February 11, 2026 • 24 mins
Are you trying to keep up with your younger self or with other people's standards and finding it uncomfortable? Maybe it’s time to accept the fact that you may have reached your limits and a deal a new deck of cards for yourself. Fearless Fabulous You's Melanie Young says, "Know when to push your limits or accept them, whether it is physical, emotional, financial, career or social. Just make sure your mind stays clear and open with no limits to embrace change and set a new course."
Fearless Fabulous You is broadcast live Wednesdays at 12 Noon ET on W4WN Radio - Women 4 Women Network (www.w4wn.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
Fearless Fabulous You Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Fearless Fabulous You is broadcast live Wednesdays at 12 Noon ET on W4WN Radio - Women 4 Women Network (www.w4wn.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
Fearless Fabulous You Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates.
We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability,
explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN
Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should
(00:20):
be directed to those show hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous. You. I am your host,
Melanie Young, Welcome to my show. Welcome to Fabruary. Yes,
that's that month where there's just twenty eight days to
cram in all the wonderful things you want to do
in your life. Before Women's History Month in March, before
swimsuit season in May, and on and on and on.
(01:02):
I like February. February to me is when you forget January. January,
beginning of the holidays, January, you're freezing your ass off.
Even in New Orleans we were freezing our ass off.
It got really cold here. But Fabruary versus February is
when I find it's a great time to reset and
decide how you want to define your fabulous. So that's
(01:24):
what the show is going to be about. It's going
to be about how to know when to push the
limits and when to accept the limits as you move
through life, because I'm doing that right now. And I'm
going to dedicate this show to the great Olympic skier,
Lindsay Vaughn, world champion, because she pushed your limits at
(01:45):
the twenty twenty six Winter Olympics in Cortina, Maligin this
past week. She at forty one, qualified to ski and
Olympics as an old age in athletic athletic terms, and
she made it to the Olympics. She vowed she was
going to ski. She did. Unfortunately, she crashed after fourteen seconds,
(02:07):
not because of the torn acl need that she has
knew because your ski hit a gate. Unfortunately, the crash
ended up fracturing her tibia, and I think it's a
fairly multiple fracture and she's under surgery, is probably ending
her career. However, she went out on top. She did
(02:27):
not go out on the descent down in her career.
She went up out on top. And now she knows
and has accepted her limits. And that is what I'm
going to talk about today, because at some point all
of us need to understand when it's good to push
the limits and when to accept the limits and move on. Or,
as the great song Kenny Rogers song The Gambler says,
(02:51):
you got to know when to hold them, no whin
to fold them, no whe to walk away, and no
one to run. So I'm doing that myself. Abruary is
a great time to do that. I mean, you know.
Another good example is the great Venus Williams, who's still
knocking it out of the ballpark at the Australian Open.
But she's not at the top. There's other young women
rising above her, but she is still going for it
(03:13):
and pushing her limits. At some point she's going to
hang up a racket and do something else. Sean White,
great snowboarder, he's off. He's maybe snowboarding. He's not doing
it competitively more. He knew and he had reached his limit,
and now he's doing something else. He's got a whole
business in the snowboarding business. Okay, so what this how
does this affect you and me? Well? I spend a
(03:34):
lot of time reassessing my own limits, because in October
of twenty twenty five, I underwent my third, my third
breast reconstruction. It was a choice I made because I
was experiencing discomfort with what they call with many breast
(03:58):
implants capsular contraction, which is when you're when your implants hardened.
Mine was shrinking, it was moving. I think it was leaking.
I don't know, but I had mobility issues and I
just said, I want these suckers out. I'd reached my limits.
I chose to undergo a process called deep flap best restoration,
(04:22):
which basically gave me a ton on the good side,
I got a tummy tuck. On the bad side, it
was really painful and I've never had a cesarean, but
many of my women friends says that after effects are
like a cesarean, where your stomach it is just taut
and tight and bloated. And I've been dealing with those
side effects, which include limits on my mobility limits. So
(04:43):
as part of the healing process, I started doing pilates
again with my surgeon's approval, and realized that I no
longer can handle the reformer at sixty seven the way
I could pre surgery and back. When I was rehabbing
from my original mass sectomy, which was almost fifteen years ago,
(05:06):
sixteen years ago this year, and I realized I had
limits and I had to be super careful because my
back was killing me. So that brings you down to
understanding your limits as you grow older and also defying
any perceptions of limits. So you can do anything you
(05:27):
choose to do at any age, in any stage. If
you have the mindset you should never let your mind
be a limit. Your mind should be limitless and what
it thinks, how it approaches life everything. The more your
mind is open, the more the world will come to you.
