As a single woman over 60, I am keenly aware that it’s often tough to feel confident. I sometimes feel like I have to put on my boxing gloves to get out there and stay relevant. After all, we live in a world that equates beauty and talent with youth.

Unfortunately, as we age, it’s easy to buy into that narrative. But I am here to tell you that believing youth is the key to beauty erodes our confidence – and confidence it hot! Confidence is youthful! Confidence is sexy!

So here are 5 ways to improve that confident feeling.

Smile

Smiling is the first thing you can do. That’s it, just smile. Look happy. Look like you are enjoying your life. Look like you are important to the world. Look like you know a huge secret, not like you are exhausted.

Let’s face it, as our faces age, those lines can make us look a little cranky before our feet even hit the ground as we get out of bed.

So, unless you are consciously working on having a happy expression, you might look cross, and who wants to engage with that? A happy expression is the fountain of youth. And, if you don’t feel like smiling, smile anyway.

Move with a Purpose

Someone who is moving with purpose is going somewhere, right? That woman is part of the world and part of life – and is important. That is a woman who has vitality.

So, who would you rather spend time with, the woman who drags herself down the sidewalk or the woman who wants to get where she is going? Make your steps have a purpose.

Wear What Makes You Feel Good About Yourself

Let me ask you this: what makes you feel better: an outfit that you are tugging on all night or one that makes you feel like you look your best? This isn’t about weight, or how much you spend, or what’s in fashion this season.

This is about meeting yourself where ever you are and wearing clothing to match. If you need a bigger size, get it. If your heels are too high and you can’t walk in them, chuck them. You aren’t looking and feeling your best by wearing them – even if that’s what the stylish magazines want you to think.

Have Joy

Joy is the ultimate confidence builder. When you are feeling joyous, you are exuding confidence with every step you take. Your joy is infectious, and, naturally, it makes others want to be around you. It makes you fun.

Not feeling joyful? You can fake it if you want to, but a better strategy would be to simply find something that lifts up your spirits. It could be the sunny weather or a song you love. Or it could be a favorite face that smiles at you from a family photo.

Stay Relevant

Know what’s going on around you. Be interested in the world. Be active every day. Confidence comes from being able to hold your own in any group situation.

So, don’t be afraid to enter a room. Simply smile, take a deep breath, and go for it.

How do you build and maintain your confidence after 60? What strategies have worked for you? Do you count on personal style to make you more confident? Please share your advice with our community!

Kelly Dodd’s Mascara on Her Instastories

Real Housewives of Orange County Instagram Beauty

Last week Kelly Dodd took to Instagram to let us know about a drug store brand of mascara that is just as good, if not better, than the higher end brand she uses and is a fraction of the price. I had to piggy back on bringing this news to you because it’s the brand I use and I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to spending more than $10 on mascara.

I ended up with mine because for some reason Big Blonde Husband decided to go to Costco and bring me back a three pack because some lady told him it was really good. I gave him a huge eye roll and said “Like you are going to tell me what good mascara is … I look at this stuff for a living!” And here I am, looking like a fool. A fool with really great lashes and an extra $20 in my pocket.

The Realest Housewife,

Big Blonde Hair

Click Here To Shop Her L’Oreal Lash Paradise Mascara

Photo & ID Credit: @kellyddodd

Originally posted at: Kelly Dodd’s Mascara

Here is a story you probably don’t know:

Two Zen students were telling each other about their teachers.

“My teacher is a great master who does amazing things. With three strokes of his sword, he can cut an apple off a tree and slice it into quarters before it hits the ground. He can shoot an arrow into the center of a target, then split that arrow with a second one.”

The other student said, “That’s pretty good, but my teacher is a really great master who does really amazing things.”

“What can he do?” asked the first.

“When my teacher walks, he just walks. When he sleeps, he just sleeps. When he eats, he just eats.”

