30 Things No One Tells You When You Reach 40

This post was written by a guy on Threads named danfounder which hit me differently. I am not yet 40, at least at the time of this posting, but I can already relate to most of what he said.

No one prepares you for the fact you will go to more funerals & this will increase as you get older. The people you love will eventually pass, so we must cherish them now while we have them.
At 40 you will see a massive divide between people who took care of their bodies & those who didn’t.
When working out in your 20’s & 30’s it’s results first & injury prevention second. After 40 it’s the opposite.
Age makes it easier to become pessimistic & bitter. Being optimistic & happy is harder & it’s something we need to train.
Self esteem comes from doing the thing you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it.
If you choose the easy path then life becomes hard. If you choose the hard path then life becomes easy.
The older you get the more you gotta work on your mobility stretches & lifting weights with full range of motion. This keeps your body nimble & prevents injuries.
It may hurt your ego but you need to hang around younger people. They keep you energized & on top of the trends.
The worst games on the planet are status games. If you play this game you’ll never be satisfied & you’ll never feel like you’re enough.
Our parents had a different way of saying “I love you”. Some said it through cooking food. Others say it through sacrifice. Just because they didn’t verbalize it doesn’t mean they didn’t say it in different ways.
Freedom means having the courage to be disliked.
Stay away from people who put money or status over everything. You will eventually get caught in the crossfire.
Every parent needs to do the Green Box exercise to relieve the burden on their family when we pass.
In life, you have surface friends & funeral friends. Surface friends are there for a good time & are transactional. Funeral friends are people who would travel anywhere in the world to pay respects at your funeral. They’re your real friends.
You can get a good read on someone by seeing how they treat service workers & what they do with their shopping cart when they’re done with it.
It takes the same amount of effort to achieve big goals as it does small ones. Force yourself to think big.
The average person spends 7 hours a day on their smartphone. If they’re 40 that means they’ll spend 11+ years staring at a screen. The biggest modern-day regret will be spending more time looking at your phone than getting out in the world and living.
The 1st step to success is showing up. You can’t achieve if you’re not in the arena.
The 2nd step is doing the work. You can’t see results if you don’t do the thing.
The final step is looking for ways to improve. You compound your returns by getting 1% better daily.
Being easily offended means you’re easily manipulated.
Never blame your emotions on someone else. Your emotions are your responsibility.
A big part of being human is learning how to manage your emotions in healthy ways (ie. exercise, food, sleep, journaling etc).
Stop using your age as an excuse to do the things you aren’t willing to do.
A good mantra to tell yourself is that you’ll never be as young as you are right now. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone do the thing you’re meant to do.
If you stop learning new things you will age faster.
You can’t control what happens to you but you can control how you react to it. As the Buddha says, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first.
The best way to get the most out of life is to remind yourself that you will die. Death is a feature, not a bug.
Don’t tell people what your goals are. Show them through your actions.
You live in one house for the rest of your life & it’s called your body. Maintain it (sleep & movement). Give it renovations (healthy eating & exercise). Treat your body like it’s the only one you’re ever going to get because it is.