I am not the only person I know in my sixties who had a bad work experience at the end of their career. One friend was in his hospital bed after cancer surgery when his boss told him he was being forced to retire. Another friend worked for years as a successful paramedic and was then given the worst shifts in attempts to squeeze him out.

A CEO I knew was asked to step down after he was scapegoated for a personnel case he handled. For me, it was a bad decision to take a job in a troubled school district that I thought I could fix. They bought out my contract after two years – meaning they fired me, but not for cause. They simply wanted me out.

In each of these cases, people who had worked in successful careers were blindsided. I won’t blame it on ageism, although I think that played a part in each of these cases. It seems more constructive to share how I suggest ways to bounce back and heal emotionally if that happens to you. This kind of experience does not have to define us.

Don’t Take a Forced Career Ending Too Personally

A bad work experience at the end or our careers can be devastating. There is a terrible sense of failure. You question whether you have actually been an imposter for your whole career. You come to feel that you are not what you thought you were. You worry that your life work has amounted to nothing. It is easy to see why some people never come back from it. That was not going to happen to me.

Take Time to Grieve and Be Compassionate with Yourself

First of all, I gave myself time to grieve. This is important because all the sadness needed to be channeled somewhere. I let myself feel the pain of what happened. I cried. I journaled. I felt my feelings.

Next, I looked square in the face of the shame I felt. I shared what happened with different close friends and family. I decided that I was not going to hide my story. That released the embarrassment and sense of failure. At the same time however, I was careful not to get obsessed by wallowing in my emotions.

I focused on compassion for myself and also for the people who had hurt me. Books helped with this. I read about forgiveness and realized that by bearing a grudge, I would be the only person damaged by bitterness.

I did a lot of writing in order to reflect on my life. I internalized what I had learned. It was then possible to break through that sinking feeling that my life had peaked and that I was on the way down. While I gave myself the time I needed to heal, I kept moving forward.

Get On a New Horse and Start Riding Forward

While grieving, I was thinking about what I could do next. Your first thought might be to get back on that horse and get a similar job. Somehow you become tainted after a failure. But as they say, when one door closes, another opens. If you are open to the possibility.

For me, the opening doors included publishing a book with a colleague. I also started to volunteer for a group in a completely new industry. It was somewhere that I could make a contribution to society. I decided to give it a chance. Working nationally for this important cause turned out to be an amazing opportunity.

Through all of this, I learned to stand in integrity. Living through a tremendous amount of stress made me stronger. I learned that I could bounce back from a bad end of career experience without terrible ramifications on my lifelong career. I learned that after a bad experience, life can be better than it ever was before.

Bounce Back and Reach Higher

Bouncing back after a big failure at the end of a career is certainly NOT easy. My recommendations are to first recognize that you are not the first or last to go through this. Take the time to grieve and have compassion for yourself. Avoid obsessing or taking the path of bitterness. Reach out to others for support.

And remember when one door closes, another will open, if you let it.

Did you go through an unexpected for bad end of career experience? How did you respond? Did you find a way to reinvent yourself and take advantage of new opportunities? Please join the conversation.

There’s good news and bad news when it comes to the best SPF face powder. The great news is that with broad-spectrum SPF, these mineral powders can protect your skin from harmful UVA/UVB rays. Plus, they can mattify even the oiliest skin and leave your face looking smooth and flawless in the heat. Now to the bad news. Derms agree that you probably shouldn’t only rely on powder sunscreens for your SPF protection. Allow us to explain.

Powder sunscreen, no matter how stellar, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply your usual daily face SPF. You’ll want to give your skin that base coverage to start the day. But did you know you’re supposed to actually reapply that sunscreen throughout the day? That’s not really possible if you’re wearing a full face of makeup. What a mess. These powder sunscreens allow you to easily update your sun protection while keeping your makeup intact. In fact, some of these are tinted and will even refresh your skin at the same time.

