The Wise Forties

Hello, dear friend,

I recently celebrated my 40th birthday. As someone who is passionate about numbers, I saw multiple reasons to celebrate this milestone.

First of all, I love celebrations. Life may not always be pink and sugar-coated, but as long as 90% of things are where I expected them to be—or better—I will postpone the focus on improvement and celebrate what I have. Then, 40 is such a beautiful age that it deserves double the attention of my previous nine birthdays. Last but not least, I see this as another good opportunity to reflect on my life and lessons so far.

So, what would be my top takeaways from the previous years of my life? The following are a few lessons I would like to share with you.

1.The power of intention. Intention is less specific than a goal, but strong enough to give a direction. It’s been almost four years since I started setting daily intentions for the short, medium, and long-term. Intentions help me clarify what to focus on next, what to improve, or what to discover in my life. The main benefit is that intentions are reminders for how to spend my time. If my intention is to prioritize my health, by repeating this regularly I become more aware of implementing habits such as longer sleep hours, more workouts, and healthier food.”

2. The greatest force I know of so far is Action. I love doing. Besides the fact that it’s my personality, I also discipline myself to spend as little time as possible on complaining and direct my energy into doing. I feel I am the owner of my life when I do things aligned with my goals or calling. I have found myself in many situations where my actions were fueled by fear of being left out or of not being enough. But my greatest force of action is when the doer within me is motivated by passion or love: love for a product, love for creation, or love for myself or a dear one.

3. When I feel things go south, I go back to gratitude. The little girl who grew up in Artari village in south Romania did not have the capacity to dream of such a privileged life like the one I am living today. I had access to top education, I live in a very civilized bubble of my society, I am financially free to pursue my own endeavors and dedicate my time accordingly, and I am surrounded by love and beautiful meaningful relationships. On top of that, I am healthy, and so are my loved ones. I am so grateful to be able to list all of these aspects even when I feel I lose the path or make unfavorable decisions.

4. Every creation has its own timing. When I built the building I previously wrote about , the builder set a timeline that he did not respect. While asking him several questions to understand the reasoning for the delay, he told me, “I did my best, but every building has its own timing.” Although I identified some stages where he could have done better, his words stayed with me. Over the years, I have found myself in many situations, both professional and personal, when I wanted things to happen at a specific moment. I pushed myself to work hard over and over again to make them happen. Sometimes, only when I slowed down or focused on something else could I see my dreams coming to fruition outside of my initial timeline.

5. Sometimes “good enough” is ideal. As a recovering perfectionist who invested a lot of effort into maximizing results regardless of cost, I have to admit this is a more recent insight. I was once told that if I reframe ideal situations by including those that meet more than 80% of my criteria, I would be happier. To clarify, “ideal” for me had previously always meant 95% or better, and so much effort was spent to improve up to this level—sometimes unsuccessfully. Now I know that some situations make me perfectly happy without any unnecessary improvement. And so much more energy is left for the important upgrades.

6. Everything that lasts long goes through many stages. I love beginnings of all kinds: businesses, relationships, and discoveries. The enthusiasm of a beginning fuels the explorer within. After a while, when the hype of joy diminishes, I feel a gap and the need to experience excitement again at all costs. But life is not made of only hypes nor beginnings alone. Other natural stages follow and they might not have a boost of joy or dopamine, but they do bring other gifts and lessons. So, I tame the explorer within me to embrace a long-term experience full of many stages instead of hunting hyper-vibrant pieces of a process.

7. “Kind” does not mean “nice.” As a people-pleaser, I have always prioritized being nice to people without too many filters. I most likely thought I would also be respected for being nice, but it rarely happened. So I learned the hard way that being articulate and kind creates more value than being nice. I accept that not everybody will be a fan of me, and I now focus on delivering my messages and decisions with kindness. Above all, kindness does not mean tolerating any kind of toxicity or being nice by default.

8. Not all decisions are full-body “yes” decisions. I tend to overanalyze situations and decisions, especially when the stakes are high. I somehow had the preconception that main life decisions are very clear and I would feel this in all the cells of my body, hence the name “full-body ‘yes’ decisions.” However, life is not always crystal clear, and there are several nuances of gray. I used to think more, ask for opinions, and do my due diligence more thoroughly, only to make a decision that feels like this. I learned that is not always the case, nor do I always have the time to wait for that “full body ‘yes’” feeling.

9. Any extreme brings evidence of its own limitations. Any life lived on the extremity of a spectrum will attract the same intensity as the other extremity. Or, in other words, an extreme is not a stable place to be in. I spent my first 10 years of entrepreneurship working 100 hours a week most weeks. I was very young and did not feel tired. Then, brutal depression and burnout forced me to slow down to a pace that I couldn’t have imagined before. I pay a lot of attention now to signs of exhaustion to avoid entering another red zone. Even if the balance is not at one specific level, I try to keep a range of balance.

10. My wealth is not my worth. The most significant part of my life so far was definitely focused on achieving both material things and ambitious goals. I proved that I can get the results I want. I worked hard until I learned to enjoy the benefits too. It comes easy to want more and more, especially when surrounded by other high-achievers. I value all my material assets and the freedom they bring me. But they are only a small portion of what contributes to my worth. The real gems of my life are my beautiful relationships, the diversity of activities I am able to experience from writing to traveling, my inner journey, my capacity to connect deeply with other people, and the way I nurture my body and soul from working out to going to a museum to attending church. And all of these establish a far richer life than the sum of my assets.

Hoping some of these resonated with you, I would love to know what kind of introspection you do at certain milestones. How do you celebrate life as it is and progress?