How Playing It Safe Can Be Dangerous

By Laura Lee Carter

Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the street and then getting hit by an airplane.

Actually, this reminds me more of my experience at midlife. I had lived my entire life so carefully, remaining single until 39, and then in a bad marriage and the wrong career, just to “play it safe.” Then when my major crisis hit at age 49, I felt so perplexed.

I remember saying to myself: “I spent my entire life playing it safe, just so I wouldn’t end up like this!”

Too bad I had to wait so long to learn exactly how dangerous “playing it safe” can be!

Now, at age 60, I agree much more with Katherine Hepburn: So many rules, so little time to break them! I break those little rules in my head all of the time now. In fact I try to break at least one a day!

Do you have silly rules that keep you from getting the life you really want?

Do you have your own ‘itsy bitsy shitty committee’ in your head, that keeps telling you: “You shouldn’t do that!” Does it tell you regularly that you can’t possibly find the kind of love you seek? Tell it to SHUT UP right now, and then go out and find the best kind of love you can!

That’s what I did at age 49. I stopped focusing on the negative experiences in my past, and moved on to the kind of love I had always been looking for, and it worked!

Now, eleven years later, I am living a marvelous life in a solar home in southern Colorado with a prince of a partner, one who would not think of criticizing me. He believes in me!

Love is real and the only thing that counts in the end.

Decide that you will somehow find your best kind of love, and then go out and find it TODAY!

If you feel you need some help in this difficult transition from negative to positive, please check out my book! And for some more excellent reading on this topic, check out this article by one of my favorite writers!

Laura Lee Carter, MA Counseling Psychology, the writer behind the popular online blog How to Believe in Love Again, has been helping others turn midlife difficulties into opportunities for personal change since 2007. Besides working as a psychotherapist, Laura Lee has authored a number of books and e-books on midlife transformation.  Don’t miss her new book: Find Your Reason to Be Here: The Search for Meaning in Midlife. Follow her on Twitter: @midlifequeen.