I truly believe that limited minds limit opportunities, So keep
(05:49):
your mind open and unlimited. However, below the neck, below
the neck, you may have some limits. I e. Maybe
you're getting arthritis. Maybe, like me, you have chronic back paid.
Maybe your joints are stiff. Maybe you've got belly, you've
got muffin top of belly and you're not moving as much.
(06:12):
Your mobility is challenged. You may have limits, but you
can push those limits to get past them. I don't
think you necessarily want to go racing in the Olympics,
or go take up snowboarding or anything, unless you go
and make sure your joints are properly ready to handle that.
You need to know your limits. Don't give up, but
(06:34):
maybe a just so in I'm gonna take each category differently.
You've got your physical limitations. Maybe you can't carry as
much as you used to, maybe you can't run as
far or as fast. Maybe your joints are hurting. Maybe
it's just everything is harder to do cleaning driving first.
(06:57):
If you're experiencing limits that are causing pain or affecting
your lifestyle, I do suggest you bring them up at
your annual wellness visit with your PCP, which I did
yesterday actually, and I said, you know, I feel like
I'm slowing down. Do you think I'm going to?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Like?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Is my brain going? She's like, Melma, you're fine, get
over yourself. You forget a few things we all do.
You're okay, you're not wandering off into the distance. But
if you find yourself doing things or your family notices
you're doing things that are really different and could be harmful,
address them. The first thing you do is you acknowledge it.
Maybe there may be something wrong and you go see
(07:35):
your doctor and discuss open and honestly what the issue
is and decide how you're going to address it. My situation,
I said, doctor Wan, she's great, I said, my back
is a mess. After this last round of surgeries, which
also included the emergency surgery for an infection, my back
and core are just shot and it's painful to get
(07:57):
up and down. I can't lift anything really really, I
don't even wear a pocket book right now. And I said,
but what I'm going to do is get mess my
final surgery, which is coming up this month also, and
then I'm going to take the month of March February February.
February February is my assessment month. March is going to
be my self care month. I'm going to brace my woman,
(08:19):
my woman is, and get well and get healthy and
make sure my body is ready for what I wanted
to do moving forward, which is be healthy first of all,
which is to keep going and traveling because I'm having surgery.
So you should be doing that too. You should reassess
what your body needs, what it's lacking, whether it's physical exercise,
(08:42):
maybe maybe it's intimacy, maybe it's nutrition, and go and
talk to someone about it. Don't google, don't follow what
everybody is doing on TikTok. Go get profect, you know,
invest in the hour, a couple of hours of coaching
or nutrition or a physical physical therapist or a personal trainer,
(09:02):
and get on track. After that, you can do it yourself,
but do it because if you don't acknowledge any problems,
it could get worse. My mother didn't. My mother had arthritis.
She ignored it, she ignored everything, and next thing you know,
she was like cripple. It was terrible, terrible, terrible. She
(09:23):
lived her life bedridden because she didn't address a problem
that could have been mitigated earlier. So don't give up,
don't give in. Accept your limits and then push them
gently as you can now in your career, if you're
still working, or you're thinking about switching, or maybe you're
retired and thinking about creating a business, or maybe you're
(09:43):
retired and you don't know what you're doing in your life,
or maybe you just want to make a change. This
can be harder as you get older. I'm the first
to tell you, but if you've reached your limit with
what you're doing for or a living in terms of
your career or your past time or whatever, and you're done.
(10:05):
It's okay to walk away. You get a whole no
wind hold and no wind to fold. I did so
in twenty ten, twenty eleven, I had reached twenty years
of my public relations, special events company and Young Communications.
It was incredibly successful, incredibly successful in New York City.
(10:27):
It was at the top of the heap. I had
amazing clients. It was awesome. I went through a lot
of roller coasters. I lost some clients, gained some clients,
lost some clients. It all took a toll on me
health wise. Because I was so busy running business, I
wasn't managing my health. As a result, I became ill.
(10:50):
I just am convinced that my breast cancer diagnosis was
distinctly related to the stress and lack of self care
that I was dealing with. The underlying issues were brewing
as I was dealing with saving the health of my business.
