Personal Growth Planet Blog

Let’s face it. Judgments of any kind have the potential to quickly turn ugly.

Most of us were raised to believe that certain behaviors, actions, ways of living and even people are good while others are bad. The stuff of morals and ethics is based on a clear differentiation between good and bad.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this.

Each one of us makes judgments all of the time. These are the day-to-day decisions about what we prefer and what we don’t prefer. It’s natural, normal and part of the business of being an expansive human being that leads us to know what is and is not okay for each person.

I tend to be a fixer.

If there’s some situation that seems– from my perspective– “off,” broken or not right, my impulse is to step in and find a solution. The sooner the better.

While I believe that there are valuable results to be had with a solution-oriented approach to life, it has significant drawbacks as well.

What is challenging and sometimes even excruciating for me is to just let it be.

I’ve blogged in the past about this propensity of mine. When a disagreement arises between me and a loved one, my reaction is usually to rush in and resolve the discord– even if rushing in means me forcing a discussion before everyone involved is ready for one.

I don’t think I know a single person who is ambivalent about Valentine’s Day.

When I hear people talk (and I’m sure there are exceptions), there is generally aversion or excitement to February 14th. There’s rarely anything in between.

Some look forward to passionate celebrating with the one they love.
Others scowl and rant about how this is yet another Hallmark-created holiday.
Yet others grimace at this reminder of how alone or heart broken they feel.

I tend to be a romantic kind of person and so I fall into the “looking forward to it” category. However, like many people, Valentine’s Day is fraught with traps and turmoil for me too.

I’ve been reading an informative book called Outsmarting the Midlife Fat Cell by dietitian Debra Waterhouse. As I’ve hit my 40s, I’m starting to notice some signs of change in my body. This book has been a great resource to help me understand these changes, as well as ones to come.

What I appreciate about Waterhouse’s book is that she explains that, for women, meeting midlife weight gain with a food restriction-diet approach is only going to make things more difficult. It turns out that the ever-expanding fat cells in a woman’s body during the 10 or 20 years of perimenopause* actually help to ease women through this transitional time.