I got my first gray hair when I was just thirty – courtesy of a stressful job in accounting (a field that I really disliked!) packed with long hours and topped off by a boss with an extremely bad temper.

I still remember the first day I discovered it in the mirror – it gave me a really “one-foot-in-the-grave” terribly depressed feeling and I admit I quickly snipped it off with a scissor near the roots.

But that little gray hair did start off a train of thought – what was the cause? I was only thirty, wasn’t I eating right, what was wrong… And the “nearer my God to thee” feeling also made me realize – if I die tomorrow, would I have done all the things I wanted to do in my life – gone bungee-jumping, taken a trip to Hawaii, bought my dream house, seen my son graduate?

I started questioning my quality of life – why haven’t I been waking up to ordinary everyday happiness… the small things… like the kind of silent purr that is felt from deep inside when you see your baby lying asleep in his crib, the contented wonder of seeing dust motes glittering in a shaft of early morning sunlight, the satisfaction of a delicious meal at the end of a hard-spent day…

And that was when I decided it was time to change my job and give myself a chance to work at something I really loved. I got into marketing cosmetics shortly after that and soon opened up my own beauty salon.

Today, many years later, I have gray hairs galore, but these are ones I’m proud of. I earned them working with passion at growing my business, bringing up a wonderful son who was valedictorian of his graduating class, and buying and decorating my dream house at last. They are trophies of days filled with achievement, confidence and love.

And I’ve learned that it’s not the number of your gray hairs that count, it's how you got them!