By the time I finished treatment and got down on
(11:10):
their side, I had a Fabruary moment, literally a Fabruary
moment where I said I'm done. I said to my husband,
I don't want to do this work anymore. I don't
want to be in this field anymore. I don't love
what I do anymore. It no longer brings me joy,
and frankly, I only see myself going down the ladder
of success and not up. And listen, when you're on
(11:31):
the ladder of success going up, there are a lot
of people who want to uplift you and help you
when you're on the way down. That people just let
you drop. It's just the way it is. I don't care,
because people want to hang on to people going up,
not going down. So, knowing that my prospects for running
my business at this point selling was not going to
happen because we'd of going out, that I'd lost some
(11:53):
clients and I'd had cancer, and who wants to hire
merge with cancer girl? Nobody, I just said I'm done, done,
and I closed the business and then I kind of
wallowed into what am I going to do with mass
in my life at fifty one fifty one, and out
of it came journaling and writing and eventually a book contract,
(12:16):
and I wrote my first book, Anything's Off My Chest,
A Survivor's Guide to Staying Fearless and Fabulous in the
Face of preast Cancer that came out it was successful,
critically successful, and then I say, fan, I actually successful.
And then I wrote my second book, which I want
to flash up on the screen your photo of I'll
call Fearless Fabulous You. Lessons on living life on your terms,
(12:37):
which actually addresses what we're talking to today, which is
that you have to reset your life and evaluate it
every so often to address limits that may be coming
your way due to age or changes in business or
finances or whatever. And how to reol and rework things
(13:02):
to your advantage, which is what I do in Fearless
Fabulous Shoe. I have five ways to reset your life.
Learn to recharge your energy. Obviously the first thing you
need to do. If you feel like you're just wiped out,
worn out, and ready to roll it all up and fold,
reassess your energy levels and your self worth and understand
(13:23):
that no matter how you feel, you still have a
great self worth. And figure out what is that worth
to you, what is that worth to the world, and
wear it on your sleeve. Define how you want to
live your life, accept your limits, and redefine how you
want to live your life, which is the whole recharge section.
(13:44):
Then you know, let go, let go of things that
are bringing you down, whether it's mental issues, mental baggage, people, baggage, whatever.
No one to let it go, no one to say
I'm done with this. I want to free up my time, people,
my headspace to move on. Okay, sometimes change happens to you,
(14:08):
and sometimes you make change happen. It's going to happen
either way. Just be prepared. Then learn to reconnect with
what you want to do, what really matters, what limits
you'll accept, what once you will not, what boundaries you
want to push, which once you don't, And then reframe
it all and say, Okay, I had a great life,
I was doing X, but now I'm got to do why.
(14:30):
I can't begin to tell you how many people I
know at my level age wise, let's say fifty and older.
I've had successful careers and lives, and they're all out
there looking for jobs right now. They're like, I desperately
need a job. I need a job. Their company folded,
the media business is in the tank, everybody's getting taken
over by AI. You've aged out, whatever, you probably are
(14:54):
not going to be doing the same thing again. You
probably will be doing something different. Suck up and deal
and say I'm going to learn something new, So what
can that be? Maybe you're going to go to how
many schools? Well, go learn them. There's a million classes
to take free or otherwise. There's a million ways to
(15:14):
say I'd like to learn your business. Can I work
as an intern? You could be an intern at fifty
and older. You can volunteer for a period of time
with an organization a nonprofit and say I'd like to help,
and then say, by the way, i'd like to do
any jobs, or take that volunteer work and package it
(15:35):
for jobs. You can do all of that. You can
also choose not to work. You know, I have friends
who are like, I'm retired, and I'm kind of embarrassed self.
Instead of saying I'm retired, they say I'm self employed.
It's okay retire. You don't have to work. If you
don't have to work, and you're financially secure enough not
to God bless you, go out and enjoy your life,
(15:55):
do something for other people, mentor volunteer, spend that money
that you work so hard to earn and go travel
or do something you want to do. It's perfectly okay
not to work. In fact, that's one of my mental
limits right now. I keep saying to my husband David,
I don't really want to work anymore. I kind of
just want to like live my life. I figure I
(16:16):
have fifteen good years left, fifteen one to five. I
want to live them really well, just enjoy my life.
Why do I have to work well financially? I probably do,
but I don't have to work as hard. So you
can have that conversation with yourself and assess, do I
have to keep doing the same old, same old thing?
Can and I or are there limits? Finally, decide what
(16:40):
you want to do down the road and set a
goal to figure that out. Maybe it's not work okay.
That means you got to really work on your investing
and saving and not spending, and that may mean giving
up things that you really like. For me, that's hard.
I like to travel. Maybe it's not going out to
(17:00):
restaurants or concerts as much. Maybe it's buying for your
clothes because you want to save now to spend and
relax and have less stress later. It's really up to you.
