This week, I’m celebrating a big milestone—my 40th birthday.
I’ve been reflecting deeply on what this new decade means for me: my family, my career, and how I want to move through the world. In this episode, I share the ways I’m leaning more fully into purpose and presence, why I’m prioritizing harmony at home, and how I’m envisioning the next decade with intentionality. From a birthday trip under the stars in Portugal to big creative and professional goals. I’ll take you inside my reflections on growth, love, and contribution.
If you’re thinking about your own next chapter—or simply curious about how to embrace milestones with meaning—this episode is for you.
Show notes:
- Read the full blog post that inspired this week’s episode: Are 40s the Best Decade Yet? Birthday Reflections from a 39-Year-Old
Follow me on:
- Instagram @stacyennis
- Facebook @stacyenniscreative
- YouTube @stacyennisauthor
To submit a question, email hello@stacyennis.com or visit http://stacyennis.com/contact and fill out the form on the page.
Turning 40 with purpose | Episode 219 Transcript
These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.
Stacy: I have always just seen women in their 40s as just so powerful. It’s like they’ve done all this good work in their younger years and now they’re 40 something and they’re like out there just doing their thing. And it’s something I’ve really looked forward to for most of my life. And now I’m here and I’ve been reflecting on my own life and if you know, I’ve kind of reached that same place. Foreign welcome to Beyond Better, a podcast that explores a simple but profound idea. We all deserve to lives we love. And that includes our work lives too. I’m your host, Stacey Ennis, an author, book coach, speaker and longtime location independent entrepreneur living in Portugal with my family of four. Join me as I talk business, location, education, independence, writing, publishing, and so much more.
Stacy: All focused on building a life that is beyond Better. If you are an aspiring nonfiction author, I would love to help you write your book. I help authors, aspiring authors, just like you go from idea to draft. I do this through consulting, one one coaching and group programs. If you are ready to get started, serious about finally writing that book that’s been on your heart, on your mind, and probably has some kind of integration into your business, your brand or your broader impact, I would love to connect with you. Welcome. Welcome. This is a very special episode because I’m turning 40. I’m recording this at 39. By the time you listen to this, I will be 40, I’ll be 40 years old, I’ll be in my 40s.
Stacy: And it’s interesting because this is a decade that I have looked forward to for a lot of my life. Actually since I was in my 20s, I have always just seen women in their 40s as just so powerful. It’s like they’ve done all this good work in their younger years and now they’re 40 something and they’re like out there just doing their thing. And it’s something I’ve really looked forward to for most of my life. And now I’m here and I’ve been reflecting on my own life and if you know, I’ve kind of reached that same place. I’ve done the things to make me successful. I’ve built the family I want. And the truth is that I don’t feel like I’ve arrived. I don’t think I ever will because I’m such a outward looking, high achieving, just like go for it kind of person.
Stacy: Actually being present and content is one of my biggest areas of growth. But I do feel that some of the things that I perceived are true. When you get to your 40s, like you have built a career. I have built a career that I am so proud of. Like, I really feel so proud going into my 40s and I feel like this is my time to really lean in and do that next layer of good work that I know I can do in the world. Like, I’ve built the foundation, now it’s time to go. Like, it’s time to lean in. At the same time, I am looking forward to continuing with a mindset of balance and abundance and harmony in my life, which is something I’ll talk about a little bit more in a bit.
Stacy: Today I want to celebrate with you first of all. So I’m going to make an ask. If you listen to this podcast, would you for my birthday, would you leave a review in your podcast app? You can tell me happy birthday in the review. It would be amazing to open up the podcast app when I get back from my vacation. When I tell I’ll tell you about this in a minute and have a bunch of happy birthdays and podcast reviews because that will truly help me achieve some of my goals when I’m 40, in my 40s, and it would just be nice. So would you do that? Would you take a minute, just rate and review the podcast, subscribe, maybe share it with a friend? That would be like extra birthday.
