Have Your Best Years Really Passed?

I think the thought first started after 40. Not in some dramatic lightning bolt moment, but as a quiet, uncomfortable realisation that began sitting in the background of my life. I was past the halfway point of the average man’s lifespan, and because I was overweight, diabetic and carrying high blood pressure, I could not even comfort myself with the assumption that average applied to me. For some reason, 30 years suddenly stopped sounding like a long time.

When you are younger, time feels almost offensive in its abundance. There is always another chance. Another year. Another fresh start after Christmas, after the holiday, after work settles down, after life becomes less awkward. You can waste time without feeling the full cost of it because the future still looks enormous. Then you reach an age where the future still exists, but it no longer feels unlimited.

That is a very different feeling.

The painful part is not simply getting older. Getting older happens to everyone, unless the alternative gets there first, which is generally considered worse. The painful part is looking backwards and feeling that you have not made the most of what you had. There is a specific ache in wasted potential. It is not the same as failure. Failure at least suggests you tried. Wasted potential feels more like standing beside a door you never properly opened and wondering what might have been on the other side.

I have lived a normal life in many ways. In fact, a lot of people would probably look at my life and say I should feel grateful, and they would not be wrong. That is part of what makes the feeling more complicated. There is a guilt that comes with being unhappy when you know others might look at your life and see plenty to be thankful for. It makes dissatisfaction feel selfish, as though wanting more from yourself is somehow an insult to everything you already have.

But the feeling is still there.

For me, the word that keeps coming back is mediocrity. That sounds harsher than I intend it to, because it is not about living an objectively bad life. It is about knowing, deep down, that you have not fully tested yourself. It is about suspecting that you were capable of more energy, more courage, more discipline, more achievement and more happiness than you actually claimed. It is about wondering whether you spent too many years preparing to start rather than actually beginning.

I sometimes think about what would happen if I could go back to being ten years old. It is a tempting fantasy because you imagine you would make different choices, avoid old mistakes, build better habits and somehow engineer a cleaner version of yourself. The uncomfortable truth is that unless I addressed the underlying reasons I struggle now, I would probably live a very similar life and end up in a very similar place. The problem was not only the decisions. It was the patterns underneath them.

That is the bit I find both frightening and useful.

Frightening because it means the past was not an accident. Useful because it means the future does not have to be one either.

When I ask myself what would make the next 30 years better than the last 30, the answer is not simply weight loss, although that matters. It is discipline. Achievement. Trying properly, even if trying properly means failing more visibly. It is success, yes, but also the satisfaction of knowing I could not have given any more. I want to reach the end of a day, a year, or eventually a life, and know I did not leave so much of myself unused.

That is probably what scares me most. Not death, exactly, but regret. If I am lucky enough to have a deathbed, I do not want it to be a place of sorrow and accounting, where I look back at decades of excuses and realise I let them win. That sounds dramatic, but I think people have these thoughts more often than they admit. We distract ourselves from them because they are uncomfortable, but they wait patiently. They know we will come back to them eventually.

The question is whether we come back soon enough to do something about it.

Do I believe my best years can still be ahead of me? Yes, I truly do. But I do not believe it in a light, easy, motivational-poster sort of way. I believe it while also knowing the task ahead is enormous. I know the size of the mountain. I can see it. Some days it looks ridiculous. But there is also an inner ego in me that says I can do it, and not only that I can do it, but that I can do it better than any man on earth has ever done it.

That is probably absurd. It is also useful.

There is something powerful in having a slightly deluded part of yourself that refuses to accept the obvious limitations. The trick is making that part earn its place. Grand belief without action is just noise. Ego without discipline becomes another unfinished project. But ego harnessed to work can become fuel.

Turning back the clock, emotionally, does not mean pretending the past did not happen. It means accepting that the things I want to change about my past cannot be changed, and perhaps should not be changed, because I would not be the person I am without them. I am strong. I am capable. I am smart, funny, depending on the audience, and truly unstoppable when I decide to be. The regretful parts of my life shaped me just as much as the good parts did.

The issue is not whether the past made me who I am. It did. The issue is whether I let it decide who I become next.

That is why the idea of best years matters so much. If my best years were behind me, and I had spent them fully alive, fit, happy, confident and fulfilled, then perhaps there would be something to mourn. But when I look back honestly, I do not see the best years of my life. I see years that contained good things, hard things, wasted things and unfinished things. I see a man who always thought he had time.

That means the next 30 years can be better.

Not because youth can be recovered. It cannot. Not because the body has no consequences. It does. But because the next 30 years can be lived with more intention than the last 30. They can be built rather than drifted through. They can contain failure through trying rather than regret through avoidance.

That is what I mean when I say I want to turn back the clock. I want to think like I am 20 again in the sense that greatness is still ahead of me, but unlike when I was 20, I need to grab it now. I need to stop waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect mood or the perfect version of myself.

And, to put it in the most refined and spiritually mature way possible, I need to make it my bitch.

Disclaimer: This article reflects personal perspectives and experiences relating to fitness, mindset and wellbeing. It is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.