It's really up to you. Try something new, try something crazy,
push your limits and see what that's like. You know
(17:22):
what I've always wanted to do, I've always wanted to
try burlesque. Yeah, burlesque. I love burlesque. Now it's getting
harder for me to even conceive that because I have
now two surgical scores. I'm like, who would want to
see you, sixty seven year old woman do burless but
two surgical stars. Well, first of all, I just put
(17:43):
a barrier in front of me, a mental barrier. You
never know, push your limits. If it's fun and you're
having joy from it, why not do it? Another one
is financial limits. Okay, this is a biggie. Okay, we
talked about physical and mental career. Financial that's a tough one.
(18:03):
I can't afford. It's too expensive. I can't do this,
can't It is a limit? Well, yeah, sometimes that's true.
It's hard, particularly when you have friends you enjoy being
with who maybe are more financially well off than you,
and suddenly you're with them and you feel peer pressure
to keep up with your friends. But on trips like that,
(18:23):
well maybe you don't want to travel with them anymore.
You know, if you have financial limits, a accept them
and live within them, because the other option is not
great debt to find a way to grow your money,
the money you have working with a financial advisor, or
(18:44):
earn more money bit by bit. It may not be
a salary, it may not be a job, but maybe
you can sell stuff out of your closet. Maybe you
can offer to walk dogs, maybe you can get a
part time job. Whatever. The financial limits is a hard
one because you live with that the rest of your
life unless you do something with it to improve it.
(19:09):
So the best thing you can do there is start early,
be pragmatic, and have a good conversation with yourself. Do
I need it? Do I want it? Isn't necessary. I've
had a conversation many times. It's been a terrible conversation
that I've done it. So you know limits. You're never
too old, you're never too young. However, there are some
(19:37):
limits to both. Your career may have a ceiling to it.
If you're dumping your head against the ceiling, then walk away,
open the door and walk away and do something else.
If your relationship isn't a rut, I haven't talked about
that one. If your personal relationships are you a rut,
(19:59):
face it, get help, Go speak to a therapist, talk
to your partner, and have an honest, non accusatory discussion.
Don't sweep it under the blanket or under the rug,
because it'll fester. Just have an open conversation and say
is there anything you know or come up with something
fun to do together that you haven't done before. You
(20:23):
got to push your limits there too, because you don't
want to be in a rut. A rut creates limits. Financially,
I've addressed you've got to figure out how to grow
with the money, spend less money, make less money, and
live within your means. So that is setting limits. What
you can have a great time doing it. You can
(20:46):
learn to take up cooking. You can take walks with
friends instead of go out for drinks. That's right. Cocktails
are like twenty dollars now some places. Okay, happy hour
maybe twelve, But think about all the calories you can
burn by moving and taking a walk, talk, get together
versus ingesting. Okay, maybe you can't take that big trip
(21:10):
right now, or if you were saved, put your money
away for that big trip because you only live once
and do staycations. David and I did many staycations in
New York and in Tennessee when we were trying to
save money. We didn't talk about them as much as
our big trips, but which is work, by the way,
(21:30):
but we'd do staycations you find a museum. I have
a tip for you if you join your local library.
I think I've talked about this before. If you join
a local public library, you can get asked them for
other benefits. For example, our local library has a culture pass.
You can sign up and go to many museums for free,
or attend the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra for free. As a
(21:54):
bonus for having a library card. You can also check
out books current magazines not check them out, have a
reading library there. They have puzzles. Some libraries have crafts,
cooking appliances. It's actually amazing what your local public library
can offer for free just by setting up and getting
a library card. I never buy books anymore. I always
(22:15):
just go to the library. You can also go and
get notary public not should be a spokesperson for libraries,
but I'm very big. First of all, I love to read.
I love books, as you know, and second I love
to take advantage of free things. So that's a really
good one. And some of these libraries have classes where
you can sharpen your skills, whether it's social media or
(22:37):
computers or other kinds of things. So ask because if
you feel limited because you lack knowledge about something, there's
always a free or low cost class to learn or course.
I highly recommend that because lack of knowledge should not
(22:57):
be a limit. Anyway, I'm going to keep this show
short because it's Marti gra If you can see in
my head, it's Marti Gras in New Orleans, and I'm
going to enjoy the afternoon and maybe go see some parades.
But again, this show was inspired by watching Lindsay Vaughn
push your limits, and to me, she's a hero because
(23:20):
she pushed hard, she worked hard, she was dedicated to
her sport and her profession, and even though she ended
up with a huge crash, she didn't crash in my mind.
She just got through it. And we'll move on. So
a toast to her and the toast to you, and
this February, think through what you want to do beyond
(23:44):
your limits except the ones you may have, and rework
everything else. Because you have a choice in life on
how you live. You can choose to live with limits
and boundaries or not. You can push your limits or
you can stay where you're It's really up to you.
