Later I’d learn how much the quality of life depends on how we relate to the days that follow any First Day. Fast forward several decades to a couple weeks ago, when my first-day outfit was faded athletic wear pulled from the bottom of a drawer. I’ve joined a gym, you see. And put my 63-year-old butt on the line by investing in some sessions with a personal trainer.

    

My first day at the gym was pretty shiny, just like the first day of school used to represent—here we go, a new beginning! Then came my first session on my own trying to follow the workout my trainer laid out for me in a special app. I had trouble locating the right machines. Some of the balance exercises had me teetering and wobbling like a newborn giraffe. Then came the obstacle that almost took me down: the exercise requiring a stretchy fitness band.

    

I searched to no avail, then asked at the desk and got a shrug in response. In my head, the noise went from grumbly frustration to: “How am I supposed to do this? This is too hard, I don’t have what I need, I’ll do this some other time.”

    

I didn’t leave. But I most definitely wanted to. It was a hit-the-wall moment.

    

A good question to ask in these meltdown moments is, “Who am I for myself right now?” I realized oh, I’m being hapless. A helpless victim.

    

Time for some compassionate curiosity. Isn’t it interesting, I reflected, how right now I’m essentially pretending I’m not the same woman who has handled far tougher things and barely blinked?

    

I am the same woman who said yes to a journalistic assignment in the Soviet Union a few months after the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster—and published my first national piece in Ladies’ Home Journal when I was 26. Years later, I navigated single motherhood in a new city with a 3-year-old, a 6-year-old and freelancer burnout—and managed to land a job managing Hallmark’s internal think tank. When I was 56, I made the scary leap from a high-level corporate PR gig to creating my own soul-led business, and here I am nearly seven years later.

    

(We’ve all got irrefutable evidence of our power to create if we’re open to seeing it. What are some of yours?)

    

Yet—despite all the challenges I’ve conquered—at the gym, where I don’t consider myself in my element or feel very competent, I’m fighting the urge to throw up my hands in despair and bail because I don’t have a fitness band.

    

When our energy is coming from a place of fear (a general term used to represent resignation, doubt, anxiety, irritation and so on), and we let craptastic thoughts have the run of the place, we easily turn the smallest little thing into a big, honking wall. And if we allow it to, that self-created wall will stop us in our tracks.

    

The situations and fears our scared brains turn into insurmountable barriers seem so real in the moment, it’s easy to slip into the self-talk that sinks our dreams: “Never mind, this isn’t meant to be. At least not for me. Not now.”

    

Of course, we want something more than that. We want to live in a way that at the end of this ride, we say, “Hell yeah, I did the damned thing. I didn’t just make it through, I lived.”

    

Living that kind of life is a juicy benefit of activating your creatrix energy and stepping into your innate power. It’s something that can be learned at any age, though I think many of us in our third act are particularly ready and hungry for it.

    

The other day at the gym, when I witnessed myself struggling with energy-zapping mind noise, I chose to consciously step into Creatrix Mode. I switched on a playlist that connects with something primal in me, I went after it, and when I emerged from the gym all sweaty an hour later, it was as a badass, benevolent warrior for love.

    

And does that energy flow into the rest of my life? You bet it does. When you’re a student of the soul and dare to dream and create, you get to experience the emboldened, sensual, self-expressed and joy-full version of you in full bloom.