Choose Ilia’s sunscreen for its organic powders and oils, Colorescience’s powder for its reef-safe formula for all skin tones, Tarte’s for SPF 30 without the chalky finish, Supergoop!’s for a matte-satin finish and Derma E’s sunscreen for an extra boost of antioxidants. You really can’t go wrong.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

Image: Ilia.

Ilia Flow-Thru Radiant Translucent Powder – SPF 20

This translucent mineral finishing powder offers UV protection with organic powders, oils and extracts of aloe vera, rosemary leaf, thyme and hibiscus flower.

Image: Colorescience.

Colorescience Sunforgettable Total Protection SPF 50

This tinted mineral sunscreen is available in four shades: Fair, Medium, Tan and Deep. It’s cruelty-free and reef-safe with SPF 50 for UVA/UVB protection.

Image: Tarte.

Tarte Tarteguard 30 Mineral Powder Sunscreen

With broad spectrum SPF 30, you’re protected from both UVA and UVB rays with no chalky finish.

Image: Supergoop.

Supergoop! Invincible Setting Powder SPF 45

This powder sunscreen comes in four shades: Translucent (for all skin tones), Fair, Medium and Deep. The 100 percent mineral broad-spectrum UV protection gives you a matte-satin finish.

Image: Ulta.

Derma E Sun Protection Mineral Face Powder SPF 30

Translucent non-nano mineral powder SPF protects skin from UV rays, while green tea, chamomile flower extract and vitamin E gives skin a boost of antioxidants.

Walking is touted as good for our health, our emotional well-being and our social connections. I want to give you 5 more reasons.

Sensory Stimulation

Walking doesn’t make you younger in years, but it allows you to have experiences where you forget your age. When you walk, you engage all your senses, and the world around you will trigger your brain to send you messages of aliveness, enjoyment and gratefulness.

Do you experience aliveness when you’re sitting in your chair watching a movie? I don’t think so. Passive entertainment takes you out of your current reality for a while, which can be pleasant, but it doesn’t enhance your aliveness.

Slower Aging

Walking and hiking will slow aging. I have found that my bone density has increased over the last four years of hiking long distances on the trails, a reverse of the natural aging process.

Walking in nature stimulates brain cells and burns cortisol, the stress hormone, leaving your body more agile and flexible. There is evidence that walking and hiking, especially longer trail hikes, cause an increased activity of telomerase, triggering an anti-aging process in your cells.

Reduce Your Footprint

Walking is a gift to the planet and yourself. Every step you take squashes your DNA and stimulates your cells to rebuild themselves, adding new healthy cells to your body, sloughing off the old ones.

While you’re rebuilding your body on your walk, you’re reducing your carbon footprint by not driving a car or using another energy-sucking form of transportation. While you walk, your breath does a photosynthesis dance with the surrounding plants. What a miracle to be alive!

Find a New Self

As you enter a walking life, you’ll feel better, sleep better and your mood will improve. You will discover a self you may have forgotten existed! It takes consistent walking to experience this. So, make walking a lifestyle.

Reduce your sitting hours and increase your walking hours while doing errands. Go for a walk-and-talk with a friend. Walk to a dinner you’ve been invited to. Wear your walking shoes to the theater while carrying your dress shoes in your bag.

Take a Walking Vacation

Walking is addictive. Once you increase your walking distances and feel better about yourself and your body, you may think about going for a day hike or even a backpacking trip. If you don’t want to carry a heavy backpack, you can take hiking vacations where you use pack animals to carry your load.

Or you can walk or hike from B&B to B&B, hut to hut, or lodge to lodge. Europe offers many such opportunities at a very reasonable cost.

In the USA, you may have to look around to find lodge-to-lodge hikes, but they do exist. Many developing countries offer trekking trips with pack animals. A walking vacation will give you a re-boot.

