

Surely a 52-year-old woman knew what she was doing.

Apparently not.

I’m still figuring things out.

I’m still learning.

I’m still changing my mind.

I’m still getting things wrong and trying to do better the next time.

But I do know myself better than I did at 32.

I know more about what matters to me.

I know there are things I don’t want to spend another twenty years worrying about.

And I know there are people, places and experiences I don’t want to keep putting off until someday.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts of getting older.

You don’t necessarily get all the answers.

You just start getting a little clearer about which things are actually worth your time.

And if I’m lucky enough to be sitting here at 72 someday, I’m sure she’ll look back at 52-year-old me and think there were still plenty of things I didn’t understand.

I really hope I get the chance to find out.

Before you go...

If this got you thinking about your own life, grab a piece of paper and finish these three sentences:

I want to spend less energy on...

I want to make more room for...

I don’t want to keep saying “someday” about...

Don’t worry about coming up with the perfect answers.

Just write down the first things that come to mind.

You might already know exactly what they are.

In this together,

Laura