30 Things No One Tells You When You Reach the Age of 40

As we age, certain truths become increasingly apparent. Here are thirty insights that often surprise people when they reach their 40s:

Mortality & Relationships

No one prepares you for attending more funerals as you age. The people you love will eventually pass, so cherish them while you can.
You’ll notice a stark divide between those who took care of their bodies and those who didn’t.
Your parents expressed love in different ways—through cooking, sacrifice, or other means. Just because they didn’t say “I love you” doesn’t mean they didn’t show it differently.
There are surface friends (transactional, there for good times) and funeral friends (who would travel anywhere to pay respects at your funeral). The latter are your real friends.
You can judge someone’s character by how they treat service workers and what they do with their shopping cart after use.

In your 20s and 30s, workout priorities are results first, injury prevention second. After 40, it reverses.
The older you get, the more you need to focus on mobility, stretches, and lifting with full range of motion to keep nimble and prevent injuries.
You live in one house for life—your body. Maintain it (sleep and movement), renovate it (healthy eating and exercise), and treat it like the only one you’ll ever get—because it is.

Age makes it easier to become pessimistic and bitter. Being optimistic and happy requires deliberate training.
Self-esteem comes from doing what you promised when you promised to do it.
If you choose the easy path, life becomes hard. Choose the hard path, and life becomes easier.
It may hurt your ego, but you need to spend time with younger people. They keep you energized and aware of current trends.
The worst games are status games. Play them, and you’ll never feel satisfied or enough.
Freedom means having the courage to be disliked.
The best way to get the most from life is remembering you will die. Death is a feature, not a bug.

Every parent should complete the Green Box exercise to ease the burden on family when they pass.
Stay away from people who prioritize money or status above all. You’ll eventually get caught in the crossfire.
It takes similar effort to achieve big goals as small ones. Challenge yourself to think bigger.
The average 40-year-old spends 7 hours daily on their smartphone—that’s 11+ years of life staring at screens. A major future regret will be spending more time looking at phones than living.
Success requires three steps: showing up, doing the work, and looking for improvements. Get 1% better daily to compound your returns.

Being easily offended means being easily manipulated.
Never blame others for your emotions. They’re your responsibility.
A significant part of being human is learning to manage emotions healthily through exercise, nutrition, sleep, journaling, etc.
You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction. As Buddha said, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first.”

Stop using age as an excuse to avoid challenging things.
Remember: you’ll never be as young as you are right now. As long as it doesn’t harm others, do what you’re meant to do.
If you stop learning new things, you’ll age faster.
Don’t tell people your goals—show them through actions.
Avoid people who put money or status over everything else.
The first step to success is showing up in the arena.

Originally shared by Dan Go on LinkedIn