the ugly duckling story

1. Experience a different religious service

Go experience a different religious service in your current lifetime. Not to change your religion, but rather to open your mind to different beliefs and practices, and to respect the aesthetics of another faith. Why not visit a different place of worship? Many buildings associated with religion are breathtakingly beautiful. Or read the Quran or Bible, to understand better the ethos and history of different creeds. TOP TIPS: Visit a mosque, a cathedral, a Buddhist, Sikh or Hindu temple; a Methodist or Orthodox church.


2. Change the way you look

3. Date someone unsuitable

Why? Well, it's fun! Mischievous! All your friends will disapprove (and be slightly jealous). The relationship will have that edge of danger, an element of impishness, the spice of forbidden fruit. So it's not going to end in marriage and babies. Who cares? In fact, that's the whole point. Have a wild affair with someone completely inappropriate. It's a rollercoaster ride of daredevil dates and lost inhibitions. Just be prepared with the messy break-up when it all comes crashing down.

• Seduce someone significantly younger or older.
• Court a colleague (even your boss!)
• Steal someone else's squeeze

4. Buy a house!

Buying a house is one of those right passage that you really need to go through if you want to call yourself a grown up. In fact, there's no surer way of announcing your adulthood than becoming a fully paid-up member of the property-owning classes. Of course if you havent done it already, you'll have no shortage of smug friends delgihting in pointing out how much money they have spend on the property ladder. With a little determination, dedication and hard work, you too can be proud owner of the cosy little home of yours'. Whatever, it'll be home. To decorate as your own personal whims and fancies take you. You will come out the other side a poorer (much poorer) yet happy homeowner!


5. Forgive someone

That bitch who trod on your toe as she pushed past you to get on the most I-want-that-dress sale? That teacher who told you, aged twelve, that you would never amount to anything? The lover who broke your heart so badly that the scar still aches? Take a deep breath. Smile benignly. Forgive. By the age of forty it's high time you learned one of life's greatest secrets - that if someone hurts you and you forgive the, it's you who will feel better for it.


6. Learn a new word every day


7. Track down your first love
There's nothing like first love. It can affect the way you feel about relationship for ever, and all other lovers will be compared to that first - good or bad. It's actually quite cathartic experience to track down the person who first stole your heart. For example, if you have romanticized them, how would you feel about then if you see them with frown lines? Perhaps after all this time, you could make a friend of them? Or if they broke your heart, you could make a peace with them. After all, it's now time to forgive someone as you approach middle age. Lets not be cynical. Love can last a lifetime!

TOP TIPS:

• Check the phone book
• Ask long time friends for leads
• Look up your old lover on Facebook
• Visit your old school
• Send a message in a bottle

8. Visit the wonders of the world

Well, there were seven. Sadly most of them succumbed to earthquake, wind and fire, though Pyramid of Giza stands strong to this day. Still the world is full of wonders. Feel free to make a start. Before I am forty, I must see...

• The Colosseum, Rome
• The Eiffel Tower, Paris
• The Empire State Building, New York
• The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
• The Grand Canyon, Arizona
• The Great Barrier Reef, Australia
• The Great Wall of China
• The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
• Machu Picchu, Peru
• Mount Everet, Nepal
• The Statue of Cristo Redentor, Rio de Janeiro
• The Statue of Liberty, NY
• Stonehenge, England
• The Sydney Opera House, Australia

9. Give a stranger in the street a bunch of flowers

As they say, Say It With Flowers. Say what, exactly?

• I thought you looked a little down. Would these make you smile?
• You're doing such a good job sweeping the street that i thought you deserved a reward
• He/ She doesn't loves me. Please take these (and can I have your phone number?)

10. Have a messy break-up
The tears, the accusations, the complicated death throes of that lingering attraction. Ah, the joy of messy break-up. We've all been there. Broken someone's heart and then gone back for more just as they were getting over us. And we've been on the receiving end of such dastardly behavior, too. The messy break-up is something that just has to be experienced. How else would we appreciate all those mournful love songs? Singledom never tastes so sweet as when we've walked over broken glass to get here, extricating ourselves in the most painful way possible from a relationship long since dead, but kept alive through the black arts and mere routine.