What you enjoy doing and how you want to grow
and stay in the note your choice. Never let people
(24:09):
choose for you, and always live life on your terms
and choose fearless and fabulous. Thank you. Follow me on
Melanie Fabulous. Check out my book Fearless Fabulous You lessons
on living life in your terms and Getting Things Off
my Chest, A survivor's guide to staying fearless and fabulous
(24:29):
in the face of breast cancer. I would appreciate it.
Take care and less la bontemp. Thank you.
The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates.
We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability,
explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN
Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should
(00:20):
be directed to those show hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous. You. I am your host,
Melanie Young, Welcome to my show. Welcome to Fabruary. Yes,
that's that month where there's just twenty eight days to
cram in all the wonderful things you want to do
in your life. Before Women's History Month in March, before
swimsuit season in May, and on and on and on.
(01:02):
I like February. February to me is when you forget January. January,
beginning of the holidays, January, you're freezing your ass off.
Even in New Orleans we were freezing our ass off.
It got really cold here. But Fabruary versus February is
when I find it's a great time to reset and
decide how you want to define your fabulous. So that's
(01:24):
what the show is going to be about. It's going
to be about how to know when to push the
limits and when to accept the limits as you move
through life, because I'm doing that right now. And I'm
going to dedicate this show to the great Olympic skier,
Lindsay Vaughn, world champion, because she pushed your limits at
(01:45):
the twenty twenty six Winter Olympics in Cortina, Maligin this
past week. She at forty one, qualified to ski and
Olympics as an old age in athletic athletic terms, and
she made it to the Olympics. She vowed she was
going to ski. She did. Unfortunately, she crashed after fourteen seconds,
(02:07):
not because of the torn acl need that she has
knew because your ski hit a gate. Unfortunately, the crash
ended up fracturing her tibia, and I think it's a
fairly multiple fracture and she's under surgery, is probably ending
her career. However, she went out on top. She did
(02:27):
not go out on the descent down in her career.
She went up out on top. And now she knows
and has accepted her limits. And that is what I'm
going to talk about today, because at some point all
of us need to understand when it's good to push
the limits and when to accept the limits and move on. Or,
as the great song Kenny Rogers song The Gambler says,
(02:51):
you got to know when to hold them, no whin
to fold them, no whe to walk away, and no
one to run. So I'm doing that myself. Abruary is
a great time to do that. I mean, you know.
Another good example is the great Venus Williams, who's still
knocking it out of the ballpark at the Australian Open.
But she's not at the top. There's other young women
rising above her, but she is still going for it
(03:13):
and pushing her limits. At some point she's going to
hang up a racket and do something else. Sean White,
great snowboarder, he's off. He's maybe snowboarding. He's not doing
it competitively more. He knew and he had reached his limit,
and now he's doing something else. He's got a whole
business in the snowboarding business. Okay, so what this how
does this affect you and me? Well? I spend a
(03:34):
lot of time reassessing my own limits, because in October
of twenty twenty five, I underwent my third, my third
breast reconstruction. It was a choice I made because I
was experiencing discomfort with what they call with many breast
(03:58):
implants capsular contraction, which is when you're when your implants hardened.
Mine was shrinking, it was moving. I think it was leaking.
I don't know, but I had mobility issues and I
just said, I want these suckers out. I'd reached my limits.
I chose to undergo a process called deep flap best restoration,
(04:22):
which basically gave me a ton on the good side,
I got a tummy tuck. On the bad side, it
was really painful and I've never had a cesarean, but
many of my women friends says that after effects are
like a cesarean, where your stomach it is just taut
and tight and bloated. And I've been dealing with those
side effects, which include limits on my mobility limits. So
(04:43):
as part of the healing process, I started doing pilates
again with my surgeon's approval, and realized that I no
longer can handle the reformer at sixty seven the way
I could pre surgery and back. When I was rehabbing
from my original mass sectomy, which was almost fifteen years ago,
(05:06):
sixteen years ago this year, and I realized I had
limits and I had to be super careful because my
back was killing me. So that brings you down to
understanding your limits as you grow older and also defying
any perceptions of limits. So you can do anything you
(05:27):
choose to do at any age, in any stage. If
you have the mindset you should never let your mind
be a limit. Your mind should be limitless and what
it thinks, how it approaches life everything. The more your
mind is open, the more the world will come to you.
I truly believe that limited minds limit opportunities, So keep
(05:49):
your mind open and unlimited. However, below the neck, below
the neck, you may have some limits. I e. Maybe
you're getting arthritis. Maybe, like me, you have chronic back paid.
Maybe your joints are stiff. Maybe you've got belly, you've
got muffin top of belly and you're not moving as much.
