It’s not your age, it’s your attitude!

A successful best-selling female author and entrepreneur who started a business at 47 and wrote her first book less than a year later will be helping other women to succeed in midlife with her latest Age with Attitude course starting in May.

The first session will be held at a venue in Central London from 21^st to the 23^rd May.  Lindsey Agness, founder of The Change Corporation, author of ‘Change Your Life with NLP’ and the soon to be released ‘Still 25 Inside’, will be helping a group of positive 40+ women to achieve success and fulfillment by following her ‘8 Attitudes of the Successful Mid Life Woman’.

Age with Attitude is a 10-day programme spread over 10 months, which focuses on bringing about long-term, sustainable change over a 10-month period, rather than trying to find a ‘quick fix’ in just one session.

The programme helps to challenge some of the common myths associated with women approaching mid-life including ‘I’m too old to have what I want’, ‘I’m not good enough to compete with younger models’ and ‘I need surgery to feel good about myself’.

The first Age with Attitude programme started last December and is due to finish in September this year.  The women on the programme are seeing dramatic changes in their lives already, six months before the course finishes!

Audra Lamoon, 43 co-founder of Your Impact and co-author of ‘Blondes in Business’ is currently enrolled on the Age with Attitude programme and has just completed the second module. She says;

“Lindsey, Karen and Janice were amazing, as before and really got involved and each know personal things about us and so they really know how to help and respond and encourage us at crucial times. They are absolutely the right people to be leading such a life changing course, my thanks to them!”

After years of prioritising husbands and families, many women want more out of their lives as they approach mid-life and sometimes, the urge to find personal fulfilment is overwhelming, says Lindsey.

“This is a time which can be surprisingly liberating for women if you are prepared to search out and take the opportunities,” explains Lindsey, who is a Certified Trainer of NLP.

The reason Age with Attitude works so well is because Lindsey has personally experienced the challenges facing women as they age and has come out on top! She decided to leave her successful consultancy career in 2005 to build a new business giving others more choices about how to lead their lives and it was through experiencing the challenges of mid-life herself that she felt compelled to encourage a new movement of women wanting to challenge current cultural norms about growing older and gain inspiration from others on a similar path.

“I made four life changing decisions during my 40’s, to leave my marriage, leave my job, start The Change Corporation and embark on my first writing project and I’ve never looked back. My ‘Age with Attitude’ course is dedicated to mid-life women everywhere realising their true potential in a seemingly youth-orientated world. It is for women who believe in beginnings not endings,” says Lindsey.

For more information or to book your place visit http://www.agewithattitude.co.uk or call 01304 621735

The Mathematical equation for a successful marriage?!

I was bemused to see a story in the paper last week which claimed that scientists have announced a mathematical formula to increase the chances of a long and happy marriage by a fifth. According to the Geneva School of Business, a bride should be five years younger than her groom, should come from the same cultural background, and be the more intelligent of the pair if couples are to have a successful marriage.

Now I’m sure that you know many happily married couples who challenge this theory, and many unhappy ones that match the criteria above and still didn’t work out! I really do think that it is a little too easy to suggest that these factors will contribute to a happy and successful relationship as first and foremost, it is about the attitudes and feelings of the individuals involved.

The woman may have the right age difference, she may have a degree when he doesn’t and be of the same cultural background, but if she is feeling like she isn’t emotionally supported by her husband, if she feels like she has to compete with younger models at work to gain recognition and if she is feeling like she doesn’t really know who she is anymore after years of being just ‘a mum’, then its highly likely that her relationship is going to suffer as result.

I’ve found that many women on the Age With Attitude programme have seen it as much needed ‘Me Time’. Often in life, women tend to become quite invisible when it comes to their own needs, when juggling family and work, and so this programme gives them the opportunity to find out who they really are again.

There are several key attitudes to being successful in midlife that are particularly relevant to this story and these include ‘I am true to myself’, ‘ I know who I am’ and ‘I like myself’ and I think it is variables like these that will affect the likelihood of a long and successful relationship.

I believe that its only when you are happy with yourself and like who you are, can you even begin to look at what makes a happy relationship.

The key to happiness doesn’t lie in Beauty Treatments

To say I was concerned at the recent story of a mother injecting her 16 year old daughter with Botox is perhaps an under statement to say the least. It does make me wonder what kind of world we are bringing our children into if those as young as 16 are concerned about fine lines and wrinkles, but having said that it does look like this is probably going to be the next teen fad, like the obsession with the super skinny look of the catwalk models a few years ago.

As a mother with a twenty year old daughter, I am all too aware of the messages that I continue to send her as a mid life woman and I know the way that I deal with how my looks change with age will influence the way she views her own ageing too. When looking at the story of Sarah Burge and her daughter Hannah, I wondered how much of the insecurities of 49 year old Sarah have already affected her daughter to the point where at such a young age, she believes that cosmetic surgery is an absolute necessity to feel and look good about yourself.

This desire that ‘I need cosmetic surgery to feel good about myself’ is one of the myths of midlife that I challenge in my Age with Attitude course as it is something that the women in our AWA community admit is a big pressure as they age. Sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in the belief that in order to be happy, successful, in love, have a great career, you need to look young.

The reality is that you will only ever manifest what you believe, and so if you feel that you won’t be successful or you won’t get that promotion because you are a certain age, changes are you probably won’t!

That’s why on the Age with Attitude course, I teaches women to believe in the 8 attitudes of successful midlife women which are:

• I live my life on purpose

• I create what I want

• I know who I am

• I am true to myself

• I am good enough

• I like myself

• I take time for me

• I’m certain of my success

If any of this rings true with you, why not take our AWA Questionnaire on the Age with Attitude website and find out what AWA rating you are? Then you can take positive steps to move on to the next stage in your AWA journey and learn to love yourself just the way you are.

Age discrimination at the BBC in the spotlight yet again

I wasn’t surprised to see a story in the Mail recently that Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly is sueing the BBC for age discrimination after she was axed from the BBC show. There’s been a number of similar criticisms aimed at the broadcaster in recent years including the high profile departure of Arlene Phillips from Strictly Come Dancing after she was replaced by younger model Alesha Dixon.  It’s sad but this is far from an isolated incident.

My Age with Attitude programme focuses on the ‘8 Attitudes of the Successful Mid Life Woman’ revealing some of the common myths associated with women approaching mid-life including ‘I’m too old to have what I want’, ‘I’m not good enough to compete with younger models’ and ‘I need surgery to feel good about myself’. I’ve come across many women who have been in Miriam’s position and they especially benefit from a module which focuses on the ‘I am good enough’ attitude, where we provide the tools to work on their self-esteem and feeling of self worth. After this, women will feel more empowered to compete against their younger counterparts and come out on top.

What I really want to achieve with my programmes is to empower women to take a stand and be more confident in challenging their employers if they feel their age is being used against them. One such delegate was 66 year old Margaret Caiger-Watson who wanted to stay on in her job beyond 65 and subsequently secured an extension at her workplace after attending the Age with Attitude pilot programme last year.

Afterwards, Margaret said, “I was so much more confident after the programme that I felt I could take on anything that was presented to me.”

What has happened to Miriam is one of the reasons why I was inspired to develop this programme. I want to challenge the image obsessed media like the BBC to take a different perspective on their midlife workers, who I know still have so much to offer.