Eating Mindlessly vs. Eating Mindfully

Mindful eating encompasses an entire way of approaching food that will help you take less in.

It seems pretty simple – when you want to eat, just eat. The problem is that we hardly ever just eat.

In this day and age, multi-tasking is the norm. It’s rare that we are only doing one thing at a time. Television, emails, and social networking – we feel like we have to keep up with all of them while we’re working, playing, and eating. Otherwise, we feel like we’re wasting time.

However, multi-tasking isn’t really possible. The mind can only focus on one thing at a time. Everything else goes to the background.

If your mind is elsewhere while you eat, you aren’t paying attention to the flavor of the food or to how full you are. Before you know it, the food is gone, but you hardly tasted it. You ate too fast and too much. You feel stuffed, but not satisfied.

A Damaging Connection

There’s a problem on another level. A connection develops between eating and what you’ve been doing while eating.

Before long, when you start to watch television or surf the web, you’ll also feel the urge to get something to eat. And mindless eating in front of a screen of any kind will undermine your intention to take less in.

Slow Down and Concentrate

Instead, when you eat, just eat. Take the time to eat more slowly, with mindfulness of the taste, temperature, and texture of each bite. You’ll make better choices about what to eat, get more satisfaction from it, and recognize when you no longer feel hungry.

Here’s a surprisingly powerful technique to encourage mindful awareness during meals: To slow yourself down, set your utensils down.

Often, as soon as we’ve put a spoonful of food in our mouth, we start loading up the next bite. Instead, after taking each bite, gently set your utensils down and chew until that bite’s finished.

If you are clenching your fork, you may also be clenching your jaw. When there is tension in your jaw, you can feel it in your shoulders, neck, and forehead. It even extends to your arms, chest, back, and the rest of your body – a tense jaw can make your toes curl!

You may find that when you are holding on to your utensils, you are also holding your breath! When you relax your grip, your whole body relaxes and it’s easier to breathe.

Make It a Habit

To develop the habit of setting your utensils down, have your notepad with you at the table. Each time you realize you are holding on to your utensils and starting to take some food for the next mouthful while you’re still chewing, put the utensils down and make a tally mark.

You’ll soon be more aware and more consistent at setting your fork down with each bite. Here’s a link to an interview where I explain these techniques in more detail.

How often do you just eat – without distractions or feeling like you should be do something else at the same time? When are the times you are most likely to multitask while eating? What can you do to make it easier to just eat? Have you tried these psychological techniques before? Please share your experience with our community!

With everything going on in our world these days, friends are essential to our health. I don’t have family nearby, so maintaining my friendships is especially important, especially those friendships with history. It takes effort, but staying in contact with as many of our friends as possible is a priority for most of us.

In fact, I’ve put a name to this and say I’m dating my friends. Not so weird since I write a lot about relationships and find myself skewing almost everything in life to dating.

A few years back, I wrote an article about the quest for a literary agent, and compared that elusive search to dating.

Same with tile guys. I considered all candidates from the point of view of a woman dating online. Did the guy arrive late? How savvy were his social skills? Did he put on little plastic booties before coming into my house?

Friends with History Are the Best

When I needed a real estate agent, though, I turned to a friend, in spite of the old advice about keeping business separate from friendship. We went back 20 years, and there’s nothing like history for cutting through the stickiness that crops up with tricky stuff like selling your house.

She told me, for example, my room color choices (pale pink, please don’t laugh) were turning buyers off. I listened, we repainted, and the place sold.

Recently, I had a two-hour phone conversation with two friends I originally met in Crete, Greece over 20 years ago. One now lives in Nova Scotia, and the other lives in Crete.

There’s nothing like going back, way back, remembering the old stories, the kind where you had to be there. Having a belly laugh over the time I spit out my wine at dinner in an outdoor restaurant because my friend made me laugh? No one but your oldest friend can share that with you.