(06:12):
Your mobility is challenged. You may have limits, but you
can push those limits to get past them. I don't
think you necessarily want to go racing in the Olympics,
or go take up snowboarding or anything, unless you go
and make sure your joints are properly ready to handle that.
You need to know your limits. Don't give up, but
(06:34):
maybe a just so in I'm gonna take each category differently.
You've got your physical limitations. Maybe you can't carry as
much as you used to, maybe you can't run as
far or as fast. Maybe your joints are hurting. Maybe
it's just everything is harder to do cleaning driving first.
(06:57):
If you're experiencing limits that are causing pain or affecting
your lifestyle, I do suggest you bring them up at
your annual wellness visit with your PCP, which I did
yesterday actually, and I said, you know, I feel like
I'm slowing down. Do you think I'm going to?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Like?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Is my brain going? She's like, Melma, you're fine, get
over yourself. You forget a few things we all do.
You're okay, you're not wandering off into the distance. But
if you find yourself doing things or your family notices
you're doing things that are really different and could be harmful,
address them. The first thing you do is you acknowledge it.
Maybe there may be something wrong and you go see
(07:35):
your doctor and discuss open and honestly what the issue
is and decide how you're going to address it. My situation,
I said, doctor Wan, she's great, I said, my back
is a mess. After this last round of surgeries, which
also included the emergency surgery for an infection, my back
and core are just shot and it's painful to get
(07:57):
up and down. I can't lift anything really really, I
don't even wear a pocket book right now. And I said,
but what I'm going to do is get mess my
final surgery, which is coming up this month also, and
then I'm going to take the month of March February February.
February February is my assessment month. March is going to
be my self care month. I'm going to brace my woman,
(08:19):
my woman is, and get well and get healthy and
make sure my body is ready for what I wanted
to do moving forward, which is be healthy first of all,
which is to keep going and traveling because I'm having surgery.
So you should be doing that too. You should reassess
what your body needs, what it's lacking, whether it's physical exercise,
(08:42):
maybe maybe it's intimacy, maybe it's nutrition, and go and
talk to someone about it. Don't google, don't follow what
everybody is doing on TikTok. Go get profect, you know,
invest in the hour, a couple of hours of coaching
or nutrition or a physical physical therapist or a personal trainer,
(09:02):
and get on track. After that, you can do it yourself,
but do it because if you don't acknowledge any problems,
it could get worse. My mother didn't. My mother had arthritis.
She ignored it, she ignored everything, and next thing you know,
she was like cripple. It was terrible, terrible, terrible. She
(09:23):
lived her life bedridden because she didn't address a problem
that could have been mitigated earlier. So don't give up,
don't give in. Accept your limits and then push them
gently as you can now in your career, if you're
still working, or you're thinking about switching, or maybe you're
retired and thinking about creating a business, or maybe you're
(09:43):
retired and you don't know what you're doing in your life,
or maybe you just want to make a change. This
can be harder as you get older. I'm the first
to tell you, but if you've reached your limit with
what you're doing for or a living in terms of
your career or your past time or whatever, and you're done.
(10:05):
It's okay to walk away. You get a whole no
wind hold and no wind to fold. I did so
in twenty ten, twenty eleven, I had reached twenty years
of my public relations, special events company and Young Communications.
It was incredibly successful, incredibly successful in New York City.
(10:27):
It was at the top of the heap. I had
amazing clients. It was awesome. I went through a lot
of roller coasters. I lost some clients, gained some clients,
lost some clients. It all took a toll on me
health wise. Because I was so busy running business, I
wasn't managing my health. As a result, I became ill.
(10:50):
I just am convinced that my breast cancer diagnosis was
distinctly related to the stress and lack of self care
that I was dealing with. The underlying issues were brewing
as I was dealing with saving the health of my business.
By the time I finished treatment and got down on
(11:10):
their side, I had a Fabruary moment, literally a Fabruary
moment where I said I'm done. I said to my husband,
I don't want to do this work anymore. I don't
want to be in this field anymore. I don't love
what I do anymore. It no longer brings me joy,
and frankly, I only see myself going down the ladder
of success and not up. And listen, when you're on
(11:31):
the ladder of success going up, there are a lot
of people who want to uplift you and help you
when you're on the way down. That people just let
you drop. It's just the way it is. I don't care,
because people want to hang on to people going up,
not going down. So, knowing that my prospects for running
my business at this point selling was not going to
happen because we'd of going out, that I'd lost some
(11:53):
clients and I'd had cancer, and who wants to hire
merge with cancer girl? Nobody, I just said I'm done, done,
and I closed the business and then I kind of
wallowed into what am I going to do with mass
in my life at fifty one fifty one, and out
of it came journaling and writing and eventually a book contract,
(12:16):
and I wrote my first book, Anything's Off My Chest,
A Survivor's Guide to Staying Fearless and Fabulous in the
Face of preast Cancer that came out it was successful,
critically successful, and then I say, fan, I actually successful.
