OK I’ll admit it — I became a Winter Oympics junkie, sitting in my living room totally into watching the amazing feats of these athletes. One athlete in particular captured my imagination, Lindsey Vonn the women’s downhill skier.

As I listened to her story and watched her compete, I couldn’t help but get a few life lessons from Lindsey and her gold medal victory.

I went to a networking meeting in NYC at The Transition Network last month and I found it inspiring to be surrounded by a group of women who are actively choosing to reinvent themselves—and the ages of these women are 50+ to 80.

Laura told me she had recently attended a seminar at the aquarium about the evolution of salmon, which are among the most adaptive of fish. They swim many miles upstream to spawn and then die, while the juveniles swim back out to sea to begin the cycle again. Only the most hardy survive, as they adapt to the challenging journey. Her instructor had included a reference to Charles Darwin, who famously postulated that the animal species must adapt, migrate or die, just as the salmon do. Adapt, migrate or die has become her mantra for the future.

If you’re a mere babe of 50 or so, you can probably skip this. 60+? You may share my sentiments. I think it’s time to turn off the news now. Too many stories are talking about what was going on forty years ago. How could any of us be forty years older?

Whether it’s in a retail environment, a career or job-search situation, or any one of several areas in which appearances can drive a response, I am beginning to have to question whether it’s my race or my age (and gender) that’s having the biggest impact. And while, like most African-Americans, my insistence on my rights is second nature by now, I am surprised to say that it’s only lately that I have begun to heat up my response when I suspect that I am being dismissed because I am perceived as a “woman of a certain age”.