Stacy: But also you’ll get to be notified about the podcast and you won’t miss episodes like this one. Okay, so with all that said, I want to tell you what I’m doing to celebrate my birthday and then I’m going to share 14 intentions that I am holding as I move into my 40s. So first of all, the celebration for my birthday, I am going to a dark sky reserve. And if you haven’t heard about dark sky reserves, I hadn’t a couple years ago. They are these places where the government limits light pollution. So you go and you have this just beautiful, clear, direct view of the stars. I am really hoping there’s no clouds. Apparently there’s a hurricane coming in somewhere that may send some weather our way, but I am just hoping that’s not the case. Ultimately, I can’t control the weather.
Stacy: We’re going to this dark sky reserve and we’re staying in the reserve, which I’m so excited about. And it was pretty hard to find a place to stay because it’s a reserve. They don’t have like hotels, they don’t have a lot of Airbnbs. So I’m super excited. We found a really cute place to stay. On my birthday I am going to this beautiful restaurant for a lovely farm to table dinner. So excited about that. And then we’re going to the Observatorio which is the night sky observatory. And this place, according to their website, is the first starlight tourism destination in the world. So I’m so excited to go and just observe the night sky. When I was little I thought I wanted to be an astronomer. I mean I still think I want to be an astronomer.
Stacy: And I would dream about being in a room with an open ceiling. And I had this vision of myself standing in this room. It’s a big room in my mind and there’s like all these dials and buttons and things around and I have a big telescope and my job is just to watch the night sky and so I get to go live that fantasy for a night. So we’re going to do that on my birthday and then we’re going to either self organize or hire somebody to take us on a night walk through this region. Like a hike at night to look at the sky. I’m hoping to do an organized one but unfortunately a lot of the tours are closed. They closed the end of September and my birthday is October 1st, so. Boo.
Stacy: But we can still have a great time and I’m really still excited. I’m really looking forward to it. Okay, so what else are we doing? Yeah, we’re going to explore the town of Evora, which is a little Portuguese town. It looks really lovely. So we’re going to do that and I think just chill out and have a really peaceful, quiet, lovely, wild like wilderness time. When I thought about turning 40, I wanted a huge party. I wanted, I wanted friends to come in from all around the world. I wanted to do a band and I mean that would be cool. Maybe I’ll have to do that for 50 or maybe my 20 year wedding anniversary or something. But I’m good with this. I think it’s going to be great. It feels ceremonial. It feels like I’m still celebrating. I really value celebration.
Stacy: I think it’s so important for ourselves and for other people. So I’m very much looking forward to it. Okay, so that’s my birthday. I’m also, oh, I’m taking the week off which I’m very excited about. I just took a big chunk of time off. If you follow my stuff, you know that I took three weeks off in August and it was supposed to be kind of four weeks but it ended up being three Weeks, most of the month. And now I’m taking another week. And that’s great. I love that I can do that. I love as a 40 year old, by the time you watch this, that I’ve built a business that enables me to do this. It’s amazing. Okay, let me share some things.
Stacy: I wrote a blog post, it’s on my website about my intentions for my 40s and there’s 14 of them. So I want to share those with you now. First of all, I want to maintain harmony in my family life. And this is to me the most important thing because my relationship with my family, the peacefulness of our home, the harmony of our home is everything. It makes everything else in my life easier and happier. And to me harmony is very active. Peace to me is very passive. It’s very, you know, you’re peaceful, you’re calm. Harmony has a musical quality to it has a movement to it. And to me that is. It doesn’t mean you’re not resting, but it means you’re moving in harmony with each other. You’re active, you’re engaged. That’s what I aspire to.
Stacy: Next is to love my husband and keep the fire alive in our marri. This is very important to me. There have been periods of our 14 year marriage where kids got priority, work got priority, I got priority, like my prioritizing myself, not probably as much as I should, but not that I see my marriage as everything, but I see it as a nucleus. It is very important to me. My relationship with my husband Douglas is very important to me and it is the center of a lot of my life. And his support, his love, he takes care of me through food and maintaining our family function as a stay at home dad. And he loves me well, like he’s a good husband and I want to be a good wife. So those that’s important to me as I move into my 40s.