My new book, Walking Gone Wild, takes you on a journey to a walking lifestyle. The book is full of stories of women 50-plus who have been able to reinvigorate their life through walking.

It offers practical tips on how to overcome obstacles and find the right shoes and clothes to make walking a year-round activity you can enjoy.

Do you love to walk? What has been the greatest benefit of adopting a walking lifestyle? Please share your insights below.

Your mom probably told you more than once to eat your vegetables, right? If your mom was like mine, she chopped and served fresh when she could.

Our shelves along the basement steps were always stocked with canned green beans, corn, asparagus, peas and a few others that were quite distasteful to me as a child. They were mushy and just didn’t taste good. From this I learned to dislike vegetables unless they were fresh.

All those years ago, living in New England, it was not easy to get fresh vegetables in the winter, so we had to work with canned until frozen vegetables became available. They were a step up from canned, but still not as good as fresh.

Today, with a global food market it is easier to get fresh vegetables year round, but when grown locally, that remains my first choice.

We Eat What We Like

One thing I know is we eat what we like and don’t eat what we don’t like. I also know that on top of vegetables being powerhouses of vitamins and minerals, they are also your skin’s friend. Yes, your skin.

You may find skin creams that boast hardy amounts of antioxidants, but you need to look no further than your vegetables to get a daily dose of these skin preserving nutrients.

Sandy was in her late 50s when I worked with her. She set a goal to increase her vegetables to five a day. She accomplished this by eating some in whole form and others went into her morning smoothie.

If you are looking for an easy way to get your five veggies in, check out this recipe and you can start with breakfast.

Sandy not only felt more energized from this change in diet, but she noticed the tone and texture of her skin improved. Understandably, any woman in her late 50s whose skin tone improves is surely motivated to continue doing what she’s doing, and Sandy has. She has beautiful skin.

No vitamin tablet or skin cream can give you what fresh vegetables can. Cell growth and regeneration happens best when we eat high nutrient foods. Think of supplements and skin creams as a help, but not the first choice.

Vegetables Are Great for Aging Skin: Sugar Is Not

We all know that too much sun will wrinkle and age our skin, but did you know that sugar is also said to damage the skin? Sugar is an irritant.

There are numerous claims that eating excess amounts of sugar will harm the skin. It’s sad that sugar tastes so good, and that it’s an addictive food, but the truth is it ages your skin.

That doesn’t mean you should never have sugar. Eat it in moderation to best keep your skin vibrant, your weight in check, and your energy steady. You can read more about the effects of sugar, and ways to keep your energy steady.

Are you eating a good number of veggies every day? Have you been successful in avoiding refined sugar? What do you eat to nourish your beautiful aging skin? Tell us what works for you! Please join the conversation.

Kyle Richards’ Brown Leather Pouf At Her BBQ

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 10 Episode 8 Decor

Kyle Richards’ brown leather pouf (and the identical white pouf) lined her low, rustic table at the annual family BBQ. Contrary to previous years, this BBQ was fairly casual (BH casual), but only if you consider catered non-BBQ food, guests in Chanel and a plated table casual. For most of us, Kyle’s BBQ would be considered less BBQ and more of a dinner party experience.

While Kyle throws this party (at varying levels of casual) every season, there usually is more emphasis on family, as in, Kyle’s family actually attends. Nonetheless, most of the ladies brought their families, except one. I don’t think anyone really expected Denise Richards’ to bring her kids after all the drama (shhh…threesome). But our favorite Beverly Hills ladies never miss a chance to feign shock and awe, especially if it revolves around a trending topic. And let’s be real, this will be the season of the threesome—or will it? The ladies better save some shock and awe, things are just getting started.

One question still remains unanswered, what happens to all the poufs when the party is over? Mo poufs mo problems, I guess.

Until next time,

Chelsie

Click Here To Shop Kyle’s Brown Leather Pouf + More Colors

Originally posted at: Kyle Richards’ Brown Leather Pouf