As Queen Rania approaches age 40, she says she still feels like a kid inside. "The lines crept on my face when I wasn't looking," she says. "Now when I go to department stores and the saleswoman's like, 'Do you want to try this anti-wrinkle cream?' [I think]: 'Who is she talking to? She must be talking to somebody else.'"

Still, Queen Rania says she's ready to embrace aging. "We're programmed to believe that time is the enemy, that it takes away from us or that it diminishes us," she says. "I have found that it's done the opposite to me. Life is in perfect balance. It's just that our perception of it isn't."

Take a tour of Jordan with the queen