Stacy: Next is to create and strengthen family rituals that foster connection. And my sister actually gave me this idea of rituals which I love. She’s so smart. And this is all around the concept of building in these regular things in your life that create space for connection. It’s also something you can look forward to, something you can anchor to. So recently that has looked like walking to school with my daughter two or three times a week. My husband’s been riding to school with our son two or three times a week, usually on the days that my daughter and I are walking. But I can do better, I can do more and I really want to build more of that ritual into my life with my kids so that we’re connecting.
Stacy: I don’t have endless time with them at home, and I really want to make the most of it. Next is to continue to explore, experiment, and learn new things. I never want to get complacent. I do want to be content, but I don’t want to be complacent. And to me, that means I’m trying new stuff. Like, I took a dance class for the first time last week. I really can’t. I don’t have any rhythm. Like, none. But I tried. And I’m learning piano and I’m learning Portuguese, and there’s stuff I’m doing, things I tried. A new fitness class. I just started lifting weights. Life is. Is a place to experiment and grow and learn. And I always want to be like that. I always want to learn. I also, okay, this is a really important one to me.
Stacy: I want to anchor more deeply into my writing goals. So much of my life has been about other people’s writing goals, and I love that. I love the work that I’ve gotten to do, and I will continue to do it. And my deep drive for everything is my own desire to write, my own desire to share my writing with the world. And I am capable of writing and publishing a book every year. I have actually written two and a half books a year for several years as a ghostwriter. I am capable of doing this every single year with my own book. But so much of my energy and time has been poured into other people’s work. And again, what an honor. What a freaking honor to get to do that. I will never stop being grateful for the work that I get to do.
Stacy: And I want to become a prolific author myself. I’ve written books, done that. I want to be a prolific authority author. And that is my intention for my 40s. That feels big. All right, next is to travel widely. I already do that. But I want to do this in a bigger way. I want to go to Antarctica. Anybody out there who can help facilitate this? Like, let’s go. This is a huge bucket list item for me. I would love to do it in my 40s. I want to go to. Let’s see, I wrote some down. Japan. I’ve never been there. I want to go to Italy. That should be easy because it’s like a hop, skip, and a jump away. I want to go to India, ideally with one of my wonderful Indian friends, because that would be so fun.
Stacy: I have a particular friend in mind. You probably know who you are, that I’D love to go with. I also want to go to an Indian wedding. This is like, please, universe, like make this happen. Because I am enamored with Indian weddings. So these are like things I would love to do. Of course, I have so many travel destinations. I will go all over the world. Like this is just part of who I am and it will happen. But I do have some places that, like Antarctica. I really want to go there and I would love to do this in this next decade. All right, pour into my people. This is another intention that I have. I really want to just pour into the humans that I love. And I want to do this from a place of real abundance of energy and time.
Stacy: And I haven’t had that. I think. I think my 40s are going to be very full professionally. I just have so many things right now that are so on the cusp of like these huge things that I want to do. And a lot of that is going to come to fruition in the next couple of years. And so I know that my energy is going to be very used professionally. Like I have to give a lot there. But I want to build a life that enables me to still pour into my people fully with love and with that full intention and energy that they deserve. Okay. Another one that I have which is along those same lines is to call my mom, dad and sister more. I just want to pick the phone and call them more often and connect with them.
Stacy: That’s really important to me. Life is short. My parents are getting older. My sister, I haven’t seen her in years because of just distance and some other things going on. So I miss them terribly. And I really want to make an intention in this next decade to call them more. I also want to set up tea dates with my niece and connect with my nephew. I don’t know how, he’s a little younger, but maybe we play on zoom or something and have longer conversations with my brother in law because he’s a really cool person and I’d like to get to know him even better. The next one is to reignite the artist within. You may not know this about me, but I was a visual artist. So I also studied visual art in my university degree. Painting, drawing, sculpture, photography.
