The Business of Youth

What happens when the work you do on the inside begins to change the way you experience yourself on the outside.

The greatest investment you can make is in the woman you are becoming.

About six months after turning the big 40, I woke up feeling like I was living in somebody else's body. My everyday exercise felt different, tennis affected me differently, my eating habits weren't producing the response I was used to, and my energy had changed. I didn't understand what was happening. I had this belief that a woman best years began in her 40's.

Thankfully, one of my close friends had experienced something similar not long before me and could pull me out of my initial WTF moment. I started looking for answers rather than accepting that this was simply what turning forty meant. I found a nutritionist who helped me understand some of what was happening, and I saw four different doctors before finding the fifth one that would actually listen to me.

Why? Because I refused to accept feeling disconnected from my body was part of my next phase of life. No thank you.

The fifth doctor, the one I'm still with today, explained cortisol and the role stress can play in the body, and suddenly I had another piece of the puzzle. What I didn't realise at the time was that finding the answer would require me to use something I had already been developing for years: self-leadership.

I had spent years learning about mindset, leadership, emotional regulation, decision-making and what it actually means to take responsibility for the life you are creating through belief, decision and action. Until then, most of that work had been applied to business and the areas of life that felt messy. Now I was ready to apply it to me and my health in ways I hadn't previously.

I had to become much more intentional about what I ate, how I exercised, how I managed stress and where I put my energy. I reduced sugar and increased protein. I changed the way I approached tennis. I still play because I love it, but I no longer need to push myself simply because I can. I became more interested in how I wanted to feel than in proving what I could physically do.

It wasn't about doing whatever my body felt like doing either. There are plenty of things that feel good in the moment and don't serve me particularly well later. Personal development had taught me to understand the difference between an impulse and a decision, and that became just as important with my body as it had been with my business and other areas of my life.

I became more discerning about what I allowed into my life as well. Drama doesn't get much of my attention anymore. Other people's expectations and opinions don't carry the same weight they once did.

I have become much more protective of my peace and much more interested in vision, creation and playful curiosity.

Even the small things became more intentional. I worked out how I like to wear my hair and makeup as a middle-aged woman, learned what clothes make me feel good in my body and stopped trying to live a version of myself from another decade. I started paying attention to what actually works for the woman I am today and the woman I am becoming.

It wasn't a beauty plan. It was me figuring out how to feel good in my own life and in my own body again.

Before and during my divorce, I looked a mess, and I knew it. There was a period where the circumstances of my life were visible in the way I carried myself, the way I dressed, the lack of time I had to look after myself, the weight fluctuations, the stress and in the way I felt. I didn't want to play victim. I wanted to remain accountable for the decisions I had made in the past and the ones I was making for our future.

I couldn't change what had happened, but I could lead what happened next.

I got myself into that mess and it was up to me to get myself out. I chose to take responsibility for my health, my mindset and the life I believed was possible. If other people could rebuild themselves, there was no reason I couldn't do the same.

I'm grateful for the beautiful women who have walked the path before me and shown me that it is absolutely possible.

That became part of a much longer process of personal growth, and looking back, I can see how much our internal world eventually finds its way to the surface. When life is consuming you, it affects how you move through the world. When you are carrying stress, living according to other people's expectations or ignoring what you need, it changes your experience of yourself.

The reverse has been true for me too. As my life became more peaceful, more intentional and more aligned, I began experiencing myself differently. My energy improved, my body started feeling like mine again, and I became much better at understanding what it needed from me and making choices that supported it.

Then people started commenting that I looked different. In a good way.

It wasn't one comment that made me think about it. It happened often enough that eventually I started noticing what they were noticing. I started seeing the same thing in other men and women around me too. Women who are doing the personal and leadership development work are changing, not in some uniform before-and-after kind of way, but in the way they carry themselves. There is more confidence, more energy, more presence and more enjoyment in their movement. Was it showing in me too?

It's the pregnant glow, without the additional responsibility. This was the 40 I had envisioned was possible. Fit, fun and free in my 40's. You can feel it before you can describe it. And then others start to notice it too.

That is when I started thinking about the business of youth.

Society has built an enormous industry around helping women look younger. Creams, treatments, procedures, supplements, diets, fitness programs and endless messages about preserving what we supposedly start losing as we age. I understand the appeal. I care about looking good too.

But my experience has made me think about beauty differently.

There is a kind of beauty that comes from feeling good inside your own life. It isn't aesthetic beauty, although I think it can affect the way we look on the outside. It comes from having clarity about what matters, knowing yourself well enough to make decisions that are actually yours, and having enough self-worth to stop handing your energy to people and situations that don't deserve it.

For me, that looks like understanding what gives me energy and what takes it away, knowing when to push myself and when to change direction, and choosing what gets my attention rather than allowing everything around me to compete for it. It means having a vision for my life that is bigger than the expectations I inherited from other people and having the confidence to make choices that support it.

And I think emotional wealth can become visible because it changes the way we live. The work doesn't simply stay inside our heads. It influences the decisions we make, the habits we develop, the relationships we keep, the environments we choose and the way we care for ourselves.

When people ask me during an interview what actual transformation I have had from using the personal and leadership development products, I often say, “How much time do you have?”

It changed my financial possibilities, but it also changed my leadership. It changed my confidence, which changed the decisions I was willing to make, and those decisions changed the life I was creating.

It has changed how I mother, how I work, how I lead and how I spend my time. It has given me a much clearer understanding of the life I want to live and the woman I want to be within it.

The changes in my skin and body sit alongside all of that. They aren't separate from the story, but they aren't the whole story either. They are part of what became possible as I developed a deeper relationship with myself and learned to make choices that supported the life I wanted.

We have created a very successful business around women's desire to look young, and I understand why. Most women want to feel attractive, energised and confident in their bodies. We want to enjoy getting dressed, feel good when we look in the mirror and feel connected to the woman looking back at us. Most importantly, we want a space that feels safe to be our inner child and sometimes not make any sense at all, while still having the passion and drive to do what lights us up.

I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting any of that. My focus is more on what sits underneath it all.

People always look great while on vacation. It's bringing that vacation vibration into your everyday life.

There is something about feeling alive in your own life that has very little to do with trying to return to an earlier version of yourself. It comes from having a reason to get up excited about what you're creating, people around you who energise you, a body you understand better, a mind you have developed and enough self-worth to make decisions that support the life you actually want.

I entered this online business wanting to create income and a different kind of life. What I didn't anticipate was how deeply the personal and leadership development would become woven into everything else. Eight years later, it is difficult to separate the business from the growth because they have developed alongside each other.

The products gave me tools. The business gave me an environment in which I could continually put them into practice. The choices I made as a result changed my life, and the life I created changed the way I cared for myself.

When I look at the whole picture, I see that beauty can be created on the outside, but the beauty that gets noticed, the beauty that shines, is the beauty that comes from feeling comfortable in your own skin because the life underneath it feels right.

I didn't set out looking for that. I was doing the work, making different choices and creating a life that felt more aligned with me. I was learning how to lead myself, understand myself and take better care of myself, and somewhere along the way, something changed on the outside too.

Maybe that is the real business of youth. Not trying to hold onto what was, but creating a life that makes you feel so good from the inside that it has nowhere to go but out.

xx

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