I recently connected with a friend I’ve known over 50 years, and for the first time in a long while, we exchanged life stories, catching up on the personal stuff, remembering our childhood adventures, talking about my mom, whom she remembers fondly.

Multiple Dates Are Great

These moments warm our hearts, ease our minds, help us wind down. Keeping our spirits up by dating a different friend every day is as important as eating well and exercising.

“All we really have is people – nothing else matters,” says my friend Patricia.

And having a couple of back-to-back dates is not only acceptable, it gives you energy.

“You get something different from every one of your friends,” another friend says, adding that with good friends, “There’s nothing you can do that is horrible; nothing you can’t say.”

Like real dating protocol, there are rules of etiquette to follow when dating your friends and acquaintances. Here are a few suggestions for making your phone and Zoom get-togethers with friends you cherish.

Here are my 8 suggestions for connecting with your friends.

Call or Text with an Upbeat Story or Anecdote

Even a simple recipe or book suggestion, or the latest and greatest offering on Netflix or Hulu helps. Share your recipe for a disinfectant spray that can be made with bleach, soap, and water. We all need a break from the current news alerts.

Don’t discount acquaintances whom you’d normally never have on your daily radar. Reach out, ask how they’re doing.

Zoom’s Group Date Option

A group date with friends on Zoom is a popular way to get together. But if the talk about the latest developments in the news gets too heavy to handle, feel free to leave. You need a break from reality, and the other participants may not be on your wavelength.

No Judgment

I don’t know about you, but my friends and I joke that many of us will come out of this with our natural – and by this I mean gray or white – hair color revealed. That goes for eyebrows and whatever else gets done in the salon.

Isolation, especially for those of us who live alone, means letting go of some of the special grooming (nails, brows, and more) that’s a part of our routine. Which is why you’ll want to keep those friends – the nonjudgmental good friends – close.

Offer Emotional Support

Pick a friend each day and offer emotional support. And if you’re having a tough time, call a friend. Reaching out is important, more so now than ever before. Many of my friends are happy texting, but I’d rather talk, so when I’m feeling needy, I’ll pick someone I can count on to lift me up.

Exercise with a Friend

My sister and I yoga-Skype. She tweaks and corrects my poses. With the two of us egging one another on, we’re more likely to endure a sustained workout than we’d be on our own, and it’s certainly more fun chatting to one another and catching up at the end of the workout.

Share the Small Stuff

In my writing group of seven, we’ve started sharing our days, however quaint that sounds. Even pedestrian stuff like a trip to Trader Joe’s, a really great Netflix series or movie, or a special take-out meal (to break up the tedium of cooking) to support a local restaurant.

Or the joy of a newly-published piece. All this adds up, enriching our days. And we’re having our first Zoom meeting this week.

It doesn’t matter what you chat about with your friends and loved ones. What’s important is the sharing. Make someone laugh or smile today.

Appreciate Your Memories

Travel down memory lane with an old friend you haven’t visited with in a long time. Facebook Messenger is great for text-chatting or talking. My friend in Crete sounds as if she’s only two doors away – on my very own street.

Dating? Consider Distance Dating

Consider distance dating. According to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta in a podcast titled “Dating at a Distance,” it’s not impossible to establish a connection, even in these tough times.

Anyone who’s spent time online dating knows it’s not easy. So, how do you connect using only a screen, develop closeness without touch, and form attachments in the Covid era? Dr. Gupta stresses the idea that “We are all in this together.”

When I heard this on the podcast, it rang true, and set us apart from all other online dating that’s gone before. People reach out in more creative ways, and the podcast gives examples.

The Big Message

The big message here? Find the connections that resonate in your life and pursue them. No matter the type of relationship, cultivate your friends, make dates, and go out of your way to connect. You’ll feel so much better, every day.

Do you have ideas on dating, and ways of keeping up with your friends? Have you hosted lawn parties or a Zoom Game Evening? What’s helping you keep your spirit up? Please share your thoughts and ideas.