Stacy: I think I’m missing something, but anyway, that’s the gist. I don’t necessarily see art becoming like this huge part of my life. I spend hours a day doing it, who knows? But I would like to reignite that side of myself in some way. And I need to figure out what that looks like I also want to contribute in a more meaningful way to humanitarian efforts. I have done a lot of social equity work in my life, and I care about that so much. And I. There’s a lot. I know that there’s a lot of suffering in the world, and I feel that I’ve been very disconnected from it. The genocide in Gaza and my own comfort level in my life.
Stacy: Like, the fact that I’m sitting and recording this video, that I’m sitting in a nice house, that I’m fed, that I’m like, all of these things, these are really unfair that I have this privilege and so many people are suffering. And so while I don’t know that I have the constitution to, like, steep in suffering, I do want to contribute in a bigger and more meaningful way to help end human suffering. And so I got to figure out what to do or how to do that. But it is an intention that I hold in my 40s next. I really love this one. I’m really excited to share this with you. I want to age with self love. And it’s interesting because I never thought about aging when I was younger. I didn’t think about it in my 20s.
Stacy: I hardly thought about it in my 30s. And I had the opportunity recently to work with a really wonderful client, Dr. Amanda Hansen, who her whole platform is really around womanhood, redefining that. But a lot of it is around aging. And I loved getting to work with her at the age that I was, because I was able to anchor my own beliefs in aging and what I want aging to look like in my life. My commitment is that I will honor my own aging process, which means I will not have anything done to my face. I will not have anything done to change my body other than working out, which I already do. And I have my whole life eating well, which I already do. And I have most of my adult life. I’m going to take care of my skin.
Stacy: I’m going to take care of my hair. I’m going to dress well. I love to look beautiful. I love to dress up. I want to feel beautiful now. I already do. And I want to feel beautiful when I’m 80. And I want to honor that side of myself that really looks at my body through a lens of love. I want to see what my husband sees at me, who tells me regularly that I’m way hotter now than I was when I was in my 20s. And I actually feel that I feel hotter. I feel more beautiful. I feel. I just feel like, better than I. Than I did when I was younger. And I want to feel that way when I’m 50, when I’m 60, when I’m 70, when I’m 80, when I’m 90.
Stacy: And then I just want to like die at 112 years old because my goal age is 111. So if I could just like die when I’m 112, that’d be great. But I want to live until I die. I just want to keep that mentality, this like love myself, love my body, love my face, love my wrinkles, love my changing hair, love my changing everything. And I want to carry that until I die. And I never want to use okay. And I don’t. I can’t control that totally. But I can control what I eat and I can control my exercise and I can control my emotional self care my hygiene there. And there’s a lot I can control. And so I’m going to do that next is to live into this decade with the same excitement I’m bringing into it.
Stacy: I am really excited to turn 40. I’m really excited to live into this next decade. It’s going to be great. There are so many big things coming, so many great things happening, and I want to feel that. I want to live full on. I want to be in it. I want to be in, in living this decade. And that is a real commitment and intention that I’m bringing to it. And lastly, I want to stay anchored to my values. This has been a steady pulse to my life. I talk about this a lot because I think it’s good to stay accountable, to talk about your values, to keep them top of mind. And I just want to always do that. I always want to do the right thing. Even when it’s a hard thing.
Stacy: I want to do the right thing when no one’s looking. I want to make choices that other people don’t understand because it aligns with my values and that is an intention that I carry into my 40s. So that’s it. Those are my 14. I hope I gave all 14 because I didn’t number it as I went. Those are the things, those are the things that I want to bring into my 40th year and the 40s and all the things to come. Thank you for being with me. Thank you for celebrating this with me. And yeah, it’s good. It’s a good thing. It’s exciting, it’s new. I’m going to go look at the stars and ring in my 40th birthday. Thank you for being here with me. Don’t forget that birthday present I asked for. The review, the rating, the comment, the subscription, the sharing.
Stacy: Just pick one. But ideally a review because it really makes a difference. And thank you. Thank you to Rita Domingues for her production of this podcast. As I tell you every week, you would not be listening to this or watching it without her. She makes it happen and I will be back with you before you know it.
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