Barbara Sher - Its Only Too Late If You Dont Start Now: HOW TO CREATE YOUR SECOND LIFE AT ANY AGE

Barbara Sher can help you make the rest of your life the very best time of your life. She has a gift for seeing the fears and responsibilities, prejudices and doubts that have been holding you back and for showing you how to conquer them! Age, time, moneynone of them needs to stand in your way. Not anymore. Find out about:

A thirty-year plan the craziest and very best strategy for experiencing an exciting future.

True love it is probably impossible before the age of forty. Discover how, and why, you can now, finally, experience the real thing.

An energy jump-start the one thing you need to get you going.

Myths about getting older heres one: Old people are lonely and depressed, The truth is the loneliest, most depressed people in the United States are actually teenagers.

Reclaiming wonder you can travel the world or travel through the unexplored caverns of your own soul. Turning forty is the first step in the journey.

A two-week unannounced strike a warm-up for the biggest change you will ever make.

Going for greatness there are only four rules for doing it, and theyre simple. Really simple.

ITS ONLY TOO LATE IF YOU DONT START NOW

A DELL TRADE PAPERBACK
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036

Quote from My Back Pages by Bob Dylan 1964 by Warner Bros., Inc.
Renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music.

Copyright 1998 by Barbara Sher

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

The trademark Dell is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

eISBN: 978-0-307-76404-1

Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

It can become too late if you waste time trying to go backwards.

Will you look at this splendid world! A travel poster for your second life. Your final exam. Its only too late if you dont start now. The party is just beginning.

H ow would you like to wake up tomorrow feeling young and fearless, full of creative energy, unworried about anyone elses opinions, knowing exactly what you want to do with your life, and having the unswerving intention of doing it?

I know that sounds like pie in the sky, especially to someone whos entering midlife. To you the future looks all downhill. Young again? You figure youll be lucky to grow old as slowly as possible, right? The direction life takes after forty is so obvious that you cant understand why were even discussing it.

Youre not the only person your age who sees it that way. I see that same certainty on the face of every newcomer to the middle years.

These are the facts. The partys over. There were dreams I had, but its too late for them now. I have a few years of health, and then I have to be prepared for the worst. Time to face up to the grim news: I will never be young again.

Does that sound pretty close to what youre thinking?

Youre in for a surprise.

Youre turning a big corner all right, and walking down a new street. As a matter of fact, this is one of lifes most significant turns. But the minute you step around that corner what youre going to see will astonish you.

Youre not heading for any kind of decline. In fact, youre about to embark on an amazing new beginning. The era youre entering is so different from your first forty years its completely justifiable to call it your second life.

I want you to understand that this is no variation on whats come before. Your second life is a different world, as different from your first life as college is from grade school. And it all starts as soon as you wake up from the illusions of your youth, the ones that govern your first life.

What illusions am I talking about? The ones that midlife seems to be taking away from you: the youth and beauty that gave the promise of great romance and glory, the delicious sense of endless tomorrows with endless possibilities, the certainty that youd never grow old (because nothing could be worse) and that youd never die. None of these beliefs is holding up too well against the passing of time, but your impulse is to hang on for as long as possible.

And thats not a good idea.

If you struggle to hang on to those illusions, you might not wake up for years to the opportunities waiting in your second life. And then youll look back and say, Why couldnt I have seen this fifteen years ago? Oh, the things I could have done with all that time!

So let me say it loud and clear: Your first life belongs to nature. Your second life belongs to you.

Whats coming is a gradual loosening of the hold that culture and biology have on you, and the arrival of your authentic self. You are losing nothing real by getting older. In fact, youre moving into a life thats sure to be more conscious, centered, creative, and energetic than anything youve known so far. And there is no way to live a life this exciting