And then I wrote my second book, which I want
to flash up on the screen your photo of I'll
call Fearless Fabulous You. Lessons on living life on your terms,
(12:37):
which actually addresses what we're talking to today, which is
that you have to reset your life and evaluate it
every so often to address limits that may be coming
your way due to age or changes in business or
finances or whatever. And how to reol and rework things
(13:02):
to your advantage, which is what I do in Fearless
Fabulous Shoe. I have five ways to reset your life.
Learn to recharge your energy. Obviously the first thing you
need to do. If you feel like you're just wiped out,
worn out, and ready to roll it all up and fold,
reassess your energy levels and your self worth and understand
(13:23):
that no matter how you feel, you still have a
great self worth. And figure out what is that worth
to you, what is that worth to the world, and
wear it on your sleeve. Define how you want to
live your life, accept your limits, and redefine how you
want to live your life, which is the whole recharge section.
(13:44):
Then you know, let go, let go of things that
are bringing you down, whether it's mental issues, mental baggage, people, baggage, whatever.
No one to let it go, no one to say
I'm done with this. I want to free up my time, people,
my headspace to move on. Okay, sometimes change happens to you,
(14:08):
and sometimes you make change happen. It's going to happen
either way. Just be prepared. Then learn to reconnect with
what you want to do, what really matters, what limits
you'll accept, what once you will not, what boundaries you
want to push, which once you don't, And then reframe
it all and say, Okay, I had a great life,
I was doing X, but now I'm got to do why.
(14:30):
I can't begin to tell you how many people I
know at my level age wise, let's say fifty and older.
I've had successful careers and lives, and they're all out
there looking for jobs right now. They're like, I desperately
need a job. I need a job. Their company folded,
the media business is in the tank, everybody's getting taken
over by AI. You've aged out, whatever, you probably are
(14:54):
not going to be doing the same thing again. You
probably will be doing something different. Suck up and deal
and say I'm going to learn something new, So what
can that be? Maybe you're going to go to how
many schools? Well, go learn them. There's a million classes
to take free or otherwise. There's a million ways to
(15:14):
say I'd like to learn your business. Can I work
as an intern? You could be an intern at fifty
and older. You can volunteer for a period of time
with an organization a nonprofit and say I'd like to help,
and then say, by the way, i'd like to do
any jobs, or take that volunteer work and package it
(15:35):
for jobs. You can do all of that. You can
also choose not to work. You know, I have friends
who are like, I'm retired, and I'm kind of embarrassed self.
Instead of saying I'm retired, they say I'm self employed.
It's okay retire. You don't have to work. If you
don't have to work, and you're financially secure enough not
to God bless you, go out and enjoy your life,
(15:55):
do something for other people, mentor volunteer, spend that money
that you work so hard to earn and go travel
or do something you want to do. It's perfectly okay
not to work. In fact, that's one of my mental
limits right now. I keep saying to my husband David,
I don't really want to work anymore. I kind of
just want to like live my life. I figure I
(16:16):
have fifteen good years left, fifteen one to five. I
want to live them really well, just enjoy my life.
Why do I have to work well financially? I probably do,
but I don't have to work as hard. So you
can have that conversation with yourself and assess, do I
have to keep doing the same old, same old thing?
Can and I or are there limits? Finally, decide what
(16:40):
you want to do down the road and set a
goal to figure that out. Maybe it's not work okay.
That means you got to really work on your investing
and saving and not spending, and that may mean giving
up things that you really like. For me, that's hard.
I like to travel. Maybe it's not going out to
(17:00):
restaurants or concerts as much. Maybe it's buying for your
clothes because you want to save now to spend and
relax and have less stress later. It's really up to you.
It's really up to you. Try something new, try something crazy,
push your limits and see what that's like. You know
(17:22):
what I've always wanted to do, I've always wanted to
try burlesque. Yeah, burlesque. I love burlesque. Now it's getting
harder for me to even conceive that because I have
now two surgical scores. I'm like, who would want to
see you, sixty seven year old woman do burless but
two surgical stars. Well, first of all, I just put
(17:43):
a barrier in front of me, a mental barrier. You
never know, push your limits. If it's fun and you're
having joy from it, why not do it? Another one
is financial limits. Okay, this is a biggie. Okay, we
talked about physical and mental career. Financial that's a tough one.
