My Health, Wealth & Happiness Goals

Now that I’ve turned 54-years-old, I’m thinking about mid-life goals even though this not a milestone year. I’ve decided to create priorities and organize my life three categories: health, wealth and happiness.

Mid-Life Health Check-In

My first step was to do all those medical appointments that I have been putting off:

• Doctor (physical)
• Dentist (cleaning– hopefully no follow up but it hasn’t been like that in a long time!)
• Mammogram (scheduled)
• Dermatologist (skin check)
• Gynocologist (I’ve never had one, just an OB-GYN when I had babies)
• Optometrist (eye exam)
• Colonoscopy (I did it at 50 so I’m good for ten years)

My goals for Health are centered around fitness. I am adding an extra 10 minutes after my boxing workout to add in Buns of Steel exercises using my gym’s kettlebells and weights. I’m already warmed up and the equipment is right there.

I have been doing various squat exercises with weights for 10 minutes twice a week and have already seen improvement in a few months. I also found some YouTube videos that I occasionally do at home on the weekends.

I’ve also been working on my abs. Let me know if you want me to make a video of my 10 minute Ab workout for a six-pack. We do lots of abdominal exercises for boxing and I have a few favorites.

Mid-Life Wealth Check-In

There are few things that I want to accomplish in the Wealth department but it primarily centers around Personal Finance Skills. I actually went back to business school in my 20’s to learn personal finance, specifically accounting, finance, and investing. I want to make sure that my children know how to invest and I wrote a post for them based on that: Stock Market Basics for Kids.

I used to invest in the stock market when my kids were young but about 10 years ago, my husband and I hired a Financial Investment Advisor and I’ve left the money management to her. She only invests in mutual funds and encourages her clients to be engaged in the investment decision-making process. I’ve decided to return to stock investing and started to research, track and purchase stocks again. Let me know if you want to learn more about what stocks and industries I’m looking at and how I’m conducting my research and I’ll blog on that.

Mid-Life Happiness Check-In

In the spirit of Marie Kondo’s purging based on an item “sparking joy,” I’ve decided to prioritize my time based on the activity and how it falls into my  Health, Wealth, and Happiness categories. Ideally, I would want to do one activity in each category a day and I’m tracking everything in a blank book. My overarching goal is experiences over possessions.

Mentoring

First To Go To College: One thing that I’ve been doing more of this year is mentoring. I’m in two formal mentoring programs. The first one is Transitioning Together or TSquared. It’s a First To Go To College Program at my children’s high school. I am paired up with a Junior in High School who wants to attend art school (which I have learned a lot about from my oldest). This program meets every six weeks or so as a group with mentors and mentees. We also take our mentees on college visits. I’ll be visiting MassArt soon with mine and will post on that.

Harvard Asian American Female Advising: As part of H4A (Harvard Asian American Alumni Association), I am paired with a Harvard Undergraduate Asian American who wants general mentoring. We met formally at the kick-off breakfast and try to meet quarterly for lunch in Harvard Square. She’s pretty together and doesn’t need much help in the summer internship department but I try to steer her to think long term about her career along the lines of work/life balance. This is an area that I noticed myself and my fellow female classmates struggle with, especially those with children.

Foley Athletic Advising: My co-author of How To Coach Girls and dear friend recently left her coaching job after 23 years and is launching her own soccer college advising service. My two daughter and I are helping with her company launch.

Bloom Development: My work colleague friend launched her career counseling business as a side hustle and I am her mentor both at work (Aquent) and on her new business. It’s been rewarding to watch her learn and master personal finance skills as her business takes off!

Writing

I’m trying to figure out what genres of books that I want to write and attempt to get published. I’m currently working on a How To Play Sports in College with my co-author of How To Coach Girls. I have two picture book biographies in various states, and a few rhyming picture book manuscripts as well. I guess the key is what “sparks joy” since I’ve discovered that writing children’s books is not very lucrative for most of us authors. I would guess that most preschool teachers earn more on an hourly basis by way of example!

Travel

I would like to make travel a higher priority moving forward. My husband and I are planning a short getaway in Nova Scotia in the fall. It will be the first time we have traveled without our children and our oldest is 19-years-old! My husband has talked about playing a golf course there for a long time, and I’d love to see the Anne of Green Gables house. Our children are interested in neither of these activities so it will be nice to leave them at home!

Our big family trip before our oldest goes off to college will be to Hawaii. We are really excited to return to Kauai this summer.

We would also like to take a family vacation to Asia as we always talked about. We have three homeland countries to cover (China, Japan, and Korea) which is too daunting and the reason why it never seems to happen. Next summer, we are hoping to visit one or two on this list.

I have been taking smaller trips with just my girls, primarily for college tours. My oldest and I want to take a short trip to Paris before she starts school. I hope we can pull this off.

Foodie Adventures

My kids are particularly excited about my Foodie Adventure priority. As a family, we tend to eat dinner at home because my youngest hates to eat out. If we get restaurant food, it’s usually takeout. To break this food rut, we recently have been trying new restaurants for our birthday dinners (thus forcing 100% family participation). We tried Ethiopian and Middle East/Turkey Meze this way, and both were a big hit. My husband and I also celebrated Valentine’s Day by taking a cooking class together.

I’d like like to take more small foodie adventures right here where we live in Boston. My husband, missing the high quality and relatively inexpensive sushi that we used to get in Los Angeles, wants to get our kids to try “good” sushi. Ditto for yakitori which I don’t think even exists in Boston. There are two other Ethiopian restaurants here that I’d like to try. We used to eat Malaysian food in Chinatown before we had kids that we’d like our kids to try it.

These small foodie adventures are probably the same amount of money we spend on take-out. It will take a little more planning and a small commute but it should be easy to pull off!

Let me know if there are any topics mentioned above that you want me to post on. How about you? Are you working on your life goals too? I’d love to hear what you are planning! Thanks for sharing!

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My books:

 Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me

Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me

Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World

• • • Junior Library Guild Gold selection
    • Selected as one of 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023 by dPICTUS and featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
    • Starred review from School Library Journal
    • Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
    • 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist
    • Green Earth Book Award longlist
    • Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids

 Amazon / Barefoot Books / Signed or Inscribed by Me

Amazon / Scholastic / Signed or Inscribed by Me