My husband Mike thinks we should call the past decade “the zeros.” I think we should call it the “Uh-Ohs.”
What do you think we should call this unnamed and unclaimed era?
Here’s some fun facts about the decade just past:
A recent poll of Americans found that a full 50% of us viewed our past ten years as a negative experience, with only 27% seeing it as positive.
Ten years later, the stock market is lower than it was in the year 1999, and job growth has been exactly 0%. A compilation of Beatles’ songs was the best selling CD of the decade, and the final episode of Friends was the most watched TV program.
Starting out with the millennium bug scare at the end of 1999, we can all ponder what the 00’s meant to us personally, but for our nation, the most memorable catastrophe was certainly 9/11.
Few will ever forget where they were when they heard of this evil attack on the Twin Towers and everyone at work there. This led to American involvement in two wars in the Mideast, wars that we still fight today. Then we have Hurricane Katrina along with many other natural disasters, and the shameful way our government responded to the victims of this terrible storm.
The good news, at least for me and the millions who voted for him, was the election of a certified intellectual for U.S. president. But he was faced immediately with the worldwide collapse of our financial system. Details, details… One reporter on TV called this the era that “no one wants to own or own up to.”
So, perhaps the 00’s weren’t all they ought to be, but for me personally, they were a gigantic triumph! Granted, the first half sucked. With a traumatic divorce at the beginning of 2001, and career loss in 2004, things were NOT looking up! I thought for sure I would lose my house next.
But these personal misfortunes stimulated a dramatic change in me. They challenged me to change my perspective, my mind set, and my life; to cut the drama and depression off at the pass, and move on to something better. I challenged myself to dig deep inside, and become my authentic self. And that I did, all smack dab in the middle of menopause!
I’m never going back to the bad old days again. I am now absolutely determined to treat myself with enough self-respect, that I will never stay in life situations where I am treated badly. I now know that I’m worth more than that, and so are you!
To learn more about what I learned through my own midlife transformation, please read my books: Midlife Magic: Becoming the person you are inside! and my Midife Change Workbook.