(18:03):
I can't afford. It's too expensive. I can't do this,
can't It is a limit? Well, yeah, sometimes that's true.
It's hard, particularly when you have friends you enjoy being
with who maybe are more financially well off than you,
and suddenly you're with them and you feel peer pressure
to keep up with your friends. But on trips like that,
(18:23):
well maybe you don't want to travel with them anymore.
You know, if you have financial limits, a accept them
and live within them, because the other option is not
great debt to find a way to grow your money,
the money you have working with a financial advisor, or
(18:44):
earn more money bit by bit. It may not be
a salary, it may not be a job, but maybe
you can sell stuff out of your closet. Maybe you
can offer to walk dogs, maybe you can get a
part time job. Whatever. The financial limits is a hard
one because you live with that the rest of your
life unless you do something with it to improve it.
(19:09):
So the best thing you can do there is start early,
be pragmatic, and have a good conversation with yourself. Do
I need it? Do I want it? Isn't necessary. I've
had a conversation many times. It's been a terrible conversation
that I've done it. So you know limits. You're never
too old, you're never too young. However, there are some
(19:37):
limits to both. Your career may have a ceiling to it.
If you're dumping your head against the ceiling, then walk away,
open the door and walk away and do something else.
If your relationship isn't a rut, I haven't talked about
that one. If your personal relationships are you a rut,
(19:59):
face it, get help, Go speak to a therapist, talk
to your partner, and have an honest, non accusatory discussion.
Don't sweep it under the blanket or under the rug,
because it'll fester. Just have an open conversation and say
is there anything you know or come up with something
fun to do together that you haven't done before. You
(20:23):
got to push your limits there too, because you don't
want to be in a rut. A rut creates limits. Financially,
I've addressed you've got to figure out how to grow
with the money, spend less money, make less money, and
live within your means. So that is setting limits. What
you can have a great time doing it. You can
(20:46):
learn to take up cooking. You can take walks with
friends instead of go out for drinks. That's right. Cocktails
are like twenty dollars now some places. Okay, happy hour
maybe twelve, But think about all the calories you can
burn by moving and taking a walk, talk, get together
versus ingesting. Okay, maybe you can't take that big trip
(21:10):
right now, or if you were saved, put your money
away for that big trip because you only live once
and do staycations. David and I did many staycations in
New York and in Tennessee when we were trying to
save money. We didn't talk about them as much as
our big trips, but which is work, by the way,
(21:30):
but we'd do staycations you find a museum. I have
a tip for you if you join your local library.
I think I've talked about this before. If you join
a local public library, you can get asked them for
other benefits. For example, our local library has a culture pass.
You can sign up and go to many museums for free,
or attend the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra for free. As a
(21:54):
bonus for having a library card. You can also check
out books current magazines not check them out, have a
reading library there. They have puzzles. Some libraries have crafts,
cooking appliances. It's actually amazing what your local public library
can offer for free just by setting up and getting
a library card. I never buy books anymore. I always
(22:15):
just go to the library. You can also go and
get notary public not should be a spokesperson for libraries,
but I'm very big. First of all, I love to read.
I love books, as you know, and second I love
to take advantage of free things. So that's a really
good one. And some of these libraries have classes where
you can sharpen your skills, whether it's social media or
(22:37):
computers or other kinds of things. So ask because if
you feel limited because you lack knowledge about something, there's
always a free or low cost class to learn or course.
I highly recommend that because lack of knowledge should not
(22:57):
be a limit. Anyway, I'm going to keep this show
short because it's Marti gra If you can see in
my head, it's Marti Gras in New Orleans, and I'm
going to enjoy the afternoon and maybe go see some parades.
But again, this show was inspired by watching Lindsay Vaughn
push your limits, and to me, she's a hero because
(23:20):
she pushed hard, she worked hard, she was dedicated to
her sport and her profession, and even though she ended
up with a huge crash, she didn't crash in my mind.
She just got through it. And we'll move on. So
a toast to her and the toast to you, and
this February, think through what you want to do beyond
(23:44):
your limits except the ones you may have, and rework
everything else. Because you have a choice in life on
how you live. You can choose to live with limits
and boundaries or not. You can push your limits or
you can stay where you're It's really up to you.
What you enjoy doing and how you want to grow
and stay in the note your choice. Never let people
(24:09):
choose for you, and always live life on your terms
and choose fearless and fabulous. Thank you. Follow me on
Melanie Fabulous. Check out my book Fearless Fabulous You lessons
on living life in your terms and Getting Things Off
my Chest, A survivor's guide to staying fearless and fabulous
(24:29):
in the face of breast cancer. I would appreciate it.
Take care and less la bontemp. Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com