Is it possible to get all that you want in life? Is it possible to get the body of your dreams?

I’m going to answer these questions and yes there is a part of it that relates to you getting the healthy body you’ve always dreamed of.

I recently bought a program I never (EVER) thought I’d buy in my life. The first time I heard about this program, I dismissed it as being fluff.

I’ve been on the path to personal growth for many years now and I’ve read so many books it’s almost insane.

I’ve made some progress in certain areas of my life (and I’m pretty proud of myself for that), but I still didn’t feel that I was achieving all of my life goals.

It’s not at all that I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to get to where I want to get in life, it’s more the fact that self-doubt, fear, worry and self-defeating talk can sometimes keep me stuck in a bad place.

I’ve read so many books, listened to countless self-development CDs and travelled several kilometres to personal growth conferences or weekend seminars that I could barely afford and I still felt like I was banging my head against the wall.

I’m not even going to go into Whitney’s crazy marriage with Bobby Brown or any of those times she made news because her strange behavior from the past!

When I was a teenager, I have to say that I never took to Whitney until the 1992 sound track to The Bodyguard. That song “I Will Always Love You” written by Dolly Parton was the song that really made me appreciate Whitney’s talent.

I always find it so heartbreaking to see people with so much talent have so many issues in life. I mean Whitney is the world’s “best-selling music artist) with over 170 million albums sold and yet, she’s had a very complicated, tumultuous and plain screwed last few years!

When she announced her divorced, I yelled Hallelujah and when Clive Davis from Arista Records declared in March 2007 that Whitney would be putting out a comeback album, I said “thank God”. Now with her second album (I Look to You was released on August 31, 2009) behind her, Whitney seems to be back on track to rebuilding a healthier life for herself.

Can you imagine that the post I wrote last week (24 hours BEFORE the official photos of Susan Boyle’s makeover photos were made public) caused a reader to leave a rude comment and use vulgar words … you know the F-word, the B-word and I was even wondering if he or she was going to pull a Perez Hilton.

You can imagine that I was less than impress with the comment and deleted it.

That said, it’s interesting to see how people are reacting to this middle aged woman who is now (FINALLY) focusing a bit more attention to the way she looks.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to Susan Boyle: 1) those who feel that talent should come in any “packaging” and 2) those who think that her talent would be showcased even better with a bit of a refreshed look.

So you’ve most likely seen the video or heard about Susan Boyle on late night comedy shows or on CNN … they just won’t stop featuring her and many anchors have admitted to weeping during her performance in front of the three judges (Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden) of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Now, I don’t think that I was moved to tears when I saw Susan Boyle’s performance, but I was as amazed as everyone else.

The 47-year-old unemployed women from West Lothian (Scotland) has become an overnight sensation and her life is soon to be an open book to the world (I hope she’s ready for the bumpy ride).

I think the reason why some many people (100 million downloads on You Tube and counting) are so fascinated by Susan Boyle is because she doesn’t “look” like your typical songstress. She’s like the underdog that everyone dismissed and now she’s come on top in her late 40s!!!

That said, if she is to win the competition on “Britain’s Got Talent” 2009 she’s going to have to step up her fashion and beauty game or else she’ll be fed to the (media and blogging community) wolves.

I’ve not had a 360º after 40 feature in a very long while and when I read this feature of  Canadian runner Denise Robson who made it to the Boston Marathon on her first try (it takes years to train for this) and who has been breaking running records after running records, I just had to talk about this 40-year-old mother of three girls from Eastern Canada.

For U.S. and international readers, I should place Nova Scotia on the Canadian map. Nova Scotia is near the Atlantic Ocean and it’s so low on the map that its southern point is actually very close to state of Maine.

You can find out more about this Canadian province here: Nova Scotia.

Ladies, why is dating again after a break-up so much harder as we age?

No one deals with heartbreaks the same way. Breaking up with someone you love is simply emotionally cruel and divorce in my opinion is synonymous with a word that rhymes with witch!

Some women get back on the saddle as fast as possible and they start on a road of endless serial dating in order to feel like they are never alone, but yet never allowing themselves to get close enough to anything else so they don’t have to go through all that pain and heartache ever again.

Some women get trapped in the uncertainty of a new relationship and having to get to know someone all over again (you know what I mean … knowing what he likes or dislikes, knowing his habits, knowing what he hates and loves, knowing his family history and drama … etc).

There are two events that made me want to write this post: 1) Tina Turner was on Oprah not long ago and Queen Oprah declared that at 68 Tina had been in a happy relationship for the past 20 years (which would mean that she stated dating her current man at 48) 2) The “Sex and the City” movie features Carrie Bradshaw who finally finds love and gets married after 40.

It occurred to me that when you end a relationship in your mid-to-late 30s and you’ve been on a bad string of dates and you’ve had to endure a few bad medium-length relationships, you start wondering if you will ever be able to find a meaningful relationship again.

I’ve been a huge fan of house music (electronica gender – according to Wikipedia, electronica is refers to music that emphasizes the use of electronic musical instruments or electronic music technology as a central aspect of the sound of the music.) since I was a teenager.

This underground sound became popular in some of the coolest bars in the city and although I was underage, I was able to get into those bars because I was tall and looked 18 and not 16.

I knew this guy who used to always say that after a woman had reached her 30th birthday it was all downhill from that point on because she would never have the same “beautiful and sexy” body she had in her teens and 20s and that a woman’s body after the age of 30 was just not as desirable. He always talked about how much woman lost their muscle mass and their firmness, gained a belly, acquired flabby arms and how everything on their bodies turned to mush. This is not something this guy said once or twice, this is something he said constantly and in time, I came to understand that he actually truly meant it … he wasn’t trying to be comical.

I recently read a really interesting article published in the New York Times last month about the trials and tribulations of adding more candles to your birthday cake.

The article revealed some fascinating facts from a recent study about the emotional reality of hitting certain “big” birthdays:

Photo by RRubio

Moira Cameron who had spent 22 years as an army accountant decided that she had had enough of her career and needed a radical change. She got to a point where she would have chosen a career as either a plumber or an electrician, but luckily, she choose tourism and with that decision she singlehandedly turned British history upside down.

During my recent visit to London, I visited the Tower of London under the strong advisement of my good friend who’s been living in London for a few years now.

Photo by CarlosMendoza

Beauty Match is all about celebrating beauty after the age of 35! We focus a lot of our skincare and body and mind tips on helping us look as young as we feel in our mid-to-late 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond.

Another very important aspect in feeling good and feeling beautiful is recognizing (and really believing) that life doesn’t have an expiry date marked “40”.